The Attack on the Divina Misericordia Church: a massacre which demands justice
In La Prensa December 8, 2024
Paramilitaries and police fired upon a church in Managua, where some young people were taking refuge in the middle of the 2018 crisis. Two of them died and since then the families of the victims ask for justice in the international system. “I would like these processes to be shorter”, says Susana López, the mother of Gerald Vásquez.
Gerald Vásquez and Francisco Flores were massacred in the early morning of July 14, 2018. The dictionary of Royal Academy of the Spanish Language defines a massacre as “the slaughter of people, generally defenseless, produced by armed attack or a similar cause.”
Vásquez, 20 years old, and Flores, 21, were not able to defend themselves from one of the most vicious and cowardly attacks in the history of Nicaragua.
The attack began on the afternoon of July 13, 2018, when the regime of Daniel Ortega ordered the violent removal of the youth who had taken over the National Autonomous University of Nicaragua (UNAN) in Managua, as part of the citizen protests which had been going on for 87 days in the country, demanding a change in government.
An undetermined contingent of paramilitary and police, carrying weapons of war, attacked the university students with unprecedented fury who remained protected only with some handmade mortar tubes in barricades made from paving stones and scrap metal.
Cornered
“NOW. This is how the gun bursts against the students in the barricades of the University #UNAN sound during the massive attack of paramilitaries of the Ortega Government #SOSNicaragua,” the user Javier Bauluz posted on Twitter at 4:34 pm, showing a video in which a group of some four young people are seen sheltering themselves from the bullets under a precarious cover of sheets of tin.
“We all die here!”, says a young woman visibly frightened in the images.
All of Nicaragua was distraught as they followed the fate of the university students cornered in the UNAN Managua.
“The paramilitaries are attacking us, they just shot at us, they have us surrounded,” says another young man in another one of the videos that circulated that afternoon.
“Mom, forgive me, I left to defend my country. I love you,” shouted the young woman Valeska Sandoval by way of a goodbye in a video, in the face of the imminent possibility of dying in that barricade.
The paramilitaries also made videos of the attack.
“Sons of bitches!, look you bastards, you are going to die here! Long live Daniel! Daniel stays!, expressed a paramilitary while filming his fellow fighters who carried arms of war and communicated by walkie talkies.
The state of alarm made the priest, Raúl Zamora, pastor of the nearby Divina Misericordia Church, go out in a pickup truck under the bullets to find out how to rescue the largest number of young people and avoid the massacre which was looming. He made five trips. Other young people arrived on their own by foot to seek refuge in the Church. By the end of the afternoon there were more than a hundred young people, two journalists and some doctors sheltering in the Divina Misericordia Church.
In spite of the fact that the paramilitaries easily took control of the university, the attack did not cease, and they did what was unthinkable: they surrounded and kept the church which served as a refuge for the young people under fire for 15 hours.
“Now once in my parish I thought that I was not going to have any problems, but our surprise was that an attack began. We had some three people wounded there and they did not allow aid to come in. This is something that caused me a lot of pain as a priest, because I really do not understand that hard heartedness. I don´t understand it,“ described Father Zamora.
War arsenal
Most of the young people prepared to die in the church that night of July 13, 2018 and the early morning of the next day. Some began to say goodbye to one another. Meanwhile, outside religious authorities and civil organizations were looking to avoid the massacre which was looming.
The aid which was mobilized to that place was blocked from getting to the church because the Police themselves established a security perimeter and control that, on the one hand, kept anyone from getting to the church where the young university students were cornered, and on the other hand, gave the paramilitaries a free hand to do what they wanted.
Bellingcat, an organization specialized in journalistic investigations in armed conflict, through an analysis of the videos disseminated that afternoon, concluded that the paramilitaries who attacked the barricades and the Divina Misericordia Church used military weapons- M-16s, AKs, PKM machines guns, Remington 700/M24SWS rifles and different type of pistols.
In that same analysis, exposed in February 2019, the organization recalled that the Ortega regime lurched in their recognition of the paramilitaries as a force of their own used for the repression.
