United Nations human rights investigators said Wednesday that Nicaragua’s co-presidents, Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo, have built a full dictatorship and that there are “reasonable grounds to believe that crimes against humanity have been committed” in the country.
The finding comes from a U.N. expert group that has investigated human rights abuses in Nicaragua since April 2018. Nicaragua’s government denies the allegations.
“What we are looking at is a full dictatorship, and that dictatorship has one clear goal: permanent dynastic rule,” said Jan-Michael Simon, chair of the group appointed by the Geneva-based Human Rights Council. “Four months ago, Daniel Ortega said it loud — Nicaragua will never hold elections again.”
Nicaragua has withdrawn from the Human Rights Council and dismissed the body as “manipulated, obsolete and interfering,” accusing what it called “neo-colonialist powers” of weaponizing human rights for “political aggression.”
Ortega and Murillo, who are married, have ruled Nicaragua since mass protests in 2018 triggered a government crackdown that killed hundreds. Ortega declared himself the winner of the 2021 election after jailing every candidate who could have beaten him. The United States does not recognize his presidency.
Since 2018, the government has imprisoned or exiled opponents, religious leaders and journalists, stripped hundreds of their citizenship, homes and possessions, shut down more than 5,000 organizations, and forced thousands to flee. Critics and targeted groups are routinely accused of working for the United States and other foreign powers to undermine the regime.
Reed Brody, a member of the U.N. expert group, said the ruling Sandinista Party has “total control” over the police, courts and prisons. Under the constitution adopted last year, he said, the legislature and judiciary answer to the co-presidents rather than operating independently.
“There are no opposition parties left, no independent press inside the country,” Brody said, adding there is “simply no space left for anyone to disagree.”
Brody, a Hungarian American human rights lawyer and prosecutor, said that since February 2023 at least 452 Nicaraguans considered political opponents have been declared “traitors” and stripped of their citizenship, leaving them stateless. The list includes former Sandinista leaders, a former vice president, and every presidential candidate from the 2021 election.
A transnational surveillance network also “monitors, intimidates, and attacks” hundreds of thousands of Nicaraguans living abroad, Brody said.
The expert group is urging member states to bring a case against Nicaragua before the International Court of Justice, the U.N.’s highest tribunal, over violations of the convention on statelessness. Nicaragua is not a party to the International Criminal Court.
