Urnas Abiertas [Open Ballot Boxes] is a Nicaraguan electoral observation organization. This is their first report on the upcoming municipal elections to be held in November of this year. What follows is a translation of the introduction and executive summary of the full report.
Nicaragua: Between Fraud and Terror
A brief report about how terror Works in Nicaragua
INTRODUCTION:
The current report titled “Nicaragua: Between fraud and terror- a brief report about how terror works in Nicaragua” is the first document of Urnas Abiertas within the framework of the process of the municipal elections of 2022, and attempts to briefly describe the Human Rights situation in Nicaragua, revealing the continuity of the political violence and the persistence of the state of terror that has been possible thanks to the perpetuation in power of the Nicaraguan regime established through the electoral fraud of 2021.
On November 6, 2022 purportedly municipal elections are going to be held in Nicaragua to elect 153 mayors, vice mayors, and more than 6,000 council people. So far, those elections have not been convoked. From Urnas Abiertas it has been pointed out that the period for convoking municipal elections has been shortening, from one year to 6 months since Ortega returned to power. This has been a systematic behavior registered throughout the last three municipal processes. For the elections of 2008 the call for elections was launched on November 6, 2007, exactly one year before the date of the elections. In 2012, the announcement was not made until April 26, that is seven months before the elections were held, and in 2017 the call for elections happened on May 5th. For this year 2022, it is not known how much time the period will be reduced and when the call for elections will officially happen.
The regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo through their Sandinista bench which controls the National Assembly on May 3, 2022 issued a bill to reform the Electoral Law, Law 331, which allows for greater control over the electoral process, limits citizen oversight and contradicts the recommendations made by civil society organizations and political and international organizations. The reform allowed changes to be made to nine articles unilaterally, modifications that, among other things, decrease the time for the electoral campaign, constitution and work of the intermediate electoral organs; everything indicates that said reform was promoted for the purpose of justifying the delay in calling for elections.
The democratic setback of Nicaragua predates the social and political crisis that erupted in 2018, the demonstrations of the peasants against the interoceanic canal, and even the electoral frauds of the last four presidential elections. Two facts established the conditions for the decadence of the institutional policies: the pact in 1998 between Daniel Ortega and Arnoldo Aleman – realigned the pieces on the gameboard of representative democracy and the discovery of the “Huaca” in August 2002. These events caused a profound impression on the fabric of Nicaraguan citizenry and a significant drop in the levels of credibility of public officials and political figures.
Both events constituted the starting point for a series of electoral processes which with the passage of the years ceased to have a relevant amount of citizen participation. Corruption and fraud were the perfect prelude to the authoritarianism and political terror materialized in the multiple forms of human rights violations that the State of Nicaragua has exercised in a systematic and generalized manner against the civilian population.
In her work The origins of totalitarianism (2007), the political scientist Hanna Arendt understands political terror as the means that totalitarian systems use to subjugate entire populations and to conserve power.
Following the idea of Arendt, we understand political terror is one of many phases of an extensive project which anchors its horizon in the complete control of the dynamics, relationships and expressions of a certain people. This phase cannot be carried out without the constant destruction of the bodies for citizen participation, the annulment of political/ideological divergence, and the persecution (and even annihilation) of opposition leaders. In other words, the terror phase is also the moment for the destruction of the collective strategies and exercises of a people, because who would take on the responsibility of leading a party or movement under the risk of incarceration or assassination? Despite this, in Nicaragua there are still leaders, organizations and other citizen expressions willing to report, register, oversee and resist the cruelty of the totalitarian regime which Ortega and Murillo have constructed and fortified, and it is thanks to these reports that this report of Urnas Abiertas is possible.
Recording the landmarks of the political violence and pointing out the ways in which such wounds are opened constitute a forceful way of fighting against forgetfulness and non-repetition. The organized networks in the territories/municipalities have the careful, complex and essential task of monitoring the deployment of the brutality to which Nicaragua finds itself subjected.
