1 de septiembre 2018
The government of Daniel Ortega expelled today the mission of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (UN Human Rights) that was in the country to verify the situation of human rights, diplomatic sources reported.
The mission arrived in Nicaragua on June 26th to accompany the Verification and Security Committee of the National Dialogue and monitor the human rights situation in the country. The Office of the High Commissioner published this week a devastating report on the human rights violations that occurred in the country in the context of the demonstrations and the repression unleashed by the Daniel Ortega regime.
The final report of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) details the use of the “lethal force” by the Government of Daniel Ortega and paramilitary groups against the “non-lethal threats” of the Nicaraguans who rose up in protest.
The findings will be elevated on September 5th to the UN Security Council, despite the fact that Ortega disqualified the report and accused the agency of being “an instrument of the powerful who impose their death policy.”
The report states that the government’s actions during four months of protests “were in violation of international human rights law,” and lists among these the disproportionate use of force by the National Police, which in some cases resulted in summary executions, forced disappearances, obstruction of access to medical care, arbitrary or illegal detentions, ill-treatment, cases of torture and sexual violence, as well as the criminalization of social leaders, human rights defenders, journalists and demonstrators critical of the Government.
Guillermo Fernández Maldonado, coordinator of the Mission in Nicaragua for Central America of the OHCHR, said that with this report, entitled “Violations of human rights and abuses in the context of the protests in Nicaragua,” one does not want to polarize the situation, but to have information at the national and international level, in such a way that we can try to contribute to get out of the current crisis.
President Ortega rejected the report presented by OHCHR on Wednesday afternoon, arguing that it is an “instrument of the powerful who impose their death policy.” Ortega, visibly angry, stressed that the half million signatures he obtained from the “people demanding justice” will be given to “the blind United Nations human rights organizations.”
“To them, these “victims” don’t exist. If the person tortured was a Sandinista, he doesn’t exist. A commission managed by we know who, by the powerful, by those who have taken ownership of entire continents, by those who have committed genocide against entire peoples, those are the owners of this United Nations’ human rights commission who came to Nicaragua because we invited them, but in their reports, these murdered, these tortured don’t exist,” expounded an irate Ortega.
The Sandinista leader stated that to the OHCHR the “coup terrorists” are little angels who don’t torture anybody, and that the world doesn’t believe them since they’ve become instruments of the powerful.
“To those who impose their politics of death on the peoples, they’re the same ones who reduced the peoples of entire continents to slaves…who took them from Africa to work. They’re the same, the same colonialists who have invaded and continue to invade and to destroy entire peoples, these organizations, in this case the United Nations, is nothing more than a policy instrument of death, terror, lies, infamy. They’re despicable and it’s a good thing that we Nicaraguans are getting to know them better,” he repeated in anger.