“The position of the Government of Nicaragua about the paramilitary groups has fluctuated,” says Bellingcat in their report. “President Ortega has suggested that the groups are organized and financed by drug traffickers and the United States, and have denied any connection with the groups, to later say that they were “voluntary police”. Francisco Díaz, the head of the National Police of Nicaragua, said in an interview to a news organization of Norway (Dagbladet), published on February 2, 2019, that most of the paramilitaries were `professional police´ in `covert operations´, and that the rest were `voluntary police” ´.
Since then, the head of the police has maintained that the paramilitaries were “volunteer police”, authorized to act. “We followed the order which our president of the Republic, our supreme leader, gave us. We were given the order to restore peace, security and tranquility in the country, and that Nicaraguan families might be able to continue working in peace and joy,” Díaz said on October 10, 2024 in an interview on the Russian news program RT.
Nevertheless, retired major Roberto Samcam, who has specialized in security analysis, maintains that the paramilitary forces which the regime used to repress the protests were composed of common prisoners, lumpen, police and retired military.
“There are shots to the head and thorax. They are high precision shots which are not from any shooter. This tells you that there were police who were leading it, probably people who came from the Tapir troops, which were the special police troops, people were recruited who were retired then to avoid putting in people who let´s say were active,” he pointed out.
“With these characteristics it is easy to begin killing young people with just one shot. They began to shoot like crazy, shooting at the church, where we see all the bullet holes, which were from a higher caliber bullet. Presumably it could be a `catatumbo´(sharpshooter rifle made in Venezuela),” he added.
“We are sheltered in the church. They continue firing! They have no mercy” shouted a young university student in a video and she asked, “it is not enough to pray, but continue praying and spread the news internationally.”
Two deaths
Around 4am, Gerald Vásquez and Francisco Flores fell mortally wounded.
“I found him (Gerald Vásquez) dying, practically speaking, with a shot to the head. It was very hard, very difficult. I tried to help him spiritually, but he died in a matter of minutes,” later Fr. Zamora related.
Suzana López saw the image of her dead son, Gerald Vásquez, on television. “When suddenly they showed the image of him. They were carrying him nearly stretched out. I had to go to the Vivian Pellas hospital. They told me that Gerald was no longer here. That we needed to be strong and go inside. We are going to go in to recognize him, he tells me, because there are a lot of them, there were a lot of people wounded. I looked at him with his short jeans, which are the shorts he was wearing when he was dancing on the bridge. All dirty. And with the bullet wound in the head. I froze up.”
Stating the night of the 13th, the Episcopal Conference tried to negotiate with the regime to free the students. At first, they were only able to get the journalists out of the church, Joshua Partlow, from the Washington Post, and Ismael López from BBC World, who were gott trapped while covering the attack.
Finally in the early morning of July 14th the negotiation of the Church was able to get the regime to permit the departure of the youth in several buses which took them to the Cathedral of Managua to be reunited with their families.
“You promised me that you would come back,” Susana López complained to her son when she was in front of the cadaver of Gerald Vásquez. And she promised him, “This is not going to remain like this. And yes, I am strong. You told me once that I was strong, yes, I am strong, and I am going to continue. And I promise you, I will do it.”
Bearing her pain, Susana encountered the pain of many other mothers. From the pain of so many mothers of children murdered was born the Mothers of April organization.
“It was sad. It was sad to see and hear each one of the stories of the mothers and to swallow all that pain. Because it was not just me, but almost all of Nicaragua experienced it,” said Susana.
Crimes against humanity
The Interamerican Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) registered 355 murders in the context of the violence which was experienced in Nicaragua between 2018 and 2019. “The updating of the record of fatal victims in the context of the crisis reveals at least 355 victims during the repression against the social protests between April 18 and July 31 of 2019,” explained the Commission of the OAS in November 2021. “According to the breakdown by gender, 15 were women and 340 men. In addition, 27 of the total were girls, boys and/or adolescents. The data also show that 23 National Police agents lost their lives in that context.”
