Daniel Ortega’s four high-risk jobs in Nicaragua

In a well-known cartoon, a prisoner shouts from behind the screened window of his cell: I want to talk to my lawyer! From another cell, his lawyer replied: I am here!

This image is not a caricature in Nicaragua. You can give it real names. Political prisoner asking for legal aid could be presidential hopeful Medardo Maiena and another cell of the Directorate of Legal Aid of the Nicaraguan Police, known as “The New Chipote ”, his lawyer would answer him, Maria oviedo. O Felix Maradiaga, another prisoner candidate for the presidential election, and his lawyer, Roger reyesFrom another cell in the same police complex, I would answer: Here I am!

Lawyers

The fate of Oviedo and Reyes is linked to the high risk lawyers take when defending political prisoners under the Daniel Ortega regime. It is not the only profession whose practice has become dangerous. Along the same lines, human rights defenders, journalists and even doctors. Prison and exile have become frequent for these professions.

La abogada María Oviedo es funcionaria del Consejo Permanente de Derechos Humanos de Nicaragua (CPDH) y defensora de los direntes campesinos Medardo Mairena, Freddy Navas y Pedro Mena, detenidos por la Policía el pasado 5 de julio, acusados ​​del supuesto cargo de “traición a the homeland. “Until Wednesday, neither their relatives nor their lawyer had been able to see them. On the contrary, Oviedo was arrested on July 29 on the same charges and also remains incommunicado.

Roger Reyes, accompanied his client, the opposition presidential candidate, Félix Maradiaga, on June 8 to the appointment made by the public prosecutor. That day, after the interview, police violently arrested Maradiaga on his way home with the lawyer. Reyes, in turn, was arrested on the night of August 20 at a gas station in Managua. Both Maradiaga and Reyes are members of the Blue and White Unit (UNAB).

Avocado Elton Ortega, who defended imprisoned opponents Juan Sebastián Chamorro and Arturo Cruz, went into exile after being threatened for his work.

“Being a lawyer in Nicaragua is dangerous”, says lawyer and human rights defender Pablo Cuevas. “The abuses against lawyers already existed, but they intensified from April 2018 when the citizen is deprived of his defense and the lawyer who vigorously defends the rights of his client is seen by the State as an enemy .

Human rights defenders

Cuevas, who is also an adviser to the CPDH, says they have found no legal reason to justify the arrest of his colleague, María Oviedo. “We looked at each of the statements she (Oviedo) made before being jailed and found nothing to do with Law 10-55 with which they accuse her. All!”.

Oviedo’s arrest, he says, is a message to human rights defenders. “They want to scare us and prevent us from doing our job.”

Five CPDH human rights defenders have been jailed over the past three years. Four of them were sentenced and one was jailed for three months without being brought before a judge. Another organization, the Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights (CENIDH) was banned by the Ortega regime in december 2018, their offices were confiscated and many of their officials fled into exile to avoid arrest and continue working for other organizations.

“At every moment, I have to consider the possibility that they could put me in jail, shoot me or tie me to anything”, Pablo Cuevas, 52 and 14, recognizes himself as a promoter of human rights. “People look at us with regret. Recently, I was dating a citizen and the place was besieged by the police. She said to me: How do you manage to put up with this? And the same thing happens in our homes. The neighbors are watching us. Motorized civilians patrol our region. My son said to me: Dad, walking with you is a danger ”.

Journalists

Sergio Marín Cornavaca, 58, is a Nicaraguan journalist and runs the digital portal “Round table”. In mid-June, he went into exile before an imminent arrest. “There is fear. I knew there was an attack on journalism coming. Among other things, a video appeared where I appeared with other people and relatives of Ortega asked for jail for us. Right now everyone in the video is in jail except me ”.

Marín is a member of the Independent Journalists and Communicators of Nicaragua (PCIN) and estimates that over the past three months some 45 Nicaraguan journalists have gone into exile, mainly in the neighboring country of Costa Rica. The other destinations are Panama, Spain, the United States, El Salvador and Colombia.

“Journalism is criminalized. There is no exercise of journalism in complete freedom. Closing the media is part of the criminalization of journalism. They call us putschists and that creates a stigma. Only official journalism exercises its profession without anyone infringing its rights“, says Marin.

Since June, at least thirty journalists have been summoned by the prosecution to answer for the sources of funding their work and to threaten them with crimes that they would be expected to engage in accordance with the recently approved Cybercrime Law. Four of the 36 politically detained at present are journalists or are linked to journalism.

The newspaper Press, the oldest and last remaining print media in Nicaragua, was seized by police on August 13 and its managing director, Juan Lorenzo Holmann, jailed and charged with alleged crimes of customs fraud and money laundering.

From the Nicaraguan executive, there is a permanent disqualification of journalism which is not under its control. Chachalacos, putschists and terrorists are some of the epithets with which Vice President Rosario Murillo usually refers to journalists.

“The day before yesterday, we said, communication terrorism is being carried out with the issue of Covid. It is unforgivable, it is sacrilege, it is an attempt against the love of God, to always be inventing, desiring. They wanted, they wanted, ”said Murillo on Tuesday in his traditional lunchtime monologues. “For this reason, communications terrorists are simply ignored at all times, and even more so when it comes to an assault on life, an assault on the good life.”

Doctors

Doctors are another union that feels persecuted. The disagreement started after the 2018 rebellion when some doctors decided to treat the wounded from the protests who did not go to public hospitals out of mistrust or because the doors were closed to them.

An emblematic case is that of the teenager lvaro Conrado (Alvarito) who died on April 20, 2018 after being wounded by a gun during a demonstration. The hospital where he was rushed did not allow his admission.

Dr Carlos Quant, a renowned Nicaraguan infectious disease specialist, recalls that the staff of the private hospital where he works were organizing themselves to treat the injured at that time. “It is part of our Hippocratic Oath that the sick must be treated, unfortunately it has become a problem,” he says.

The Covid pandemic has also become a point of collision between the regime and independent doctors.

Another doctor who out of fear asks not to be mentioned by name, says that before the imminent arrival of the Covid in Nicaragua, a “Multidisciplinary Scientific Committee” was organized, made up of epidemiologists, infectious disease specialists, professionals health, pediatricians and pulmonologists, among others, to guide the population and the union on the precautions to be taken.

“We are at odds with the government over the data. There was no acceptance, but rather rejection and we have already seen how it ended. We had to disintegrate the group, the persecution of some colleagues started, they ended up confiscating the non-governmental organization led by Dr (Leonel) Argüello, and many colleagues had to go into exile or silence us. Censorship us, ”the source says.

Dr Quant was among those summoned by the Ministry of Health. “They called us to tell us that we could not continue to talk about the pandemic because we risked losing our license to practice medicine or to enforce the law on cybercrime. “He points out and apologizes for not being able to talk about other topics. You feel threatened.

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