Wayzata World Factbook 1996/The World Factbook - 1996 Edition - Wayzata Technology (3079) (1996).iso/pc/text/humanrts/nicaragu.txt

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TITLE:  NICACARAGUA HUMAN RIGHTS PRACTICES, 1994
AUTHOR:  U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE
DATE:  FEBRUARY 1995

                           NICARAGUA


Nicaragua is a constitutional democracy, with a directly
elected President, Vice President, and a 92-member unicameral
National Assembly.  President Violeta Barrios de Chamorro was
elected in a free and fair election in 1990, defeating the
incumbent Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN).  She has
delegated significant executive authority to her son-in-law,
Presidency Minister Antonio Lacayo.  The executive branch
coexists with an increasingly independent National Assembly,
which has become the central forum for political debate.  With
an unprecedented degree of cooperation among the FSLN, key
parties belonging to the National Opposition Union (UNO)
coalition that had supported President Chamorro's election in
1990, and several moderate parties, the Assembly passed
significant legislation on labor, civil-military relations, and
property compensation bonds, and is currently working on
constitutional reforms.

The President, in her capacity as commander in chief and
Minister of Defense, and the Ministry of Government are legally
responsible for overseeing the Sandinista Popular Army (EPS)
and the National Police, respectively.  In practice, however,
in the absence of a defense ministry, Nicaragua's security
forces continued to be led by senior officers who maintained
ideological and political links to the FSLN and who operated
with substantial institutional and legal autonomy.
Nevertheless, civilian control over the National Police was
more evident in 1994, particularly during two transportation
strikes.  Moreover, on September 2, President Chamorro signed
into law a Military Code, passed by the National Assembly,
which established institutional mechanisms intended to
strengthen civilian control of the security apparatus.  The law
provides for the retirement of current EPS Commander General
Humberto Ortega in February 1995, presidential appointment of
his successor to a term limited to 5 years, civilian court
jurisdiction over common crimes committed by military and
police personnel, prohibition of "political intelligence
activities" by the EPS's Defense Intelligence Directorate
(DID), and civilian oversight of the newly created military
social security system and of EPS-operated private
enterprises.  By the end of 1994, it was not clear whether all
of these provisions would be implemented sucessfully.

The economy is predominantly agricultural, dependent on sugar,
beef, seafood and banana exports, with some light manufacturing.
After years of hyperinflation and negative growth, the
inflation rate was about 20 percent and real growth
approximately 3 percent in 1994; per capita annual income was
estimated at $410.  Unemployment and underemployment totaled
over 50 percent, while the investment climate remained
unsettled.  Although the Government's fiscal deficit has been
cut by 80 percent since 1990, Nicaragua remained heavily
dependent on foreign aid.

The security forces persisted in committing significant human
rights abuses, although they are declining in number.  Murders,
extrajudicial killings, torture, widespread mistreatment of
detainees, and violence by paramilitary and criminal bands in
rural areas were common.  Since President Chamorro assumed
office, the focus of international attention has been on
safeguarding the human rights of former members of the
Nicaraguan Resistance (RN) since most human rights observers,
including the Sandinista human rights organization CENIDH,
acknowledge that more ex-RN than FSLN members have been
homicide victims.  The Organization of American States
International Support and Verification Commission (OAS/CIAV)
estimates that 270 ex-RN were killed from June 1990 through
1994.  The conviction rate among killers of ex-RN is so low
that a state of impunity for abuses committed against ex-RN can
still be said to exist.

The Tripartite Commission, composed of the Government, the
Catholic Church, and OAS/CIAV, has issued recommendations which
the security forces continued to resist implementing in 1994.
The Commission, whose meetings the Government convenes, met 18
times during the year, a reduction from 48 meetings in 1993,
and failed to produce any reports.

A weak judiciary continued to hamper prosecution of human
rights abusers.  An office of human rights within the Attorney
General's office, created in 1992, remained unstaffed;
discussions about creating a human rights ombudsman independent
of the executive continued during the year.  Violence against
women, including rape and domestic violence, continued to be a
serious problem, with the Government taking little effective
action to counter it.

