At least 229 people have been victims of torture after being detained in Nicaragua since the protests against the government of Daniel Ortega in 2018, the human rights organization Nicaragua Nunca Más Collective reported on Tuesday. “The testimonies of 229 survivors of torture have been documented,” the report from the NGO, which operates in exile from Costa Rica, highlighted.
The report identified “more than 40 forms or methods of torture perpetrated in Nicaragua,” including beatings, asphyxiation, electric shocks, burns, mock executions, and the removal of nails or teeth, among others. The victims include 46 women and 183 men. “With the start of protests in 2018, the practice of arbitrary detentions was established with the intent to spread terror and control over the population,” the report stated.
The Ortega government, along with his wife and Vice President Rosario Murillo, has intensified repression since the opposition protests of 2018, which left more than 300 dead in three months according to the UN. Managua has dismissed the protests as an attempted coup orchestrated by Washington.
The Collective emphasized the “systematic” nature of the “attacks” on dissidents and opposition members, involving acts considered crimes against humanity, such as murder, enforced disappearances, imprisonment, torture, rape, and other forms of sexual violence. The NGO has reported more than 2,000 arbitrary detentions since 2018, nearly 40% of which involved “the participation of paramilitary agents acting as a third armed force.”
Since February 2023, the government has stripped around 450 Nicaraguans—including politicians, businesspeople, journalists, intellectuals, human rights activists, and religious figures—of their citizenship while exiling or expelling them from the country. “The exile and statelessness have intensified what amounts to civil death,” the NGO denounced.
A sweeping constitutional reform passed in November established that “traitors to the homeland” would lose their Nicaraguan nationality—a charge that has been used to target the majority of those expelled from the country.
