Nicaragua on Wednesday announced that it was expelling international experts investigating allegations of human rights abuses by security forces during anti-government protests earlier this year in which demonstrators had demanded Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega leave office.
The move came a day before the experts were scheduled to hold a news conference in the country to present their findings on the unrest that began in April.
More than 320 people were killed in the upheaval, according to non-governmental groups that have also denounced numerous cases of alleged torture, arbitrary detentions and persecution of government opponents.
A Nicaraguan Ministry of Foreign Affairs letter to Organization of American States (OAS) Secretary-General Luis Almagro, alleged that regional bodies had acted “irresponsibly in the criminal, interventionist escalation, promoting terrorist actions of political, economic and military order.”
It cited previous comments by Almagro calling on the international community to put pressure on “the dictatorship that is being installed in Nicaragua,” and accused the secretary-general of “lies and slander.”
The letter also said that the Special Monitoring Mechanism for Nicaragua (MESENI) and the Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts breached an agreement signed in June opening the door for them to investigate killings in the country.
Both are arms of the OAS, which said in a statement that the government’s decision “further places Nicaragua into the terrain of authoritarianism. Expelling researchers and institutional defenders is characteristic of those who do not want to see justice done and perpetuate impunity.”
Ortega’s government says it has been the victim of an attempted “coup,” and the ministry criticized those organizations for not reflecting that claim in their reports.
The letter formally announced the suspension of the visits by the rights monitors, effective on Wednesday.
The experts were summoned to the ministry and accused of spreading false information.
“They asked us to leave the country immediately and we hope that our headquarters in Washington will take care of the logistics for us to go,” delegate coordinator Ana Maria Tello said at a news conference.
MESENI’s job in the country was to follow up on recommendations from the Inter-American Commission that, among other things, urged Ortega’s government to cease repression of civilians, disband pro-government paramilitary groups and guarantee respect for media freedoms.
The Center for Justice and International Law, a regional non-governmental organization, criticized the expulsions of the experts just a day before the presentation of the report.
The experts “faced a government that blocked and boycotted their work, by closing down all spaces for dialogue and monitoring and by denying them access to essential information in fulfilling their mandates,” the center said.
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