Daniel Orterga's regime aims to prevent abuses from being documented in Nicaragua

The non-governmental Permanent Commission on Human Rights (PCHR) denounced on Tuesday that the Nicaraguan regime asked the National Assembly (Parliament) for its closure and its illegalization in order to prevent them from documenting the alleged abuses of authority.

“There is no will, on the part of the Government (of President Daniel Ortega), that there are human rights organizations that are documenting the abuses that are being committed in this country,” CPDH Executive Secretary Marcos Carmona said at a press conference.

According to the activist, the CPDH is the latest organization that legally promotes and defends human rights in Nicaragua, since December 2018 the Government has stripped different similar NGOs of legal personality, including the Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights (Cenidh).

In Nicaragua, with the vote of Sandinista MPs and their allies, at least 112 Nicaraguan NGOs have been outlawed since December 2018, eight months after a popular revolt broke out over controversial social security reforms described as a coup attempt by dictator Ortega.

The last 25 NGOs, including the Nicaraguan subsidiary of Operación Sonrisas, were cancelled on March 17.

Among the organizations that have been affected are NGOs that defend human rights, medical, feminist, educational, universities, environmentalists, indigenous people, journalists, and centers of thought, among others.

The Executive has also canceled the registrations and perpetual issues of four US and six European NGOs.

In addition, in 2018, the mission of a delegation from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) and another from the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) ended.

SAVE COMPLAINTS IN DIGITAL FILES

Carmona argued that, with the decision of the Nicaraguan Government, “not only are they affecting the institution as such, they are affecting all the people of Nicaragua, because in some way it was the only institution we were (legally) to document the arbitrariness and abuses that are committed by the different branches of the State and since the different officials”.

According to the request of the Executive, which is expected to be submitted tomorrow to the plenary of Parliament, with an official majority, the CPDH and 24 other NGOs have failed to comply with their legal obligations, such as not registering as “foreign agents”, or failing to deliver their financial statements with their detailed breakdowns of income, expenditure, balance of checking and detailing donations, or their boards of directors.

The representative of the CPDH recalled that the organization had already attempted to deliver these documents to the Ministry of the Interior and that the portfolio refused to receive them.

On March 1, the CPDH had already publicly denounced that the Government of Nicaragua wanted to “outlaw” it, because it refused to receive its documentation.

Carmona, who called the state decision “painful”, especially one day after the CPDH was 45 years after it was founded, said he did not understand that the NGO would be canceled by the same Sandinista deputies whom he defended in decades past.

The defender added that by law the assets of the CPDH will pass into the hands of the Government, but said that information on the cases of opponents they defend are safe in digital formats.

Since April 2018 Nicaragua has been experiencing a socio-political crisis that was accentuated in last November's elections, when Ortega was re-elected for a fifth term, fourth in a row and second with his wife, Rosario Murillo, as vice president, with his main contenders in prison.

(With information from EFE)

KEEP READING: