NewsLatin AmericaRelease of Nicaraguan political prisoners: an unrepeatable day

Release of Nicaraguan political prisoners: an unrepeatable day

There are days that do not repeat twice. In my life, this Thursday, February 9, was one of those days. Shortly after two in the afternoon in Madrid, while I was writing pages of my new novel, I received two pieces of news, the first: Tiffany Roberts, a Univision journalist, in a tweet, announced that a plane with 222 political prisoners from the Ortega dictatorship and Murillo was flying from Nicaragua to Washington. Nominally banished, these people were released from prison to freedom. Simultaneously the second came: my son Camilo, whose wife was expecting their first baby, announced to me on WhatsApp: Julian will be born today.

222 lives detained, imprisoned, subjected for almost two years to cruel and undignified prison conditions for the mere fact of demonstrating opposition to the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo, were heading to another life. A baby, lovingly kept in his mother’s womb for nine months, was making its way into a wide and alien world. Freedom and joy came double for me.

Since in 2021, at the gates of general elections, the dictatorial regime that governs Nicaragua opened its repressive claws to eliminate electoral competition and declare a merciless war against those who dared to oppose it, Nicaraguans have experienced a superlative level of repression. Already in 2018, more than 300 people lost their lives in protests against this new incarnation of the old and bloody Latin American dictatorships, but the blow of 2021 came unexpectedly. On successive days, electoral candidates, political leaders, public opinion leaders, professionals, defenders of political prisoners, media directors, businessmen, were detained without explanation. For 90 days, a term that has replaced the habeas corpus in my country. nothing was known about them other than rumors. Families, children, wives, hung around the jails asking for information that nobody gave them.

There, isolated, in two-by-two prisons, some with the light always on, others in the dark, without blankets, sleeping on cement slabs, on a starvation diet, with no predictable visits from their families, and forbidden to receive reading or writing, people with no fault other than legally opposing the regime suffered cruel imprisonment for more than 600 days. Judges loyal to the dictatorship, in flawed processes in which the defendants lacked defense lawyers or time to find out what they were accused of, were sentenced to prison. For “undermining national integrity” they were sentenced to between 8 and 13 years in prison.

For those of us who knew them and knew of their innocence, their situation, their suffering, the stories of their relatives, took us back to the time of the Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua. Had so many died for another dictatorship, born within the same Sandinismo, to repeat history? The unprecedented and unpunished act of Ortega and Murillo was condemned by the international community. Hundreds of people in solidarity around the world mobilized to denounce this violation of the human rights of Nicaraguans.

We do not know exactly what achieved the release of the prisoners on February 9. The United States claims that it was a unilateral action by the regime; I think that international pressure was effective. It is a factor of hope to know that the community of nations can act in concert to corral those who try to impose their injustices.

Today I imagine my friends Cristiana Chamorro, Violeta Granera, Dora Maria Tellez, Ana Margarita Vijil, without bars to limit them. I imagine parents hugging their daughters and sons, Vicky Cardenas and Berta Valle, tireless fighters for their husbands, meeting with them. It excites me and I can’t help but feel relief.

But, just as my grandson, Julian, was born the same day and knew the light, these people will return from the darkness to rediscover their interrupted lives. In 1975, I was sentenced to several years in prison by the dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza. With the overthrow of the dictatorship, my unjust sentence is over. Our beloved prisoners will also see the end of their exile and will recover their rights. Whatever Ortega and Murillo decree, they are and will continue to be Nicaraguans.

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