RESPECT FOR HUMAN RIGHTS

Section 1  Respect for the Integrity of the Person, Including
           Freedom from:

     a.  Political and Extrajudicial Killing

The civil war formally concluded in June 1990 with the
demobilization of the Nicaraguan Resistance.  However,
politically motivated or connoted violence continued into 1994,
as Nicaraguan society continued to be both politically
polarized and heavily armed.  The police, army, and Sandinista
militants continued to kill demobilized RN combatants, but the
number of such murders dropped from a monthly average of 6.1 in
1990 to 4.0 in 1994.  With the demobilization of the 380
Northern Front (FN-380) in April and smaller bands of rearmed
ex-RN (recontras) in August, the situation in the
trouble-ridden north calmed somewhat.  According to OAS/CIAV,
the National Police or EPS killed 7 former combatants through
November 1994, unknown assailants killed 11, and rearmed EPS
veterans (known as recompas) killed 3.  However, it attributed
the majority--23 deaths--to other ex-RN members or recontras.
The total of 44 deaths in 1994 brought to 270 the number of
ex-RN members who died under violent circumstances since the
beginning of the Chamorro administration.  OAS/CIAV and
national human rights group continued to report details of
these human rights abuses to the Government and the media.

To address the issue of ex-RN deaths, President Chamorro
established the Tripartite Commission in late 1992.  The
Commission, composed of the civilian Government, the Catholic
Church, and CIAV, issued three reports during 1993, covering
investigations of 88 deaths and including 120 recommendations
for government followup action, ranging from arrest of known
perpetrators to investigations for obstruction of justice.  Of
these, the Commission has verified that the Government complied
fully with three of the recommendations in the first report.
Consistent with an expanded mandate granted to CIAV by the June
1993 OAS General Assembly, a fourth Commission report discusses
33 additional cases of both Sandinista and ex-RN deaths, plus
an evaluation of the compliance level of all the recommendations
contained in the 1993 reports.  This report was expected to be
released in late 1994 but was delayed into 1995.  Senior EPS
and police officials continued to impede the work of the
Commission by their refusal to implement its recommendations or
respond to its requests for information.  Only a handful of
officials named in the first report, dated January 1993,
received criminal or administrative sanctions.  Although the
EPS claimed that it had punished several soldiers named by the
Commission's report as wrongdoers, by year's end the Commission
had not received any confirming documentation to this effect.

Of those perpetrators named by the Commission, CIAV later
listed five who later committed additional human rights
abuses.  They are police officers Johny Jose Rugama (cases 110
and 113), Captain Benito Diaz Perez (case 149), and Santiago
Irias (mentioned in the special case of La Trinidad in the
third Tripartite Commission report) as well as Etnio Obregon
Ruiz of the EPS (case 61).  In December the Nicaraguan
Association for Human Rights (ANPDH) released the names of four
police officials and three EPS officials who were involved in
five separate human rights incidents.  It said the military
convicted and sentenced them, but none is behind bars.  One
soldier, EPS Lieutenant Jose Antonio Barberena, had been
sentenced once before for killing a fellow soldier.  In neither
instance has he served time in prison.

Human rights groups such as CIAV and CENIDH have witnessed
continued violence in rural areas of northern Nicaragua,
primarily as a result of land disputes and criminal activity.
Since July 1993, CIAV has calculated that 45 percent of the
homicides it investigated were committed by rearmed former
Resistance members (recontras).  The majority of the victims
were demobilized resistance members or their families who lived
in the community.  CENIDH reported that during the first
quarter of 1994, there were 3 homicides of FSLN members,
bringing the total number of FSLN homicides from May 1990
through March 1994 to 169.  During the same period, CENIDH
reported that 513 "ex-RN and recontras" were homicide victims.
Due to the remoteness of many of the conflict zones, coupled
with popular fear of retribution or apparent frustration with
the inability to bring the perpetrators to justice, an
undetermined number of other deaths are believed by some
resistance members to go unreported.