Claudia Paz y Paz is the director of the program for Mexico and Central America of the Center for Justice and International Law (CEJIL) and during 2018 joined the Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts (GIEI) for Nicaragua, which the IACHR organized, with the acceptance of the regime of Nicaragua, to investigate the acts of violence which were experienced in that country.
“We published a report which gathered the serious acts of violence and human rights violations which occurred in Nicaragua since the April 18t, 2018 crisis began, and one of our principal conclusions is that crimes against humanity had been committed, which should be investigated,” pointed out Paz y Paz.
But the local justice system turned its back on the demands of the mothers for their murdered offspring.
“In countries like Nicaragua the system is absolutely closed, in other words, the division of powers does not exist, therefore, the judicial power does not work, which is the mother power,” pointed out Paula María Bertol, former representative of Argentina in the OAS.
“The enormous importance of a free and independent judicial branch marks the fact that true freedom exists in a country. Not having freedom in Nicaragua means that at this point no judicial process can be carried out which might protect the victims of the tyranny which is happening today in Nicaragua,” she added.
The official discourse in Nicaragua claims justice just for those who it considers victims of what is called “a coup attempt” and ignores those killed by the police and paramilitaries.
Just the case of the Brazilian medical student, Raynéia Gabrielle da Costa Lima Rocha, murdered by the paramilitary Pierson Gutiérrez Solís the night of July 23, 2018 in Managua, went to the national courts as a common crime, even though the murderer, originally sentenced to 15 years in jail, was freed one year later after his arrest when the regime included him in the beneficiaries of an amnesty which was approved on June 8, 2019 for political prisoners.
“They want to silence us, erase the memory, an issue which is our history, and the Government wants it to appear that Nicaragua is in a situation of normality and to run out all the human rights organization, when really our rights have been violated, from taking a person´s life which is the first violation of human rights,” says Susana.
Long road
Nevertheless, with the door of national justice closed, the only thing left is to undertake a long and tortuous path: international justice.
Camila Ortega is a trial lawyer from the Center for Justice and International Law (CEJIL) before the Interamerican System for the Protection of Human Rights (SIDH) and remembers that these processes of the search for justice have specific requirements and terms for the presentation of briefs, which have to be recognized to develop a successful trial strategy.
Unfortunately, she says “the victims of human rights violations do not always have the possibility of having this accompaniment to access the system.”
She also emphasized that the Interamerican Court is not a Penal Court, and does not evaluate the penal responsibility of individuals, but the international responsibility of States.
“The only path for justice to exist in these cases is the international path through universal jurisdiction, “says Claudia Paz y Paz, and she points out that “there is a case which has already begun in Argentina, which is a country which in their internal legislation recognizes universal jurisdiction.”
In addition, she suggests that other countries should begin similar processes because “most of the countries of Latin America, if not all, in some way recognize this universal jurisdiction and would be able to move processes forward.”
In the same sense, Paula María Bertol points out that cases like that of Nicaragua, while not being able to be prosecuted in their own country, take on importance when other countries and other organizations take it up and try to resolve it and carry it forward and reveal those who are guilty.
The strategy in a case like this, she says, is to not give up. “Wait for the right moment to arrive so that everything be documented, and everything can flow more quickly when the moment comes.”
The lawyer Alejandro Álvarez highlights an important point in favor of the victims of repression in Nicaragua in this case: “They have won the battle for the truth,” he says.
Álvarez was a member of the Special Mechanism for Followup for Nicaragua (MESENI) which the IACHR installed on June 24, 2018 at the invitation of the State of Nicaragua. “Having won the battle for the truth, with reasonable evidence, it is an important step which is going to contribute in its time when things happen which have to happen in the country,” he says in allusion to a “democratic reconstruction in Nicaragua, an institutional reconstruction and some processes of transitional justice which are going to be imbued by all the work which has been done up to now.”
Argentinian process
A window to justice began to be seen in October 2022 when the Argentinian justice opened a penal investigation against Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo to determine their responsibility for crimes against humanity, as well as those “who within the state or parastate structure” might also be responsible.
