“The above conditions make a full and free electoral process unfeasible,” he warned.
The report, entitled “Nicaragua: Concentration of Power and Weakening of the Rule of Law,” establishes that “none” of the measures to promote free elections proposed by the OAS General Assembly were implemented.
The IACHR report highlights that this year, “in an unusual way,” More than 30 people were “arbitrarily” detained, including seven presidential candidates, who remain deprived of liberty.
It also denounces the cancellation of the legal status of three political parties, the “continuous harassment” of civil and human rights organizations, and harassment and repression against all opponents.
Nicaragua was transformed into a “police state”, where the Ortega government, in power since 2007, “has installed a regime of terror”, with suspension of fundamental rights and an “intense and systematic” attack on public liberties “through state and parastatal security institutions.”
The report further emphasizes that, in responding to the massive anti-government protests that broke out in 2018, the Ortega government “carried out conduct that according to international law should be considered crimes against humanity.”
The repression of the demonstrations left at least 328 dead, 1,614 detained, of which 136 are still in prison, and more than 103,000 exiles, according to the IACHR.
The agency said Nicaragua expressed its “non-acceptance and absolute rejection” of the report, a copy of which was sent to it before its publication.
“It is but an insulting one, offensive and absurd compilation of false facts, distorted and manipulated that do not reflect the reality of our country and whose sole purpose is to defame the State, “the Ortega regime asserted in its response to the IACHR.
He added that he considered it “a frank obedience and replica of the harmful and interfering designs of the North American Empire, in its attempt to injure our sovereignty and self-determination, in the face of its next electoral process.”
The report traces the origins of Nicaragua’s institutional deterioration to the so-called “Alemán-Ortega” pact of 1999, sealed between the then president. Arnoldo German (1997-2002) and Ortega, who had already been president between 1985 and 1990 after the Sandinista revolution of 1979 that defeated the dictatorship of Atanasio Somoza.
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