Odair Morales, Barrica, September 7th 2018
https://barricada.com.ni/polarizado-retratado-por-la-oficina-del-alto-c…
The mission of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights formally began on June 26th of this year; its objective was to accompany the National Dialogue’s Verificaiton and Security Commission. Unfortunately, what really happened was that its visit turned into an on-site mission for the observation of human rights. This overreaching was indicated in the considerations of the State of Nicaragua in the OHCHR’s report, “Human Rights Violations and Abuses in the Context of Protests in Nicaragua.”
The OHCHR violated the General Assembly resolution 48/141 by going beyond the powers granted to it. To this we must add the terrible bias that a good part of the report presents. These are some of the inconsistencies in the work of the OHCHR in our country:
1) The report is named “Human Rights Violations and Abuses in the Context of Protests in Nicaragua.” This title does not correspond to the reality of the crisis because it is clear that what occurred was an attempt to rupture the constitutional and institutional order of the country and not peaceful protests repressed by the government. There is vast evidence for this, such as the systematic attacks on state institutions that were intended to stop the normal functioning of the government and its institutions. No other form explains the deaths of 22 National Police officers.
2) The use of lethal force by authorities against non-lethal threats. This assertion is not supported by serious investigations; it is based on unverified allegations. What is proven is that armed groups operated with firearms, artisanal weapons, and molotov cocktails. There is enough information about the siege by these groups of police stations and state institutions and in these cases the use of force and firearms (by the police) was proportional to the type of resistance it faced.
3) Impact on the general enjoyment of the rights to health, work, education, and food due to budget cuts. The report emphasizes how certain human rights would be compromised by the reform to the republic’s general budget but sins by not mentioning the damage done by the opposition sector to the public infrastructure, damage calculated to be around 205 million dollars. It minimizes the negative effects of blockades and barricades, nefarious mechanisms responsible for the impact on these rights -- the right to work being one of the most affected. According to official reports as of July 31st, 68,000 jobs of Nicaraguans that contributed to the Social Security System were affected. The right to health also suffered: 55 ambulances, two SILAIS offices, and a maternity home were destroyed, but of course those pieces of information do not fit into the account of the facts.
4) As of April 27th, 30 deaths had been reported, mostly university students, a journalist, and two police officers. It’s not true that most of the dead were university students. The Truth, Justice, and Peace Commission in the May 29th press release accounted for a total of 85 dead by May 28th, identifying 5 university students and 4 secondary students. The vast majority were citizens of the general population. It is shameful that the OHCHR is willing to reproduce distorted data. Speaking of the university students, Cristhian Emilio Cadena, a university student who died burned defending the University Center of the National University (CUUN), wasn’t mentioned either in the report.
5) The universities became centers of student mobilization. The peaceful protests in the universities did not last long. Almost immediately the areas surrounding the universities (as in the case of the UPOLI and the UNAN) converted into criminal centers, from where common crimes like robberies, illegal carrying of arms, and possession of explosives, among others, were committed. There is an ongoing accusation against the people who took advantage of the barricades of the Polytechnic University of Nicaragua (UPOLI) in order to commit crime.
6) Persecution and criminalization of social leaders and the protests. The roadblocks constituted centers of organized crime, in whose vicinities were committed various crimes, including murder, kidnapping, torture, arson, rape, and extortion, among others. Knowing this, it’s logical to have detained people who used the roadblocks not as a method of protest (as the OHCHR claims to affirm), but in order to alter the public order. A protest cannot be used as an excuse to commit crime.
7) The Law against the Laundering of Assets, Financing of Terrorism, and the Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction was designed for the political persecution of the opposition. When the OHCHR tries to make it appear that this law is against dissidents of the government, it demonstrates that its objectivity is non-existent. The aforementioned law is approved to comply with one of the 40 recommendations of the GAFI, which the OHCHR could find by searching for the archive of Mutual Evaluation done to Nicaragua by the GAFILAT updated in 2017, in which it was recommended that the type of punishments on terrorism and its financing was adapted to international standards.
8) The detained have suffered tortured and sexual assault. There is not a single documented case that demonstrates that the detained have been subjected to torture or sexual assault.
The Nicaraguan government does well to reject in comprehensive manner the report of the OHCHR. It is evident that it is biased. Its writing is so careless (or ill-intentioned) that in its language the report justifies the violent action of the opposition, arguing that the government’s response was its cause. In addition, it criticizes the state investigations that question the violent acts of anti-government protests while nevertheless taking as true the information it receives from the Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) despite the politicized view of their complaints. Their statements are not based on documented cases, but on biased information coming from sectors linked to the opposition. At the very least the OHCHR could have done a better job after making the decision to overstep its boundaries.