Letter from Cenidh to Delegations Attending the Farcical Ortega Inauguration

Vilma Nuñez, president of Cenidh, during the presentation of a report on the human rights situation in Nicaragua.  Photo: Carlos Herrera.

“Go out and see the reality.” Many of those killed were young, sometimes even children who were shot with weapons of war.

By Confidencial

HAVANA TIMES – The Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights (Cenidh) released an open letter on January 10th to delegations arriving in the country to participate in the inauguration by the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo for a fourth consecutive term, after the electoral farce of November 7.  Cenidh urges those visitors to “go out on the streets” and see the reality that is experienced daily in the country.

The prestigious human rights defenders denounced that in the last four years of socio-political crisis “more than 300 families suffered the murder of their children or close relatives, due to state repression against social protest.” There have been no institutional investigations or justice brought. In addition, they pointed out that in the country’s prisons there are more than 160 persons unjustly held hostage.

“We ask you to go out into the streets, to ask about the murdered, about the mothers who cry for their children, about the relatives who, in a daily pilgrimage, approach the jails where the innocent political prisoners are held in a situation of arbitrary detentions, isolation, and torture,” they request in the letter.

Cenidh emphasizes that if the delegations approach the relatives of victims and prisoners “they will see, without intermediaries, that they are not coup plotters, that they are not terrorists, that they are not foreign agents. They will see that these are Nicaraguans who are fighting against the repression of the State, which has taken away their freedom and the lives of their loved ones.”

Below is the complete letter from Cenidh (Spanish).

Read more from Nicaragua here on Havana Times.