Nicaragua’s Absurd and Out-of-Control Repression
The latest group of 135 political prisoners banished to Guatemala includes some activists, government opponents, worshippers, common citizens and FSLN militants. In most cases, however, the prisoners’ crime was to express themselves.
HAVANA TIMES – Just printing a photo of [then imprisoned] Monsignor Rolando Alvarez was enough to transform Nicaraguan Adriana Zapata into a political prisoner of the Ortega-Murillo dictatorship. Former university professor Freddy Quezada’s crime was to “like” a post supporting the Nicaraguan Miss Universe, Sheyniss Palacios. Kevin Laguna was imprisoned for painting a mural of her; and TikTok influencer Geovany Lopez Acevedo overstepped by criticizing the official narrative against the Nicaraguan beauty queen’s victory.
None of the four were active members of the opposition. Nor were they business leaders, presidential hopefuls, or activists of any kind, as was often the case for the previous 800 Nicaraguans imprisoned between 2018 and 2021. Yet they were all treated as political prisoners: deprived of their liberty, exposed to inhumane conditions behind bars, and later banished, stripped of their nationality with an order for government confiscation of all their assets.
Since 2018, the Ortega dictatorship has sharpened its persecution against all Nicaraguans it considers opposed in any way to its mandate. As a result, among the thousand-plus citizens jailed from 2018 to 2024 are Nicaraguans who weren’t involved in protests, who merely exercised their right to freedom of expression on social media or through their art. The Ortega-Murillo net also reached – and continues trapping – its own Sandinista militants.
Listening to identify the patterns
“There’s a lot of variation, and because of that we should listen to all of them, including the government employees who became political prisoners. That will help us identify the new patterns of persecution the regime has implemented,” emphasized Ivania Alvarez, an exiled activist and released political prisoner.
Alvarez also feels that the treatment of these political prisoners was different from that of the ones imprisoned during the first years of Nicaragua’s socio-political crisis, because in this new repressive phase the families were silenced.
“Relatives [of the prisoners] have suffered a great deal of repression. They’re under surveillance in their homes, through their telephones, their social media. They’re forced to sign a letter before they enter the La Modelo prison to visit their loved ones; and when they leave, they’re threatened that if anything happens, or some media outlet or individual mentions that political prisoner, they’d cancel their visits,” Alvarez added.
After jail, comes banishment, denationalization, and confiscation
Between February 2019 and September 2024, there’ve been 14 group releases of political prisoners according to Confidencial’s count. Some of the prisoners, however, were then detained again, like Juan Carlos Baquedano who was imprisoned for the second time in August 2023, when he returned to Nicaragua to obtain some personal and property documents. He’s one of the prisoners now in Guatemala, banished and stripped of their nationality.
Then there’s the case of Jaime Navarrete, who remains in prison after being locked up again just a few days after he was released under the amnesty decree Ortega issued in June 2019. Even though he has finished serving his sentence, he continues to be held.
Between the end of February and the beginning of June 2019, over 520 political prisoners were released bit by bit, all with no guarantees of their freedom. With the approval of Ortega’s blanket amnesty on June 8, 2019, another 106 political prisoners were let out of jail. Among them were citizens who had participated in the civic protests of 2018, student leaders, farm leaders and activists from different sectors.
The releases of that year came as part of agreements that were established during the second National Dialogue, as well as Ortega’s June 2019 Amnesty Law. Before that law was approved, some Nicaraguan political prisoners had been released under the “family cohabitation” program, or simply sent home without any document certifying their status.
In 2021, the dictatorship once again filled their jails, imprisoning the seven principal presidential hopefuls and a great number of the country’s political and civic leaders. These remained in prison until February 2023, when a new pattern of repression was established – banishment and denationalization.
Those banished since February 2023
The first group that were released and banished from Nicaragua were the 222 political prisoners that included the former presidential hopefuls [from the November 2021 elections], business leaders, priests, activists, political leaders, farm leaders and opponents of the regime, most of them imprisoned in 2021, some for the second time. All were banished to the United States, where they landed on February 9, 2023 with newly printed passports that hours later were canceled and the released prisoners stripped of their nationality.
On October 18 of that same year, twelve priests, mostly from the north of Nicaragua, were banished to the Vatican. Then, on January 14, 2024, a second group of 19 priests and seminarians, headed by Bishops Rolando Alvarez of Matagalpa and Father Isidoro Mora de Siuna, were released and banished. A third group of religious leaders met the same fate on August 8th of this year.
The list continues growing with the latest group of 135 political prisoners banished to Guatemala on September 5th.
After five mass banishments, this is the first time that the regime of Daniel Ortega has refused to release the list of those who were expelled, despite the fact that in the hours following their release, he ordered them stripped of their nationality and their assets confiscated, all without even identifying them by name.
