Israel

Nicaragua vs. Germany: a political red herring

This article was first published on 4 March 2024 on freiheit.org.

The alleged violation is based on the fact that Germany has supported Israel politically, financially and militarily, and that it has reduced funding for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA). This is an attempt of a political analysis:

Report of the Group of Experts at the UN Human Rights Council

It is certainly no coincidence that Nicaragua submitted the application on March 1, 2024. This is because the Group of Human Rights Experts on Nicaragua (GHREN) had presented its report on the situation in Nicaragua to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva the day before, on February 29, 2024. In the report, the UN experts identify the most serious crimes, serious human rights violations and impunity of the perpetrators in Nicaragua under the leadership of President Daniel Ortega since April 2018. The group of experts is chaired by Jan-Michael Simon, a German legal scholar and proven expert on Latin America.

Rule of impunity

For the current UN report, 642 victims and witnesses were interviewed and other sources evaluated. This is the second publication of the group of experts' findings. Once again, the UN experts found that opposition members and critics are being monitored, persecuted, arbitrarily imprisoned and tortured. Ortega and his wife, Rosario Murillo Zambrana, who is also the country's vice president, have sovereignty over the security apparatus. This includes not only the national police, but also the army and non-uniformed paramilitary units that patrol the country. Torturers and other perpetrators of serious human rights crimes against Nicaraguan citizens are not being prosecuted. An amnesty law introduced in 2019 supports the prevailing system of injustice. Arbitrariness and impunity have long since replaced the principles of accountability.

Complete control of the judiciary

The judiciary is completely controlled by the president and the vice president. Nicaraguan citizens from a range of sectors and professions are arbitrarily imprisoned. Priests and other church representatives, journalists, members of civil society or other groups such as the indigenous population or the campesino movement are affected. But students, judges and other members of the judiciary are also persecuted as opponents, the UN expert group summarizes in its second report.

The experts identified a pattern: the police raid the homes of political opponents of the Ortega family, take them into custody and always transfer them to the same police stations. Those arbitrarily detained are not allowed to freely choose a lawyer. Their relatives are not informed of their whereabouts for a long time.

The fate of Félix Maradiaga, who ran as a candidate against Daniel Ortega in 2021, is exemplary. He was arrested before the presidential elections, held in solitary confinement, tortured and flown out to the USA with other political prisoners after almost two years in prison. He is now stateless and fights as a pro-democracy activist for an end to the dictatorship in Nicaragua. The Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom (FNF) has been supporting him for years. On February 22, 2024 he gave a moving interview on the situation in Nicaragua during a visit to the FNF Human Rights Hub in Geneva.

Abuse of international law

Against the backdrop of the catastrophic human rights situation established under the auspices of the UN and the coincidence in time, Nicaragua's application to the ICJ exposes itself as a cheap diversionary tactic. One can trust that the International Court of Justice will see through the attempt at political instrumentalization by a dictatorship that denies its own citizens any guarantees under the rule of law.