Source: United Nations (video statements)
The Chair of the United Nations Group of Human Rights Experts on Nicaragua, Jan-Michael Simon, said the Government of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo, “has demonstrated a cynical and calculated approach to international cooperation.”
Briefing journalists in New York, Simon said, “they have been leveraging Interpol anti-money laundering and counter financing and terrorism cooperation frameworks to persecute transnational opponents. And this includes abuses of the Interpol retinal system and the circulation of false alerts on travel documents, misusing, databases dedicated to this by Interpol.”
He said, “they have also been circulating misinformation to trigger on the anti-money laundering compliance warnings within the financial compliance systems, leading to freezing of closure, of bank accounts and, of the targets.”
The Group Chair said, “the goal is to avoid scrutiny and accountability while continuing to perpetrate human rights violations. But the second point, which is less evident is, here, more important even, in this consists in a direct and aggressive, challenge to the international legal order.”
Ariela Peralta Distefano, a Member of the Group, said, “we continue to raise alarm over the increase of simultaneous mass arrests and prolonged incommunicado detention. Authorities refuse to disclose their fates and whereabouts of thousands of detainees, which amounts amount to enforce two disappearances. The resurgence of enforced disappearances is one of the most alarming developments we have seen since the group began its mandate in 2002.”
Distefano said, “it is important to underscore that international human rights law does not require a minimum duration for an act to qualify as an enforced disappearances. In this regard, the November 2024 detention of at least 40 political opponents whose whereabouts work on sale for two weeks constitute clear violation of international law, regardless of their duration.”
The third Member of the Group, Reed Brody, said, “the state and the ruling Sandinista party have virtually fused into a unified machine of repression, operating a wide intelligence network, surveilling the population and selecting the targets for violation of rights.”
Brody said, “our reports have identified 54 officials responsible for grave human rights violations, abuses and crimes. In addition, Nicaragua’s large-scale use of the arbitrary deprivation of nationality as a mechanism of targeted political repression is a manifest violation of the UN Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness, and we are urging states to bring Nicaragua before the International Court of Justice for that violation.”
The Group of Human Rights Experts on Nicaragua is an independent body mandated by the UN Human Rights Council. Established in March 2022, it is tasked to conduct thorough and independent investigations into all alleged human rights violations and abuses committed in Nicaragua since April 2018.
The expert members of the Group of Human Rights Experts were appointed by the President of UN Human Rights Council to gather data on alleged human rights violations, collect unbiased information and provide independent analysis.