Samantha Jirón was the youngest political prisoner released this past Feb 9, 2023. This is her statement of the situation on the fifth anniversary of the uprising in which she participated.
Jail interrupted my life plans
By Samantha Jirón
April 19, 2023 in DIVERGENTES
I am 23 years old, I am a political activist, defender of Human Rights, a feminist and an artist. I was in exile in Costa Rica because of my participation during the April crisis from 2018 to 2020 when I decided to continue my political activism within the country. I joined the civic struggle within the Blue and White National Unity (UNAB). I did not think that this endeavor would take me to jail at such a young age.
Up until my capture I was a university student of Journalism and Political Science. I was a political prisoner for a year and three months in the jails of the dictatorship of Nicaragua, accused of the false crimes of “conspiracy to commit harm to the national integrity to the detriment of the State of Nicaragua and society.” In addition, they saddled me with “propagation of false news.” Crimes in quotes for which I was sentenced to 8 years in prison and to pay a fine of 30,000 córdobas, after an illegal and arbitrary process after my arrest, catalogued as an abduction by its nature, the conditions of the trial and the conditions of the detention in the “Las Esperanza” jail. I was released and banished with 221 political prisoners on February 9 of this year, and since that date I have been in the United States.
Jail obviously interrupted by life plans, which I can summarize in three aspects: first, finish the two university majors that I was studying; second, continue working as a student political activist to contribute to the construction of a country with justice, peace, democracy and freedom; and third, continue being a human rights defender. The unjust imprisonment that we suffered, and our banishment show that human rights have been seriously violated by the regime of Daniel Ortega, surpassing even the historical precedents in Latin America. The exile and banishment have not diminished my willingness to continue along the path that I decided to undertake starting in April 2018, when from the streets of the city where I lived, Masaya, I went out to protest in a civic and peaceful manner in the face of the abuses of the totalitarian regime.
On February 9th I received the news in jail that they were moving us somewhere else, but they never told us where they were taking us…we realized the destination once we arrived at the airport of Managua. They gave us new passports, which on arriving in this country were disactivated, and they forced us to sign a consent form of “voluntary” abandonment of Nicaragua. Later, I realized that we 222 former prisoners had been denationalized, in other words, they declared us people without a nationality. They had erased our data in the Civil Registry of People, which is equivalent to eliminating our legal existence in the country. They confiscated our assets, they intervened our bank accounts, and as if that were not enough, we lost our citizen rights in perpetuity. We were facing a new modality of governmental vengeance and repression, blind and absurd, as everything that Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo have done since April 2018.
In Latin America in the decades of the sixties and seventies of the last century the most terrible dictatorships proliferated in the Southern Cone, none of them, with the exception of the Chilean dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, massively stripped their opponents of their nationality. Consequently, the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo greatly surpassed the Argentinian, Uruguayan, Bolivian, Paraguayan, Peruvian, Venezuelan, Dominican, Honduran, Salvadoran and Guatemalan dictatorships of that time. That is why Sandinism is rightly equated with Nazism and is attributed crimes which offend all of humanity.
To the loss of the nationality of the 222 people deprived of their freedom for political reasons, are added 94 new victims of the policy of State terrorism which the dictatorship is implementing, a new tactic of repression, revenge, and violation of our rights, banishment, confiscation and loss of citizenship are violations of the Political Constitution of Nicaragua, which has been reformed so many times and made like a custom suit to respond to the interests of the tyrant in power. Such measures also are additional violations of universal human rights, which in articles 9,13,15 and 21 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights contradicts everything done by the Ortega and Murillo dictators.
The response of the international community to these juridical aberrations and atrocities has been an excellent mechanism of pressure on the regime. The United States has benefitted us with a humanitarian parole which allows us to remain in the country for two years, in addition to be able to request political asylum during this period. Spain, Chile, Brazil, Argentina, Colombia and Mexico have offered us the opportunity to become citizens of those countries, for which I am profoundly grateful. Nevertheless, the Nicaraguan people who find themselves suffering exile and persecution, within and outside the country, want this same international community to take bolder measures against the dictatorship. We have seen that international pressure bears fruit. Of the eight years of my sentence, I only served one year and three months in jail, and that was thanks to the pressure and the work of different actors.
Recently the Group of Human Rights Experts on Nicaragua (GHREN) through a thorough investigation has declared in their report that the regime has committed extrajudicial executions, arbitrary detentions, torture, including sexual violence, forced deportations and persecution for political reasons, all of which constitute crimes against humanity. Ortega has outdone himself by establishing a nefarious dictatorship in Latin America, capable of committing the worst abuses to remain in power. In addition, the terrible persecution which he is carrying out against the Catholic Church must be added to that. A dozen priests and lay religious traveled in the “Flight to Liberty” which brought us to the United States, leaving in prison Mons. Rolando Álvarez, a member of the Episcopal Conference of Nicaragua and the bishop of the Diocese of Matagalpa, along with dozens of political prisoners who were serving unjust sentences.
Nicaragua is living in a permanent state of SOS. It is not just the serious situation of the human rights violations of Nicaraguans but also because of the historic exodus, principally of youth and skilled labor. The dictatorship that exists in Nicaragua in addition represents a problem for the region and the security of the United States. As a direct victim of the regime, I ask that more forceful actions be carried out on the part of the international community, actions which would allow those directly and indirectly guilty of all these crimes to be brought to justice. That the freedom of all the political prisoners continue to be demanded tirelessly, the end of State terrorism, without more deaths, without more prisoners, without more people in exile, for the purpose of making a peaceful transition possible for Nicaragua.
The writer is a student of Political Science and Social Communications. She did political activism in the National Unity in Nicaragua, UN, and the Alliance of Nicaraguan Youth and Students (AJEN). She is part of the 7th cohort of the “Lead and leave your footprint” Leadership Formation Training of the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung Foundation; FLACSO, Costa Rica; the Council of Young People, and the Ministry of Culture and Youth. She was a political prisoner of the Ortega-Murillo dictatorship.