The ‘deep human rights crisis’ looming over Nicaragua’s elections | Elections News

Nicaragua is holding general elections after months of election campaigns drowned in controversy, including a widely-denounced wave of arrests of opposition leaders and presidential candidates.

President Daniel Ortega, who is running virtually unopposed, is ready to win his fourth consecutive term on Sunday.

But the longtime leader, denounced as a “dictator” by the European Union’s foreign policy chief just days before the vote, has been monitoring what right-wing groups and international observers are calling a government campaign to stifle dissent.

In the run-up to the election, the Ortega government arrested 40 opposition activists, including seven potential presidential candidates, and the United States and the EU have denounced the competition as a fraud.

Rights groups said current conditions in the Central American nation are not conducive to free and fair elections.

“These elections are taking place in the context of a deep human rights crisis,” Astrid Valencia, Central America researcher at Amnesty International, told Al Jazeera. “The Nicaraguan government has a deliberate strategy of prosecuting and punishing any opposition – thereby precluding the possibility of any real political process.”

Here’s what you need to know before voting on November 7th:

How will the voting work?

Nicaraguans will vote for the President and Vice President, as well as elect the members of the country’s 92-seat National Assembly.

About 4.5 million people are eligible to vote, according to local media, but it is unclear how many will actually vote this week when exiled dissident groups called on Nicaraguans to boycott the elections.

The new government is expected to take office on January 10 for a five-year term.

Ortega’s Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) and five other minority political parties – the Constitutional Liberal Party, the Independent Liberal Party, the Nicaraguan Liberal Alliance, the Nicaraguan Christian Way and the Alliance for the Republic – take part.

The parties are popularly known as “zancudos” – or mosquitoes – – small political parties with few well-known candidates who are friends or allies with the ruling government.

Nicaraguans will vote for the President and Vice President, as well as elect the members of the country’s 92-seat National Assembly [Maynor Valenzuela/Reuters]

Who is Daniel Ortega?

Ortega, 75, is standing for re-election along with his wife Rosario Murillo, who is seeking the vice-presidency.

Ortega, a former Marxist fighter and leader of the left wing FSLN, ruled Nicaragua from 1979 to 1990 before returning to power in 2007.

The FSLN overthrew the US-backed dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza in 1979 and established a revolutionary government. Then Ortega won the 1985 presidential election, which international observers said were free and fair. In 1990, 1996 and 2001 he ran unsuccessfully for president.

Human rights groups said Ortega has increasingly moved towards authoritarianism since 2007 when his government began cracking down on dissent, freedom of expression and civil society groups.

State Department Says Elections “Lost All Credibility” [File: Alfredo Zuniga/AP Photo]

When did the crisis start?

Political analysts said the latest crisis began in April 2018, when student-led demonstrations erupted across the country after Ortega announced plans to cut pensions and raise taxes.

The reforms were canceled later that month, but the government initiated a violent crackdown on the demonstrations.

According to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), 328 protesters were killed and 1,614 others were arrested, many of them ill-treated and tortured while in detention. The IACHR said 136 people remain in prison and more than 103,600 have fled the country and gone into exile, most to Costa Rica.

The latest wave of arrests of members of the opposition, activists and journalists began in June.

Several of the detainees were charged with treason or money laundering. However, critics have said the allegations were fabricated and aimed to keep them out of the running.

“The government has charged many with serious crimes without producing substantive evidence, strongly suggesting that the persecution was politically motivated in retaliation for resisting the government,” Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in September.

Many Nicaraguan activists have gone into exile in Costa Rica [File: Mayela Lopez/Reuters]

Who was arrested?

Opposition leader Cristiana Chamorro, 67, the daughter of former President Violeta Chamorro, was arrested in early June and charged with money laundering.

The former journalist had planned to head a unified opposition list and was widely considered a favorite to defeat Ortega. However, citing the charges against her, a court upheld the prosecution’s motion to exclude her from running for president or holding public office.

Chamorro, who has denied the money laundering allegations, has been under house arrest since June 2.

The arrests of other presidential candidates soon followed. Arturo Cruz, Felix Maradiaga, Juan Sebastian Chamorro, Miguel Mora, Medardo Mairena and Noel Vidaurre were arrested and prevented from escaping.

