The Nicaraguan authorities stripped another 94 Nicaraguans of their nationality, including the writers Sergio Ramírez and Gioconda Belli, as well as the auxiliary bishop of Managua, Silvio Báez, bringing the total to 317 in the last week, including Bishop Rolando Álvarez , sentenced to more than 26 years in prison after refusing to be exiled by the government of President Daniel Ortega to US territory.
The others are the 222 political prisoners who were released and expelled to the United States on February 9. Human rights groups describe the move as a violation of international law without precedent in the West.
The order, read on Wednesday by the presiding magistrate of the Managua Court of Appeals, Ernesto Rodríguez, affects Nicaraguans living abroad, but also some who still reside in the country. “I am Nicaraguan by the grace of God… if they think they are going to bring me to my knees, they are in trouble. Long live Nicaragua!”, the journalist Álvaro Navarro, who is in this new group of Nicaraguans declared stateless.
In the list of 94 exiled people, who were accused of crimes considered “treason”, in addition to Ramírez, Belli and Bishop Báez, the ex-commander of the revolution Luis Carrión or the veteran defender of human rights Vilma Núñez, stands out. former Foreign Minister Norman Caldera or former Sandinista magistrate Rafael Solís.
It also includes former Nicaraguan ambassador to the OAS Arturo McFields, academic Ernesto Medina, former Education Minister Humberto Belli, researcher Elvira Cuadra and opposition politicians Kitty Monterrey, Eliseo Nunez, Enrique Saenz and Edipsia Dubón.
Journalists Carlos Fernando Chamorro, Sofía Montenegro, Luis Manuel Chavarría Galeano, Jennyfer Ortíz, Lucía Pineda Ubau, Patricia Orozco, Camilo de Castro, and the correspondent for the Spanish newspaper El País Wilfredo Miranda were also punished.
Likewise, the list contains the names of two former collaborators of the president of Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega: Julio López and Mónica Baltodano; as well as human rights defenders, priests, environmentalists, Sandinista dissidents, students, businessmen and merchants, among others.
In that resolution, it is also ordered “the immobilization and confiscation in favor of the State of Nicaragua of all real estate and companies that the defendants have registered in their favor.”
Nicaragua has been going through a political and social crisis since April 2018 that has worsened after the controversial general elections of November 7, 2021, in which Ortega was re-elected for a fifth term, fourth in a row and second together with his wife, Rosario Murillo, as vice president, with her main contenders in prison or in exile. The country, highly dependent and punished by sanctions due to the repression, suffers a serious economic crisis.
