MEXICO CITY (AP) — At least five indigenous people were killed, three injured and 16 homes burned following an armed attack on the community of Wilu, in the Caribbean region of northern Nicaragua, authorities in Nicaragua said on Monday. the region and environmental leaders.
Amaru Ruiz, director of the environmentalist Fundación del Río, told The Associated Press (AP) that the attack took place last Saturday in Wilu, one of the 24 Mayangna indigenous communities belonging to the territory of Sauni As, located in the Bosawas Biosphere Reserve in northeastern Nicaragua.
“A new massacre took place, which left 16 houses burnt and the killing of five people confirmed so far by the autonomous government of Mayangna,” he said. He said the victims “were brutally murdered” and some bodies mutilated.
Ruiz blamed the attack on “settlers,” as the mestizo groups who invade indigenous lands in the area are called. He indicated that the police and the army were mobilized in the area but did not provide any information in this regard.
The national police did not immediately respond to a request for information requested by the AP.
In a statement, the Sauni As Home Rule Government stressed that “it is presumed that there are more deaths in the Wilu community”, where indigenous houses have been destroyed. “All houses were completely burnt down” and “families were left unprotected, without food and without clothing”, as they barely had time to escape, the report said. Only the church, the pastoral house and the school remained standing.
He also said that last Friday, five other natives “were abducted” by “settlers and foreigners” in the area of Musawas, the chief of the Sauni As territory, and that they would have been released the next day.
Meanwhile, the Sauni As guard team said the attack on Wilu involved some “70 heavily armed non-native settlers” with assault rifles and AK-47 shotguns. According to the complaint, the attacks are intended to “pressurize community members and sow terror, and thus more easily seize land.”
The Mayangna government “strongly denounced this crime which constitutes genocide, because it is repeated and systematic” against the territory of Sauni As, where the attacks “have intensified since 2020”, he said.
This is the second attack similar to Wilu. In 2017, a similar incursion caused the forced displacement of its inhabitants. In 2022, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) granted precautionary measures to the Wilu community, which were not respected by the Nicaraguan state.