The Supreme Court of Justice (CSJ) of Nicaragua “definitively” annulled the titles of 26 lawyers critical of the government of Daniel Ortegaamong them the jurists Vilma Núñez and Yonarqui Martínez, who have defended imprisoned opponents and who are still working in the country.
According to a CSJ resolution issued Thursday night, 25 of the affected jurists had been stripped of their Nicaraguan nationality three months ago, and 15 of them were imprisoned and expelled from the country, as part of a group of 222 opponents deported to United States on February 9.
The rest are part of almost a hundred exiled opponents who were also declared “stateless” by the Sandinista government in February and expropriated all their assets in Nicaragua. The 26 jurists were given a period of 24 hours to deliver their protocols and stamps that accredited them to work.
stripped of everything
On the list stands out the lawyer Núñez, 84 years old and founder of the NGO Centro Nicaragüense de Derechos Humanos (Cenidh), whom ortega stripped him of his nationality, froze his bank accounts and canceled his old age pension. Cenidh has been characterized by its defense of “political prisoners” after the 2018 social protests in the country.
Martínez, also a lawyer for dozens of opponents who were detained, protested the measure on Friday on her Twitter account: “Years of study and professional experience are not erased with a circular from a complicit body of the Executive in human rights violations,” she wrote. after describing the judicial resolution as “an act of cowardice by not being able to silence a voice” human rights defender.
Both Martínez and Núñez are in Nicaragua. Unlike her others, Martínez has not lost her nationality and the CSJ did not explain the reasons why she decided to suspend her right to work as a lawyer “for life”.
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The blacklist
The list of the 26 “illegalized” lawyers includes the renowned writer Sergio Ramírez, exiled in Spain; the human rights defenders Gonzalo Carrión and Álvaro Leiva, exiled in Costa Rica, as well as Uriel Pineda and Mónica López Baltodano, exiled in Mexico. Also to the released “political prisoners” Ana Margarita Vijil, José Pallais, María Oviedo, Roger Reyes, Hugo Rodríguez and Edgard Parrales, the latter Sandinista ambassador to the OAS during the first Ortega government, in the 1980s.
Others affected are former Ortega collaborators, such as Rafael Solís Cerda, who in 2019 resigned from his position as vice-president magistrate of the CSJ and fled Nicaragua, and three former officials of the Judiciary detained and deported in February. There is also the former Sandinista soldier Marlon Sáenz (alias “Chino Enoc”), arrested and deported for his criticism of Vice President Rosario Murillo on social networks.
According to the CSJ, these people “cannot hold the title or practice the profession of lawyer and notary public” because they “lost the right to practice said profession by virtue of having lost their Nicaraguan nationality.”
political crisis
Nicaragua has been experiencing a serious political crisis since 2018, when social protests were violently repressed by the government of ortegawith a balance of 355 dead, more than 2,000 injured, thousands of detainees and more than 100,000 exiles according to humanitarian organizations.
The crisis deepened in recent years, when Ortega was re-elected for a fourth consecutive term after jailing his main political rivals. The government has also closed more than 3,000 NGOs and some 50 media outlets, while forcing some 200 journalists into exile, according to data from independent organizations.
The opposition assures that there are currently fifty “political prisoners” in the country, including the Catholic bishop of Matagalpa (north), Monsignor Rolando Álvarez, who was sentenced to 26 years in prison for refusing to be expelled from the country along with the 222 opponents exiled three months ago.
- 100,000 Nicaraguans have had to go into exile in the last six years.
- 50 media outlets have been closed in Nicaragua since 2018
- 26 years in prison the sentence against the Catholic bishop of Matagalpa, Rolando Álvarez.
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