The death toll in Nicaragua during two months of anti-government unrest has risen to 212, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights said yesterday, faulting President Daniel Ortega’s government for “serious” human rights violations.
“Nicaragua has not fulfilled its international obligations to respect, protect and guarantee human rights in the context of the social protests that began on April 18,” the rights body said in its report after its visit to the Central American country.
“On the contrary, the IACHR found that the state response has been characterised by the repression and criminalisation of the demonstrators and the social movement they represent, which has resulted in serious violations of human rights,” the 97-page document said.
The Washington-based group said more than 1,300 people had been wounded in the unrest.
Nicaragua’s descent into chaos began when relatively small protests against now-scrapped social security reforms exploded into a popular uprising against Ortega, whose forces met demonstrators with a violent crackdown.
“State violence has been aimed at discouraging participation in demonstrations and quelling this expression of political dissent,” the IACHR concluded, calling on Nicaragua’s government to “reach a constitutional, democratic and peaceful solution to this human rights crisis.”
The IACHR presented the report yesterday during a special session of the Washington-based Permanent Council of the Organisation of American States.
The latest round of negotiations aimed at ending Nicaragua’s violence once again fell apart on Monday, with the country’s influential Catholic bishops and civil groups accusing the government of failing to act on a promise to allow more probes from international organisations.
A onetime leftist guerrilla, Ortega led the country from 1979 to 1990 and then returned to the presidency in 2007, now serving his third consecutive term.
Earlier, Nicaragua’s bishops entered the opposition bastion of Masaya in a dramatic show of solidarity with residents they said were threatened with a “massacre” at the hands of forces loyal to Ortega.
Thousands of people poured onto Masaya’s narrow streets to welcome several prominent bishops, who led them through the city in procession.
The bishops — tasked last month with mediating an increasingly bloody confrontation between the opposition and government — said they had decided to go to Masaya “to avoid another massacre, give comfort and pray with our people.”
The city just south of the capital Managua — once a stronghold of Ortega’s Sandinista revolution — has become a flashpoint after two months of anti-government protests that so far have claimed the lives of 191 people.
Managua’s auxiliary bishop Silvio Baez called on the crowd not to take justice into their own hands, “not to imitate the same attitudes and criminal acts” as the government forces.
“We do not want more criminals in Nicaragua,” said Baez, a harsh critic of the government.
“To the snipers, to Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo: Not one more death,” he said.
Murillo, Ortega’s wife and vice president, has said her husband “is committed to curbing this wave of terrorism, hate crimes, kidnappings, threats and intimidation.”
But residents are desperate.
Wrapped in a flag, 40-year-old housewife Yanet Lopez said she could no longer tolerate the pro-Ortega repression. “We want a free country. Daniel should go, we do not want more dictatorship. We are people, not ‘criminals’, as he says,” he said.
The city — which this week declared itself in rebellion to Ortega’s rule — had come under “disproportionate” attack from hundreds of police and hooded paramilitaries since dawn Thursday, a human rights group said.
The pro-government forces were using AK47s and Dragunov sniper rifles against civilians in the town, Nicaraguan Association of Human Rights head Alvaro Leiva said.
“It’s deplorable to see how our brothers are dying,” a local resident said in the indigenous Monimbo neighbourhood, believed to be the target of the operation.
“If we had weapons, it would be weapons against weapons, but this is very unequal. Help us against these murderers who are killing our people,” he said.
In Monimbo, local residents, who were resisting with homemade mortars, said government forces had set fire to some houses.
Cardinal Leopoldo Brenes, who led the delegation to Masaya, said the talks mediated by the bishops would resume next week.
The church has called on Ortega to allow early elections in March 2019, two years ahead of schedule, in order to ease tensions.
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