Nicaragua’s ‘Nazis’: UN investigators cite Hitler’s Germany to describe what Ortega’s dictatorship is doing

The Nicaraguan president, his wife and senior government officials have committed serious human rights abuses, including torture and murder, which amount to Crimes against humanityconcluded a team of UN investigators who will provide evidence to any initiative that tries to try them abroad.

At a press conference on Thursday, the head of the investigation called for international sanctions against the government and compared Nicaragua’s human rights record to that of the Nazisclaiming that the current regime’s tactics to stay in power since 2018 were similar to those discussed at the Nuremberg trials.

“The arming of justice against political opponents, as is done in Nicaragua, this is exactly what the nazi regime didhe said in an interview Jan-Michael Simonwho led the team of UN-appointed criminal justice experts.

“People are massively stripped of their nationality and expelled from the country: this is exactly what the Nazis did“, he added.

The Biden administration imposed sanctions on the government and the president’s family Daniel Ortega in recent years, though the UN report could mean even greater repercussions, including accusations in other countries, according to human rights experts.

Under universal jurisdiction, courts in any country can try people for atrocities committed anywhere It has therefore become a global mechanism for human rights lawyers, particularly in Europe, to prosecute war crimes committed by governments such as those in Syria and Liberia.

“Let’s say if Daniel Ortega’s son is in Spain, someone could go to a local judge for these reasons and convince him to go and arrest this guy,” he said. Jose Miguel VivancoAssociate Senior Researcher for Human Rights at the Council on Foreign Relations.

The UN finding that Nicaragua has committed crimes against humanity could also affect the government’s ability to secure international funding, Simon said.

In 2018, Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillothey faced a massive uprising of political dissent, as hundreds of thousands of demonstrators protested against cuts to social security and the deterioration of democracy, blocking the streets and paralyzing the country.

UN investigators found that the regime used all the means at its disposal to repress the protestersand that police forces and pro-government groups have acted in concert with deadly results.

According to the report, the police systematically fired on demonstrators, as well as on armed groups that were not authorized to use force. The police and allied government organizations have engaged extrajudicial executions. Police carried out highly coordinated operations to dismantle the barricades using violent tactics, investigators found.

The UN analyzed 40 extrajudicial executions and concluded that the police and pro-government groups acted in a “coordinated manner”.

By the end of the protests, hundreds of people had been killed.

To this day, “the rape continues to be committed,” Simon said.

The government has denied deliberately killing protesters and calls the protests a violent coup attempt, saying at least two dozen police officers were also killed. The government was not involved in the UN report, nor did it allow investigators access to the country.

Investigators also claimed that the government systematically proceeds Arbitrary Arrests and Prosecutions of Government Opponents using various government institutions, such as the National Assembly, the police, the judiciary, the public defender’s office, the penitentiary and the Institute of Forensic Medicine. Detainees were torturedconcludes the report.

“The Nicaraguan state has, in fact, armed literally every state institution in terms of control and repression,” Simon said. “The word is weaponry. They have armed the judicial system, armed the legislative function, armed the executive function.

The vice president, who acts as the government’s spokesperson, did not respond to a request for comment from The New York Times.

The report comes just weeks after the Ortega government stripped of citizenship from 300 Nicaraguans whom a judge describes as “traitors to the fatherland”. Those affected included human rights activists and journalists, among others, and most live outside the country.

The publication of the UN investigation was a pleasant surprise for human rights activists.

“Before arriving in prison, this was not the language used by the experts. Now the language is stronger,” he said. Juan Sebastien Chamorroa Nicaraguan activist who was released last month after spending 611 days in detention and now resides in Houston.

“It means that more evidence has been accumulated and can be used in a future international tribunal,” he said. “We are talking about more than 350 people who have been killed.”

Chamorro was among hundreds of Nicaraguan political leaders who have been removed from office since protests in 2018 first shocked the country.

Rosalia Gutierrez-Huete Millerwho is among the Nicaraguans who lost their citizenship last month, said the UN report was the condemnation protesters have been waiting for.

“Today’s legal finding validates and recognizes what we have been calling out for years,” he said by phone from Washington, DC. “There has never been a statement as clear as this. Often these statements are tasteless, trying not to cause emotions.

© The New York Times 2023