Nonetheless, through their testimonies in the media and on social media, the latest group has been identified to include Catholic parishioners and Protestant pastors, plus many other “low profile” citizens who were imprisoned for commenting or responding to some post on social media, expressing their thoughts through art, participating in religious activities, or celebrating the crowning of Nicaraguan Sheyniss Palacios as Miss Universe.
Anyone in Nicaragua can become a political prisoner
“I was betrayed by my trust, believing that a retired professor didn’t represent any great danger to them,” admitted academic Freddy Quezada, 66, one of the 135 recently banished.
Marcia Aguiluz, president of the Nicaragua Nunca Mas Human Rights Collective, warns that in this new pattern of increased repression, any Nicaraguan can suddenly find themselves a political prisoner of the dictatorship.
“The reasons that many of these people [the 135 banished prisoners] were detained couldn’t even be classified as political opposition. In the first escalations, there was a clear pattern of [imprisoning] people who were fighting for democracy, but on this occasion, we see a pattern that’s even more complex,” Marcia Aguiluz affirmed in an interview with the online television news show Esta Noche.
“No one is immune in Nicaragua,” she stated, adding: “it’s no longer a matter of ‘you’re safe if you’re careful, if you don’t say anything, if you don’t mention this or that, if you don’t go out on the street.’ That doesn’t exist anymore. For any minimal expression, some comment that has nothing to do with political issues, you can end up spending 12 months, 15 months, whatever, in jail,” she lamented.
The list of political prisoners is never empty
The releases of political prisoners have been preceded by national and international pressure. However, the dictatorship always retains a group of political prisoners, which it later expands.
“The list is never empty. This time, once again, some people were left behind, and it’s very probable that in a very short time we’ll see more people detained or disappearing, which is infinitely more serious,” Ivania Alvarez predicted sadly.
According to the Mechanism for the Recognition of Nicaraguan Political Prisoners, there are at least 36 political prisoners still in Nicaragua, ten of them imprisoned prior to April 2018.
“Some of the young women who were released told us that a lot of women prisoners still remain in La Esperanza women’s prison. In the same way, the men who were released from La Modelo told us that there are some farmers on the lists,” so that the number of [political] prisoners could be greater, Alvarez added.
Sandinista militants now filling the jails
In the new repressive context, in addition to the people in prison, there are more than a hundred who must sign in daily at the police delegations, and otherwise are in house detention. Many of these are government employees or former Sandinista allies who are under investigation.
“This is another thing that hasn’t been mentioned much, because they’re people who belong to the party, like the case of the TikTok personality who is openly pro-government but who was detained, and we know spent a long time with his whereabouts unknown,” Alvarez noted.
There are also state workers and mayors who are missing or under investigation, but “their families don’t denounce their situation.”
“Government workers, like any Nicaraguan, have the right to a defense, the right to have their cases made visible, and also to be classified as political prisoners, given the circumstances of their arbitrary detentions, forced disappearances and the mistreatment they’re suffering,” Ivania Alvarez insisted.
Who classifies as a political prisoner in Nicaragua?
The Mechanism for the Recognition of Nicaraguan Political Prisoners has established five criteria for classifying an individual as a political prisoner:
1. If the detention violates the Constitution or international human rights law: freedom of thought, conscience, religion, freedom of expression, peaceful assembly, or association.
2. If the detention has been imposed for reasons of political persecution, without connection to any crime.
3. If the duration or conditions of the detention are clearly disproportionate to the offense for which the person is being criminally investigated or has been found guilty.
4. If, for political reasons, the person is detained in a discriminatory manner compared to others.
5. If the detention is the result of procedures that were clearly unfair and is related to political motives of the authorities.
Among the Sandinista political prisoners is Humberto Ortega, Daniel Ortega’s younger brother. He has been under house detention for nearly four months after giving an interview to the Argentine media outlet Infobae, in which he asserted that his brother has no adequate successors, and that his eventual death will leave a power vacuum that should be filled through elections.
Over 40,000 common prisoners pardoned
Parallel to the release, denationalization, and banishment of the political prisoners in Nicaragua, the Ortega dictatorship has issued “presidential pardons” to over 40,000 common criminals.
Between January 2018 and September 2024, Ortega has pardoned 40,384 prisoners, according to monitoring from Confidencial. From January to September of 2024, the regime decreed mass pardons on four different occasions: the anniversary of the April protests, Nicaraguan Mothers’ Day, the date the Sandinista Revolution triumphed, and the Independence Day celebrations.
Many of those pardoned criminals have subsequently reoffended, committing serious crimes that include femicide or gender violence. In 2024, at least four women were killed by husbands or boyfriends who had been released from jail.
First published in Spanish by Confidencial and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.