New Aggression Against Nicaragua’s Female Political Prisoners

Bishop Silvio Baez criticized on Sunday the aggression suffered by a group of women in prison, where they are being held for protesting against the government presided over by Daniel Ortega, in the context of the crisis that the country has been experiencing since last April.

“Any aggression against a human being is a grave sin against God,” said Baez, auxiliary bishop of the Diocese of Managua, when he was consulted by journalists after officiating a mass.

“It is something that debases, dwarfs whoever commits it, it is truly a wound that bleeds in society, especially when they are defenseless women, women unjustly detained,” he continued.

Baez called for an end to these types of abuses, so they “stop definitively and not happen again.”

Meanwhile, the Committee for the Release of Political Prisoners of Nicaragua denounced that last Thursday around 20 guards beat at least eight women who were in the same cell, because they resisted the transfer of three of them.

Among the women attacked are the leader of the merchants in the anti-government demonstrations, Ireland Jerez, who recently denounced before a group of European Parliament Members who visited her in prison, that she was drugged by the police in the infamous El Chipote prison, where she was first held. 

The Chipote is a prison that in recent years has been designated by humanitarian agencies as a center of torture, according to the complaint.

They noted that Jerez “cannot even get out of bed because of the pain caused by the blows to her body.”

Another of the assaulted is music teacher Olesia Auxiliadora Munoz Pavon, who belongs to the choir of a parish in southwestern Nicaragua and who was sentenced to 30 years in prison for the crimes of terrorism, among others.

The authorities of the National Penitentiary System have not yet referred to the Committee’s complaint.

Two of the beaten women are now missing 

The Committee for the Release of Political Prisoners of Nicaragua denounced on Saturday that they are unaware of the whereabouts of two of the women who were beaten in prison and dragged out of their cell.

“Jeysi Lagos and Brenda Muñoz, who suffers from cancer, were taken from the cell and we have no information about their whereabouts,” said the committee in a public statement.

According to that committee composed of relatives of the detainees, on Thursday about 20 guards entered the cell where the two women were, along with Reyna Varela, Claudia Campos, Irlanda Jerez, María Mercedes Chavarria, Olesia Munoz and Tania Munoz, with the intention to move three of them to “an unknown place”.

“When the political prisoners resisted, they were attacked savagely” and since then they do not know where Lagos and Muñoz were transferred, notes the complaint.

In the case of Irlanda Jerez, leader of the merchants in the anti-government demonstrations and who recently denounced before a group of MEPs who visited her in prison that she had been drugged by the police in the El Chipote prison,” she cannot even get out of bed because of the pain caused by the blows to her body,” said the Committee.

“This is the second attack suffered by our political prisoners in the La Esperanza women’s prison, which has become a center of torture and violation of the human rights of Nicaraguans who are kidnapped because they are considered a threat by the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo,” the Committee added.

The opposition Nicaraguan National Blue and White Unity movement on Saturday condemned the aggression suffered by the women and asked the Ortega government to stop this type of repression against political prisoners and to respect their human rights.

The Committee also demands that Josefa Pena and Aracelly Zepeda, who are in charge of the prison, be investigated for the violations.