Totalitarianisms reach their breaking point, wobble and fall apart. On the contrary, the practices and structures of corruption and violence are capable of prevailing through time, transforming themselves depending on multiple circumstances and adhering to different political discourses,which is where the work of citizen observation becomes essential to document, denounce and warn about the multiple expressions of terror.
On the other hand, in the case of democracy, the high point – during the course of the year – of its demolition happened with the closing of the OAS and the raid on its property in Managua. This entity was branded by Vice President Rosario Murillo as “a diabolical instrument of evil” and the rupture of the relationship between the Nicaraguan State and the Organization of American States (OAS) was sealed by the press release of the Ministry of Foreign Relations: “We the people and Government of Nicaragua have disavowed and disavow this Instrument of Colonial Administration, which does not represent at any time the sovereign unity of our Caribbean America, and which, on the contrary, is an instrument of Yankee imperialism to violate Rights and Independencies, sponsoring and promoting interventions and invasions, legitimizing coups in different formats and modalities.”[1]
The end of this relationship and the theft of their property represents a very serious setback for the country, it is the closing of a space that could signify opportunities for the beginning to a democratic transition. This fact is added to the marathon of cancelations of non-governmental organizations, where up to the publication of this report the National Assembly had stripped 669 civil organizations of their legal status.
The suppression of civil society organizations, foundations and collectives has emerged as a direct reaction to the questioning and pointing out of the lack of transparency of the past elections “held” in November 2021. While the Supreme Electoral Council (CSE) announced an overwhelming victory of the FSLN with 74.99% of the vote, Urnas Abiertas along with other citizen networks, documented an historic abstentionism that reached 81.50%[2]. In 2021 more than 200 arbitrary arrests were done, 66 of those people remained incarcerated, including 7 presidential primary candidates.
The past elections were carried out within the framework of a global pandemic, managed by the Government and the Ministry of Health under the most explicit negligence and secrecy. While the countries of Latin America and other regions created containment plans to reduce the spread of COVID-19, in Nicaragua more than 5,000 activities[3] were promoted of crowds in the full height of the epidemiological crisis. At the same time the data of those who were infected and died of the virus were hidden. According to a report on excess mortality published by the World Health Organization (WHO), in the country there was an excess of at least 12,095 deaths between 2020 and 2021 which could be attributable to COVID-19, in other words, 55 times more deaths than those reported by the government. By June 15, 2022 the Citizen Observatory has registered 6,002 deaths related to the virus.[4]
The present report is an effort to register the political, social and human rights panorama in Nicaragua in the context of these elections. It is structured in three chapters: “Chapter 1: General situation of Human Rights in Nicaragua; Chapter 2: “New Forms of political violence and terror”, and Chapter 3: “The terror operatives.”
In each one we try to expose the mechanisms that the regime of Ortega and Murillo use to carry out their totalitarian phase, subjecting the citizens and rooting itself in power using specific forms of harassment and terror. The construction of this report was done thanks to the analysis of citizen reports received between January and May 2022[5], as well as individual interviews, focus groups and documentary review of official sources, Human Rights reports and the coverage of national and international communications media.
The electoral-municipal horizon for this 2022 is not beneficial in so far as changes are not observed in the democratic conditions needed to carry out legitimate elections.
From Urnas Abiertas we repeat that Nicaragua needs a credible, honest and legitimate electoral process. We insist on the importance of reestablishing democratic conditions which include:
- Freedom for all political prisoners, including the 7 presidential contenders and the rest of the opposition leaders. Stop the judicial persecution of the organized opposition
- End to the repression, political violence and the police state, disarming the parapolice and in addition ensuring the right of peaceful association, meeting and freedom of the press. It is fundamental that the right to vote and run for elections be ensured.
