Development: On 27 August the students’ movement Coordinadora Universitaria por la Democracia y la Justicia (CUDJ) called on the Nicaraguan government led by President Daniel Ortega to release "political prisoners".
Significance: The call by the students – who have been at the heart of the protests against President Ortega which began in mid-April – show that they remain undeterred by the government’s bloody crackdown, which has left over 450 people dead. The call is in response to the latest wave of arrests by the government which have also attracted concern from the likes of the United Nations (UN), the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights (IACHR), and international human rights NGOs like Human Rights Watch (HRW).
- The call for the release of prisoners follows reports that from 24-25 August more than 50 people, many of them students, were arrested in the departments of Chinandega, Carazo, León, and Managua.
- On 24 August the IACHR issued a statement warning about the ongoing “stigmatisation and criminalisation of social protest on unjustified and disproportionate grounds”. The statement notes that while the Special Monitoring Mechanism for Nicaragua (Meseni), which was set up by the Organization of American States (OAS) to monitor the human rights situation, has “registered a decrease in violent actions and the disproportionate use of lethal force at protests” it remains concerned that “an adverse environment for social protest, through a strategy of criminalisation and stigmatisation” persists.
- The IAHCR also notes that “hundreds of people are being put on trial on unfounded, disproportionate charges involving widespread accusations of terrorism”.
- The UN Secretary General António Guterres met Nicaragua’s foreign minister Denis Moncada on 27 August – after which the UN issued a brief press release insiting on “the need for full respect of the population’s human rights, and the importance of a truly inclusive National Dialogue”. Guterres also expressed the UN’s “readiness to support this process”.
- While President Ortega has rejected the presence of an OAS working group in Nicaragua, the creation of which was approved in a 2 August OAS vote, he has said he is more amenable to UN mediation.
Looking Ahead: Pressure on Ortega to end the violence continues to come from the US which has already imposed sanctions on three of his allies under the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act. On 24 August a bipartisan group of US legislators called for the US executive to determine whether a further four Nicaraguan government officials meet the criteria to face similar sanctions. The four are Sonia Castro (health minister), Gustavo Porras (the head of the national assembly), and two of Ortega’s sons: Laureano Ortega Murillo and Juan Carlos Ortega Murillo.
