Edwin Carcache: “They Want to Completely Destroy My Family”
The former Ortega political prisoner denounces the persecution suffered by his relatives in Nicaragua, forcing some into exile.
HAVANA TIMES – Edwin Carcache, a Nicaraguan youth who became well known as one of the charismatic voices of the 2018 student-led protests, is now in exile. However, he continues denouncing the fact that seven of his relatives have had to go into exile, due to constant harassment from the police and Daniel Ortega’s fanatical supporters. Others of his family members are still in Nicaragua, under threat and constant surveillance.
“The Sandinistas are trying to completely destroy my family. They hold this hatred for us precisely because we tell them the truth. But we won’t rest until we find justice and freedom for our country and the release of our fellow Nicaraguans who are in prison for their politics,” Carcache declared.
Actions aimed at “settling old scores”
Carcache, now 32, affirms that his entire family always supported him in his activism against the Ortega regime, even more so when the official media launched a smear campaign against him. Even some relatives who worked for the government never hid their affinity with him and his objections to the violent repression of the protesters.
“In 2018, many of my relatives worked for the State agencies in a professional capacity. However, since that time, the Sandinista structures in Nicaragua have been forcing my family members to retire, resign, or just stop doing what they’re doing, as a kind of payback for what has happened with my participation [in the past protests], and also because my family members have never been submissive to what the dictators say in Nicaragua,” Carcache sustained.
Carcache was among the first political prisoners in 2018, the year when the Ortega police and paramilitary abducted over 700 people. He was released from jail in 2019, through the controversial Amnesty Law approved by the Ortega-aligned deputies in Nicaragua’s National Assembly. [The law was controversial because it declared a blanket amnesty that left those responsible for 300 + unsolved killings above the law.] However, that measure never restored Carcache’s full freedoms, because he remained under persecution and constant surveillance by Ortega’s fanatical grassroots followers.
He worries about relatives still in Nicaragua
Carcache left Nicaragua in 2019. His mother, Mercedes Davila, who before Edwin’s release from prison had become well-known in the media for demanding her son’s freedom, had already left the country the week before.
Carcache now says he’s concerned about those family members still in Nicaragua, including his daughter.
“It’s hard not to be close to my family. My baby’s there, and it’s complicated. I know it’s all a process of reconstruction, and I have faith that we’ll soon find a way to get out from under these criminals. As a Catholic, I tell you there’s going to be a miracle soon in my country,” he stated.
Many thousands of Nicaraguans have left the country due to the crisis caused by the armed repression against the 2018 civic protests. That repression left over 300 dead, according to documented reports from several different international human rights organizations.
Over the past five years, the Ortega-Murillo regime has imprisoned, banished, and confiscated the assets of all the leading opposition figures. Currently, no one is allowed to publicly criticize or protest against the regime.