A group of UN experts on Friday called on the Nicaraguan government, led by husband-and-wife co-presidents Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo, to provide proof of life for imprisoned Indigenous leader Brooklyn Rivera, amid fears that he may have died in custody.
Rivera, 73, who is considered a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International, was detained on September 29, 2023, by police officers who “violently broke into” his home in the Caribbean town of Bilwi, according to a report by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.
“There is information that he may have died in detention,” the group of experts warned in a statement issued in Geneva, saying the Miskito leader is a victim of “enforced disappearance.” “We urgently call for the fate and whereabouts of the more than 112 victims of enforced disappearance in the country to be clarified immediately,” and for “proof of life for Brooklyn Rivera to be provided immediately,” the statement added.
The U.S. government has expressed concern over Rivera’s health and has demanded his release from Ortega and Murillo. The U.S. Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs accused the “Murillo-Ortega dictatorship” in March of holding people “imprisoned solely for dissenting against the regime,” in “inhumane” conditions and without medical care. “The regime’s cruelty toward those who dare to speak out is unconscionable,” it added.
The UN group said it was aware of another person who had been “forcibly disappeared” and died in prison last February, whose body was handed over to the family without a death certificate. The statement was signed by nine experts, including members of the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances and the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions.
Ortega, 80, and Murillo, 74, have maintained strict control over opponents since the 2018 protests, which left about 300 people dead, hundreds detained, and forced hundreds of thousands into exile. The government justified the repression by portraying those protests as an attempted coup sponsored by Washington.
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