Other incidents of political and extrajudicial killing dating
from 1990 remained unsolved.  On March 21, a band of renegade
recontras led by Jose "Omar" Castro kidnaped Javier Barahona, a
prominent local FSLN offical and ex-mayor of Wiwili in Juigalpa
department.  They seized Barahona from a public bus in broad
daylight and later tortured and murdered him, despite
negotiation efforts by both the church and CIAV to secure
Barahona's release.  At year's end, the authorities had not
brought Barahona's killers to justice.  In November 1991, the
Government dissolved the special presidential commission
charged with investigating the February 16, 1991, assassination
of former RN commander Enrique Bermudez, claiming a lack of
evidence.  A British investigative team found no new evidence
in 1993, and the Government took no further action in the case
in 1994.

In June 1994 a military court declared EPS General Humberto
Ortega and his bodyguards innocent of organizing or covering up
the 1990 killing of high school student Jean Paul Genie, but
declared the case still unresolved.  This followed the December
1993 decision of the Supreme Court to remand the case to the
military courts.  Several human rights groups criticized both
the Supreme Court's ruling, which rejected an appeal by Raymond
Genie, the boy's father, to order the case tried in a civilian
court, and the military court's acquittal.  They cited numerous
irregularities, including the nonadmissibility or disappearance
of certain key pieces of evidence, as well as the conflict of
interest of one of the Supreme Court judges who, after his
retirement, acted as defense attorney for the bodyguards.
Raymond Genie filed two appeals with the military court:  The
court rejected an appeal regarding the June verdict, but in
August it accepted the second, requesting the trial be sent to
the Supreme Court where the case currently awaits judgment.  At
the same time, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights
referred the Genie case to the Inter-American Court of Human
Rights, which heard the case on November 18 on the issue of
delay of justice and is expected to render a decision in the
spring of 1995.  The Government had argued that the Court could
not rule on the murder itself, as it took place prior to
Nicaragua's acceptance of the Court's special jurisdiction.

On March 10, the Leon appellate court reinstated the 20-year
prison sentence given to former EPS Lt. Colonel Frank Ibarra,
leader of a pro-FSLN paramilitary group, Punitive Forces of the
Left (FPI), for the November 23, 1992 assassination of Dr.
Arges Sequeira Manga, then director of the Association of
Nicaraguan Confiscated Property Owners.  The same court
overturned an earlier ruling granting Ibarra immunity under an
August 1993 amnesty.  Ibarra's lawyer appealed the matter to
the Supreme Court, which had not ruled by year's end.  Ibarra
remained at large, and no apparent effort has been made to
capture him; the police at one point claimed there was no
warrant out for his arrest.  The Government petitioned the Leon
appellate court to obtain such a warrant, although it continued
to argue that Ibarra's conviction made this step superfluous.
On March 12, the EPS publicly denounced the Leon court's
ruling, claiming it would lead to instability regarding those
who had received previous amnesties from the Government.

     b.  Disappearance

There were no reports of politically motivated disappearances.

     c.  Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading
         Treatment or Punishment

The Nicaraguan Association for Human Rights recorded 118 cases
of inhuman and degrading treatment in 1994.  In the majority of
the cases, those accused of the abuses were the National
Police, who often held the victims for days, only to release
them without formally charging them with any crime.  There were
other credible reports during the year that the police beat and
otherwise physically mistreated detainees, often to obtain
confessions.

Three nongovernmental organizations (NGO's) worked together in
1994 to improve prison conditions as a result of innumerable
complaints regarding police brutality in prisons as well as in
police holding cells.  Following complaints of mistreatment in
police detention cells, representatives from the Nicaraguan
Center for Human Rights (CENIDH) visited the holding cell of
the criminal investigation office and found the cells poorly
ventilated due in part to solid metal doors and metal sheeting
in the ceiling.