- Restructuring the Supreme Electoral Council (CSE) “to ensure that it operate in a completely independent, transparent and responsible manner” as the General Assembly of the OAS has indicated. The CSE should ensure Electoral Justice, which includes different media and mechanism that have the purpose of ensuring that each electoral act, procedure or outcome be done in accordance with the law, as well as protecting or restoring the enjoyment of electoral rights. The CSE should ensure a transparent and credible counting of the votes, and fair processes for conflict resolution.
- Repealing the reform of the Electoral Laws of 2021 and 2022, approving a Law that would include the demands of the opposition, which would meet international standards and that would not violate Human Rights, ensuring press freedom and access, freedom of expression and opinion, meeting and mobilization.
- Repeal the restrictive legal framework and stop the use of the justice system for political persecution.
- Ensure national and international independent, trustworthy and credible observation, including Human Rights observers like the IACHR and the OHCHR
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
At the beginning of the year, a continuity was observed of the political violence that exists in the country. The reports received by Urnas Abiertas between January and May of 2022 indicate that the most common manifestations of political violence are: harassment and persecution; judicial persecution and poor treatment, inhumane treatment, cruel and degrading treatment and torture.
In the first months of this year judicial processes were carried out against people detained in the electoral context of 2021, who were sentenced to between 8 to 13 years and were mostly accused of crimes like conspiracy to do harm to national integrity, money laundering and propagation of false news, in addition, all of them were disqualified from holding public posts.
The conditions of their detention have caused a rapid deterioration in their health. The families of the political prisoners have denounced that The Evaristo Vásquez Police Complex known as “El Chipote” is functioning as a de facto torture center, which is part of the extermination policy that the regime has undertaken against the prisoners of conscience.
New Forms of political violence and terror
Even though the principal form of political violence in the first 5 months of the year has focused on harassment and persecution, citizen reports received point out new forms of exercising violence. It was able to be observed that the principal objective is exercising totalitarian control over the citizenry, including opposition figures, Sandinista sympathizers, State workers and the citizenry in general. This totalitarian escalation is intensified, rooted in, and thanks to the electoral fraud of 2021, which allowed the Sandinista Front of National Liberation (FSLN), in the figures of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo, to extend the dictatorial regime for at least 5 more years.
The manifestations of Human Rights violations are being exercised by more state entities, a slight decrease is observed in the participation of armed subjects and groups (police, military and paramilitary), which is replaced by a series of administrative measures issued by institutions like: Office of Immigration and Foreign Nationals, National Assembly, Civil Registry, Judicial Branch, Public Ministry, Nicaraguan Social Security Institute, Municipal Governments, among others.
The new manifestations of political violence documented by Urnas Abiertas are: migratory repression, refusal to issue documents, fiscal extorsion, administrative reprisals against large, medium and small enterprises, reprisals with social benefits and public services, persecution of the cultural sector and the Catholic Church, elimination of university autonomy, control over Sandinista followers and public officials, and forced migration.
Terror Operatives
Between January and May 2022 a slight decrease was observed in the participation of armed subjects and groups (police, military and paramilitary) in the execution of the recorded acts of political violence, which in turn has led to the participation of other institutional actors in the repressive strategy, demonstrating the totalitarian escalation of the regime which has been documented throughout this report.
Police agents continue being the principal operatives of the repression, through the execution of harassment, arbitrary arrests, raids and confiscations and other types of aggression. Nevertheless, through the citizen reports received other unarmed operatives were identified, mostly institutional ones, like: the Penitentiary System, the System of Justice, the National Assembly, the Office for Immigation and Foreign Nationals, Mayor´s offices, among others.
[1] El País, April 25, 2022
[2] Informe 9: “Radiografia de la farsa electoral”, Urnas Abiertas, 22 de noviembre de 2021
[3] Nicaragua Investiga, 16 de junio de 2021.
[4] Observatorio Ciudadano de COVID-19 en Nicaragua, 17 de junio de 2022.
[5] In collaboration with the Blue and White Monitoring