Regime militarizes Peñas Blancas border and bans international commission from entering Nicaragua

This Friday, July 8, the Ortega regime banned the entry to Nicaragua of an international commission of parliamentarians, social activists, and human rights defenders from six Latin American countries from entering into Nicaragua. They planned to personally verify the conditions of more than 180 political prisoners of the government of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo.

The foreign deputies denounced that the regime militarized the Penas Blancas border post, between Nicaragua and Costa Rica, and that the Costa Rican immigration authorities warned them that Nicaragua would not guarantee “their physical integrity.”

The delegation consists of deputies and activists from Argentina, Costa Rica, Mexico, Brazil, Dominican Republic and Panama. They led a caravan —with Nicaraguan exiles and human rights defenders— that left San Jose, the Costa Rican capital, towards the Penas Blancas border with Nicaragua.

In the caravan were representatives from Nicaraguan associations: Articulation of Social Movements; Reflection Group of Former Political Prisoners; Unity Congress of Free Nicaraguans; April Victims Organization; Relatives of Political Prisoners in El Chipote; Anticapitalistic Alternative, and the Nicaraguan section of the International Socialist League.

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In addition, taking part were the UNAMOS party youth; University Coordinator for Justice and Democracy; Nicaraguan PTR Migrants Costa Rica; Group of Politically Kidnapped; and the Blue and White National Unity (UNAB).

Previous requests

The commission sent a request to enter Nicaraguan territory through various means, but the regime has not answered them. At the beginning of last June, a delegation —member of the Argentine Coordinating Committee “Encuentro Memoria, Verdad y Justicia”— presented itself to the Nicaraguan Embassy in Argentina, to deliver a note to the Ortega ambassador about the trip to the country; however, they were not received.

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“We carried out diplomatic efforts at the highest level, embassies, and consulates of several countries. There was an effort through the Argentinian Foreign Ministry, through the embassy in Managua, but so far, the answers have been evasive,” said Argentine activist Mariano Rosa, political coordinator of the international commission.

He added that “we made a very concrete proposal for a road map” of the prisons that they wanted to visit.

This is not the first international commission to which the regime has denied entry to Nicaragua. In the middle of June, the government of Ortega and Murillo flatly refused to allow entry to the country or to cooperate with the Commission of Independent Experts appointed by the Human Rights Council of the United Nations (UN), created to investigate human rights violations that occurred in Nicaragua between 2018 and 2022.

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Luciana Echeverria, a deputy from the province of Cordoba, Argentina for the Socialist Workers Movement—United Leftist Front, commented that the visit to Costa Rica and the Nicaraguan border—given the refusal to enter–, will serve to document the testimonies of relatives of political prisoners and those Nicaraguans forced into exile, which will be integrated into a report and circulated internationally.

*This article was originally published in Confidencial and traslated in Havana Times