Former Ortega allies, including Hugo Torres, a retired Sandinista general who rescued Ortega from prison in the 1970s and served under him until the 1990s, were also arrested. “The arrests are a message from Ortega,” Al Jazeera Latin America editor Lucia Newman said in June that “no one is taboo, regardless of their revolutionary credentials.”

Dozens of other activists and opposition figures have since fled Nicaragua, including Chamorro’s brother, the prominent journalist Carlos Fernando Chamorro.

The Supreme Electoral Council, Nicaragua’s electoral body, also banned three opposition parties for violating electoral laws. Congress later banned 45 civil society groups, including six foreign NGOs, from operating in Nicaragua.

What did Ortega say?

Ortega has defended his government’s actions, stating that the opposition are not candidates, but “criminals” and “terrorists” who pose a threat to the country. He said her arrests were carried out in accordance with the law.

The president has accused several of his critics of affiliation with the US, accusing them of destabilizing the country and overthrowing its government.

What laws are used to imprison people?

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet said on June 22 that most arrests were made in accordance with two laws: “Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing Act 977” and “Defense Act 1055”. the people’s rights to independence, sovereignty and self-determination for peace ”.

Law 1055, known as “the Sovereignty Act,” was passed by the Nicaraguan Congress last year and has drawn criticism from Ortega’s critics and international observers. It allows the authorities to hold detainees for up to 90 days.

“My office and several human rights mechanisms had already warned that these laws could be used to persecute opponents, which is actually happening,” said Bachelet.

She also said the Nicaraguan Prosecutor’s Office’s investigation into some of those arrested “undermines their rights to personal freedom, the presumption of innocence and effective legal remedies. This would prevent them from running in parliamentary elections, which not only limits their political rights, but also the rights of citizens to vote for the candidates of their choice. “

According to local media, around 4.5 million Nicaraguans are eligible to vote [File: Maynor Valenzuela/Reuters]

How did Ortega react to the criticism?

Ortega has remained defiant, even in the face of international sanctions which he recently said would not “subdue” Nicaragua as the nation “has gone through much tougher, much tougher times.”

In a speech on the country’s independence in September, Ortega said he wanted to maintain good relations with all countries in the world, but “the only thing we ask is that they respect us”.

Michael Campbell, an Ortega political advisor, defended the election Wednesday in an online meeting of the Organization of American States. He accused the critics of the electoral process in Nicaragua of trying to overthrow the government “and to feed terrorism as a formula for destabilizing national sovereignty”.

What did rights groups say?

Jose Miguel Vivanco, America director at HRW, said in September: “Ortega’s rush to detain critics for wrong reasons and without due process in dire conditions ahead of November’s elections shows that he has no intention of losing.”

In a joint statement on Wednesday, the British human rights group Amnesty International and other US and international organizations said the elections would be held “in the context of serious restrictions on civil and political freedoms”.

“We are going to elections on Sunday where there are no guarantees to exercise political rights, where the government has taken all institutions to ensure that” [Ortega] keeps power under control, ”said Amnesty International’s Valencia.

Valencia said Ortega will win another term, which means that “the structures that have allowed, promoted and ensured impunity and repression will continue in the country”.

Last week the IACHR also published a report (PDF) saying that the circumstances in Nicaragua are not conducive to “free, fair, transparent and pluralistic elections”.

How did other countries react?

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said last month that the Ortega government was conducting “a sham election without credibility” aimed at establishing “an authoritarian dynasty not accountable to the Nicaraguan people.”

On Wednesday the US House of Representatives passed a bill calling for more sanctions against Nicaraguans blamed for overseeing the elections. It has yet to be signed by President Joe Biden.

Measures include increasing – in coordination with Canada, the EU, and Latin American and Caribbean countries – a range of US sanctions against those involved in human rights abuses and obstructing free elections.

The US had also previously imposed a number of sanctions and visa restrictions on Nicaraguan officials.

On Tuesday, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell described the election as “fake” and only aimed to keep Ortega, whom Borrell called a “dictator”, in power. The EU has imposed its own sanctions on Nicaraguan officials, including Ortega and his wife, for banning them from entering or passing through the bloc and freezing their property.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/11/5/the-deep-human-rights-crisis-looming-over-nicaragua-elections