In La Prensa, Oct 5, 2024
Modifications to the Penal Code now allow prosecuting those who carry out actions against the Ortega government outside the country, and changes to the cybercrime law now open the path to convict people for publications on social networks.
A packet of legal reforms approved in Nicaragua recently is seen by experts and dissidents as an attempt to “legitimize” the persecution of critics of President Daniel Ortega, inside and outside the country.
They have to do with modification to the Penal Code which allow prosecuting those who carry out actions against the Ortega government outside the country, and changes to the cybercrime law which open the way to convict people for publications on social networks.
Another two laws were also reformed: one makes churches pay taxes, and the other restricts the work of NGOs that now can only work on joint programs with state entities (Ortega has closed down some 5,500 NGOs and confiscated their assets).
These initiatives “seek to create a legal framework which would legitimize new practices violating human rights”, lawyer Camila Ormar told the AFP from the NGO Center for Justice and International Law (CEJIL).
“These reforms could be used to increase the persecution and repression even more on Nicaraguans, even in exile,” pointed out Christian Salazar Volkmann, director of the High Commissioner of the UN for Human Rights.
In an annual report on the situation in Nicaragua, the office of the High Commissioner warned above a “serious” deterioration under the government of Ortega and his wife, the vice president Rosario Murillo, with arbitrary arrests of opponents and torture and other cruel treatment of those arrested.
This report, debated in Geneva in September by the Human Rights Council of the UN, was rejected by the Attorney General of Nicaragua, Wendy Morales.
“It is not the first time”
Ortega´s followers argue that this packet of reforms strengthens institutions and allows crime fighting on the “transnational” level.
“These reforms are aimed at strengthening the work of the institutions of our country responsible for confronting transnational organized crime,” stated the pro-government deputy María Auxiliadora Martínez in a parliamentary session.
Nevertheless, the lawyer of CEJIL pointed out that “it is not the first time in Nicaragua that laws are reformed to criminalize those who are considered opponents or dissident voices.”
“The laws which Nicaragua adopts, or reforms should abide by human rights treaties recognized by the State,” pointed out Ormar.
The Ortega government has harshened the repression since the opposition protests of 2018, which in three months left more than 300 dead, according to the UN. Since then, thousands of Nicaraguans have gone into exile and hundreds have been expelled and their assets confiscated.
The 78-year-old former guerilla who ruled Nicaragua in the 1980s and came back to power in 2007 maintains that the protests were a coup attempt sponsored by Washington.
“The gag law”
The reformed Penal Code provides for sentences of up to 30 years in jail for those who commit “crimes against the State or its institutions”, be they in Nicaragua or outside the country.
As such, the cybercrime law incorporates sanctions for publications on social networks and intelligent phone applications which cause “alarm” with sentences of up to 10 years in jail.
This type of sanctions “is incompatible with the principle of legality envisioned in the “American Convention of Human Rights”, according to CEJIL.
Processing people who are outside the country will generate “trials in absentia”, warned the director of CEJIL.
“Justifying abuses”
The reform of the cybercrime law harshened a norm in effect since 2020, called the “gag law”, which led to the prosecution and arrest of many Nicaraguan opponents and journalists for supposed “propagation of false news.”
“These crimes have caused the denaturalization of many people,” said the Nicaraguan lawyer Salvador Marenco, now exiled in Costa Rica, to the AFP, in allusion to the fact that Ortega stripped 451 dissidents in exile of their nationality.
Marenco stated that this “policy of transnational repression” is a reaction of Ortega to the sanctions from the United States and the European Union.
Former Nicaraguan ambassador Arturo McFields told the AFP that with these reforms Ortega is trying to “justify his abuses and crimes and also give a legal character” to his repressive actions.
“They first carry out these actions in reality and then try to structure a legal framework,” added the former ambassador to the Organization of American States (OAS), exiled in the United States.
