Nicaragua’s Mothers of April Demand Justice for Murdered Relatives

“Mothers don’t give up, they demand justice!” Shouted the demonstrators, while names of the victims were heard in the megaphone

By Ivette Munguia (Confidencial)

HAVANA TIMES – The names of young people killed during the April Rebellion resonated through a megaphone, their mothers and relatives mentioned them one by one in front of a police cordon that threatened to subdue them during a sit-in in Managua’s Cathedral.

The protest took place at the conclusion of a mass in memory of the murdered that was attended by dozens of relatives gathered in the Mothers of April Association (AMA), who carrying photographs of their children or relatives killed, Nicaraguan flags and posters with the slogan “no repetition,” evaded the police state of siege to demand justice and non-repetition.

“Mothers don’t give up, they demand justice!” Shouted the group, while the names of the victims were heard over the megaphone, whose murders have been left unpunished over the last 22 months. Daniel Ortega’s regime didn’t investigate any of these crimes committed—mostly—by the Police and the paramilitary groups that cruelly repressed the population.

“We are at this mass to commemorate the memory of our children and loved ones and also, as Mothers of April Association, we are demanding truth, justice, guarantees of non-repetition and demand the Government respect our rights,” said one of the mothers of the victims, with megaphone in hand.

The relatives of the victims also called on international human rights organizations to visit Nicaragua to verify how the Government, in addition to harassing them, is also denying them the right to health, education and employment, “only for being a relative of someone killed by them.”

They demand the release of political prisoners

Besides demanding justice for their murdered children, the Mothers of April got together to demand freedom for the more than sixty political prisoners of the Ortega regime. “They protested for a just cause and we want them released,” emphasized Karina Navarrete, mother of the baby Teylor Lorio, killed during the 2018 protests.

Ivania Alvarez, of the opposition Civic Alliance for Justice and Democracy, stressed the feeling of indignation of the relatives of the victims because after 22 months “they have not seen even the slightest investigation for the death of their children. That is their outcry and that of all Nicaraguans. None of the cases has been investigated, she reproached.

Likewise, Alvarez observed that “if there is courage” to protest against Ortega, “it is in the mothers, who are not going to give up until they receive justice and the people of Nicaragua owe them that courage they have.” “There are many people who can go out to protest for them, but today they give us the lesson that they put themselves in front because they are not going to get their children back,” she argued.

A weekend of besiegement and repression

The protest of the Mothers of April happened hours after the regime’s police reactivated their repression strategy. This weekend a large number of officers again besieged universities, shopping centers, churches and houses of well-known opponents, to the point of imposing—without any legal basis— “house arrest” to political commentator Jaime Arellano and the businessman Jose Dolores Blandino.

Another protest held this weekend, to demand the release of 61 political prisoners, was repressed by hundreds of officers in the Plaza Espana sector of the capital.