The Argentinian federal judge Ariel Lijo made the decision after charges presented by two lawyers and the request of the prosecutor Eduardo Taiano, who thinks that Argentinian federal justice is empowered to investigate human rights violations which occurred in another country, because the Argentinian Constitution recognizes the principal of universal jurisdiction.
“In principle it has to be clarified that in Argentina pure universal jurisdiction exists, that is to say that there does not have to be a connecting event between the country which violated human rights and our country,” Bertol explained. “This request has to do with issuing a subpoena for their signed declaration and the possibility that an arrest order might be issued, that is to say that red alerts would go out so that when they leave the country, these people can be arrested by Interpol.”
Paz y Paz clarified, “there is no international police who are going to go into Nicaragua and arrest them.” “They would have to be outside of the territory of Nicaragua, then if they leave the territory, they could be arrested.”
“The investigation of Nicaragua is very extensive and is full of proof not just against Ortega and Murillo, but against many of the State functionaries,” pointed out Darío Richarte, professor of Human Rights and International Penal Law and one of the lawyers who are promoting the case against Ortega and Murillo in Argentina.
“Nicaragua has an accusation which is pretty consistent because the dictatorship really is one of the worst which exists today in the world,” he added. “The human rights violations which they commit are really impressive. The entire catalogue which one teaches or can be seen in real ife, the dictators are pursuing.”
It is under this premise, added to the fact that in Nicaragua an independent judicial branch does not exist and the fact that the State did not sign the Rome Statute, that Argentinian justice decided to open the jurisdiction to begin to investigate. Richarte says that the case has witnesses who have made statements under conditions of anonymity, witnesses, experts and a copious amount of documentary proof gathered, even from the countryside, within Nicaragua.
“Really progress was made to the point where the investigation is being exhausted, in terms of what is now completely proven, from our point of view. That is why the prosecutor asked for the subpoena to get a signed declaration from Ortega and Murillo, and that is why we align ourselves with that, and in addition we ask in its time for the international arrest of them and other government functionaries, so that they might be called in to defend themselves from the serious charges which they have against them,” pointed out the Argentinian lawyer.
There will be justice
Salvador Marenco, from the Nicaragua Nunca Más Human Rights Collective, is the lawyer in the case of Gerald Vásquez before the Interamerican System of Human Rights (SIDH). “We as a Human Rights Collective are trying to use the mechanisms of the Interamerican System as well as the United Nations with the aim of trying to seek justice, that the human rights violations of Nicaragua be known and that the victims might be heard,” he said.
“Gerald Vásquez and his family are victims, obviously so, because of the murder, but also because of the impunity which has characterized this case, as well as that of a lot of people who have been murdered and victims of human rights violations,” he added.
Susana would like that the search for justice for her son might be quicker and simpler. “I would like that all these processes were shorter, because it is like a sieve. To be able to get in, the door is very small, but to be able to go out the larger door takes a lot of time,” she described it in her way.
“Punishing those guilty is essential according to the standards of international law,” says Alexandro Álvarez. “It is not just a matter of an issue related to truth, memory, reparations, measures for no-repetition, when those responsible for the crimes are free and have not been punished.”
He recommends “on the part of Nicaraguan activism to continue exploring, activating universal jurisdictions in different countries in Latin America, this is a project worthy of being evaluated, with a lot of focus,” he highlighted.
“What are we going to do?”, Susana asks herself. “Well, we are going to go out. And we are going to demonstrate to the government that we are here. And we continue strong, and they are not going to silence us. Because we have to continue in this just fight.”
She lives with the hope that those who shot her son that early morning in the Divina Misericordia Church pay for their crimes. That those who ordered shooting against defenseless youth would pay. And that they would pay for all those crimes which they committed to keep themselves in power. “I have not lost hope, I have not lost the faith that they are going to pay for this.”
“And this is what gets me up every day. That I have not lost faith. And that Susana López continues the struggle and that Susana López continues for Gerald Vásquez. She continues for those mothers who have now died without seeing justice, because I want to see it. One day that day will come, and God will bring justice. And I know that they are going to be prosecuted,” she pronounced.