In June the prison population was 2,900, of which more than 10
percent were between ages 15 and 18, owing to the complete lack
of juvenile detention facilities.  The prisons had overcrowded
cells, medical attention was nonexistent, and there was
extensive malnutrition.  Following accusations that prisoners
received dietary intake of only 500 calories per day, the
Government announced plans to increase the budget by $1
million, allowing each prisoner an average of $0.91 per day for
food.  Ministry of Government officials stated that they did
not have sufficient funds to improve the conditions of prisons
under their jurisdiction.  The office of civil inspection for
professional responsibility of the Ministry of Government,
established in 1991, is charged with monitoring prison
conditions.  However, due to the unit's small budget and staff,
it is able to investigate few complaints.

     d.  Arbitrary Arrest, Detention, or Exile

Arbitrary arrest and detention by the police were common.  The
Police Functions Law establishes procedures for the arrest of
criminal suspects, which require police to obtain a warrant
from a police official prior to detaining a suspect.  The law
requires police to notify family members of a detainee's
whereabouts within 24 hours, but the police rarely comply.
Detainees do not have the right to an attorney until they have
been formally charged with a crime.  Local human rights groups
criticized the law for providing inadequate judicial oversight
of police arrests.

The Constitution declares that all detained persons have the
right to be brought before a judge within 72 hours, but the
authorities frequently ignored this in practice.  Local human
rights groups reported that the authorities routinely detained
suspects far beyond the limits established under the
Constitution.

The civil inspection unit also monitors police wrongdoing,
including illegal detention.  Through October 1994, the civil
inspection unit received 360 complaints of abuse of power,
illegal detention, and negligence.  Victims filed 80 percent of
the complaints against the police and the other 20 percent
against prison guards, immigration officials, and other
enforcement authorities.  No internal mechanism exists to
verify what official actions, if any, the Ministry of
Government takes against these officials, once the unit submits
the complaint to it.  The location of the civil inspection unit
in the Ministry building, which during the Sandinista era was
the site of the feared Interior Ministry, is cited by members
of the unit as an intimidating factor for those seeking to
lodge complaints of police or prison abuse.

Although the Constitution provides access to legal counsel for
detainees after they have been charged with a crime, in
practice police do not act to protect this right.  The Reform
Law of Penal Procedures provides for the release on bail of
persons accused of certain crimes.  Previously, the law
permitted detainees to remain at liberty prior to trial only
for compelling personal reasons, such as ill health.

ANPDH recorded 183 complaints of illegal detention through
1994.  Over half of the incidents of illegal detention occurred
in the north central region of the country, most of which were
attributable to the National Police.  CENIDH also criticized
the police, noting that, from January 1993 to March 1994,
48 percent of all complaints involved abuses by the police.
CENIDH and other observers cited many impediments to improved
police performance and responsiveness to the public, including
the lack of professional training, low salaries, and inadequate
resources, as well as the physical remoteness of judicial
centers that prevented relatives of prisoners from personally
inquiring into the status of ongoing cases.

Exile is not practiced.

     e.  Denial of Fair Public Trial

The judicial system, comprising both civilian and military
courts, is headed by a nine-member Supreme Court of Justice.
The Supreme Court names appeals court and lower court judges.
On December 13, 1993, the National Assembly approved the
nominations of four Supreme Court replacements, giving the
court a non-Sandinista majority for the first time since
President Chamorro took office.  Nonetheless, the inability to
obtain a working quorum hampered the work of the Supreme Court,
in part due to internal divisions in the Court and in part due
to the Assembly's refusal to act on an executive branch
nomination in May to fill a vacancy on the Court.  Two of the
nine seats on the Supreme Court remained vacant at the end of
the year.

