Ortega’s Revolving Door Prison Strategy for Dissidents
In the context of Easter week and the commemoration of the fifth anniversary of the April Rebellion, the regime arrested at least 27 people, seven of whom have already been charged.
HAVANA TIMES – The dictatorship of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo is relentless in the state of terror and systematic persecution of opponents and critics of their regime. Between April 1 and 16, in the context of Easter week and the commemoration of the fifth anniversary of the April Rebellion, the Blue and White Monitor reported the arrest of at least 27 people, seven of whom have already been charged by the Ortega Prosecutor’s Office.
The regime released and banished a group of 222 political prisoners to the United States last February 9, leaving 37 political prisoners, including Monsignor Rolando Alvarez, and including ten people detained since before the outbreak of the socio-political crisis of April 2018 in different prisons in the country. The information comes from the Mechanism for the Recognition of Political Prisoners, whose figures are endorsed by the Inter American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR).
“The dictatorship has created a revolving door. Not just now, but since the beginning, to imprison, release and imprison again, to maintain its state of terror and repression against any critic,” stated Juan Sebastian Chamorro, member of the political organization Civic Alliance for Justice and Democracy, and who is one of the 222 banished prisoners.
Hector Mairena, member of the Political Council of the Blue and White National Unity (UNAB), agreed that “the dictatorship has not ceased the repression because it is a characteristic in which its (power) rests and it is acting entirely in the opposite direction to what the international community and the opposition demand.”
Chamorro also mentioned that the regime has made it quite clear that “it can care less about what the international community does, and they reject any type of rapprochement or communication with the international community to solve the crisis in the country.
Ortega could continue banishing opponents
Gonzalo Carrion, lawyer of the Human Rights Collective Nicaragua Never Again, says the essence of the dictatorship is to “repress” and pointed out that “if they stop repressing, the very essence of the tyranny ends.”
It should be noted that six days after the banishment of the 222 political prisoners, the regime also stripped 94 other Nicaraguans of their nationality, declaring them “fugitives from justice” and ordered them to be stripped of their property.
“So, power and terror go hand in hand in this regime which already has five years of systematic repression, which has strengthened because now we are more than 300 people deprived of their nationality,” added Carrion, and warned that it is possible that the regime will continue to banish opponents.
“The dictatorship is not going to dismantle the machinery of repression, because that would be synonymous with leaving power and the regime will not do that,” pointed out Carrion.
They fear a new civic uprising
According to Mairena, the new repressive escalation of Ortega has affected several sectors of the opposition and independent people, who without making the slightest attempt to express themselves or protest against the regime were arbitrarily detained. “Just the fact of living in Nicaragua is to resist,” said Mairena.
Chamorro said that “this new surge began just before Holy Week and intensified for the anniversary of April,” which means that “the dictatorship fears new protests.” In his criteria, the detentions respond to “preventive” actions of the dictatorship.
Carrion agreed that the dictatorship “imposes terror to demobilize any attempt of expression against it, and the Nicaraguan people have the well-founded fear of losing their freedom, their rights and even their lives.” In addition, “they (the regime) imagine in their paranoia that the population will again make an uprising,” that is why it eliminated all religious activities during Easter week.
“The strategy of the dictatorship is to destroy any space it does not control, to repress any citizen who expresses an opinion contrary to the dictatorship and therefore to consolidate its totalitarian model. “Obviously, it is a strategy that is doomed to fail in the medium term because such a model cannot be sustained,” added Mairena.
Carrion also expressed his recognition of the anonymous people, who semi-clandestine or clandestine “continue resisting” in the country. “Repression is synonymous that there is resistance, so in that sense, although we are not talking about going out into the streets massively, the repression confirms that the dictatorship continues to be vicious for our people and that there continues to be resistance,” he expressed.
Ortega and Murillo are quite simply detestable. It really is remarkable that two such people should emerge together from the sink of depravity. Only Romania could claim having had their equal.