The Ministry of Government and Attorney General's office
attempted several times during 1993 and 1994 to issue summonses
to former Sandinista Ministry of the Interior and Immigration
Service official Luis Guzman to testify in the Santa Rosa arms
cache investigation.  The Sandinista judge in charge of the
case has repeatedly failed to meet legal deadlines for
rendering a decision on whether or not the authorities should
arrest Guzman for refusing to appear for questioning.

Police authorities commonly refused to implement decisions of
lower court judges with which the police disagreed.  Many
Nicaraguans who returned to the country following the 1990
election after a decade in exile sued for the return of their
properties confiscated under the Sandinista regime.  In several
cases, after the presiding magistrate ordered the return of an
illegally confiscated property to the original owner, the
police refused to enforce eviction orders against occupants,
who were frequently prominent members of the FSLN or security
forces.  In the widely reported case of Jaime Solorzano, police
repeatedly refused to arrest the illegal occupants even after
they fired on the judge who attempted to serve the eviction
order and wounded Mr. Solorzano's son.  This case remains
unresolved.  The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights
ruled on February 1 that the Government had violated the
American Convention on Human Rights by refusing to return
properties owned by the Marin family which the Government
illegally seized in 1979.  The Libyan-Nicaraguan Friendship
Association--an arm of the Libyan Government--currently
occupies the properties.

Until the enactment of the new Military Code on September 2,
the military court system was responsible for investigating,
prosecuting, and trying common crimes committed by or against
members of the armed forces or police.  Military courts often
failed to investigate complaints or try cases against members
of the military brought under the old code.  They frequently
imposed only light sentences against soldiers, and military
authorities often failed to enforce them (see Section 1).  The
military court's acquittal of General Ortega and his bodyguards
of the murder of Jean Paul Genie and the military's lack of
compliance with the recommendations of the Tripartite
Commission are cases in point.  The new Military Code specifies
that all common crimes committed by members of the military
will be tried in civil court.  By year's end, the authorities
had begun processing three cases, two involving the police and
one involving the EPS, under the new Code.

In all criminal cases, the accused has the right to legal
counsel, and defendants are presumed innocent until proven
guilty.  Publicly funded attorneys to represent indigent
defendants do not exist.  Obtaining justice is a slow,
uncertain process, and the authorities regularly arrested
persons and held them without bail for months before they
appeared in court.  The CPDH estimated that nearly half of all
those incarcerated in the prison system had been awaiting trial
for between 6 months and 2 years.

There were no known political prisoners.

     f.  Arbitrary Interference with Privacy, Family, Home, or
         Correspondence

The Constitution establishes that all persons have the right to
privacy of their family and to the inviolability of their home,
correspondence, and communications.  It also requires warrants
for searches of private homes and excludes from legal
proceedings illegally seized letters, documents, and private
papers.  However, in April the police burst into the home of
the Bishop of Leon looking for the driver of an illegally
parked truck.  The driver and two workmen were delivering
material to a nearby chapel and had sought refuge in the
Bishop's residence after being chased by the police.  The
police entered the residence without a warrant, caught the
workmen, and beat them in front of the Bishop.  The police
later released the three uncharged persons, and Vice Minister
of Government Frank Cesar personally visited and apologized to
the Bishop (the police also apologized).  The Bishop made no
formal complaint.

Article 26 of the new Military Code prohibits the Defense
Intelligence Directorate from undertaking "political
intelligence activities" and places it under the authority of
the President as head of all armed forces.  Despite the new
law, several political parties have complained that
infiltration by the DID into their groups has not ceased.

     g.  Use of Excessive Force and Violations of Humanitarian
         Law in Internal Conflicts

In several instances, police and the EPS used indiscriminate or
unnecessary force, resulting in deaths or injuries to
civilians.  Despite the efforts of local human rights
organizations, the authorities took no action to discipline
senior officials nor to punish those who committed the abuses.

An EPS patrol wounded 11 persons on February 8 when it
indiscriminately opened fire with machine guns and rocket-
propelled grenades on the town of Tomayunca in the mistaken
belief that it harbored an armed recontra group.  In fact, the
group had passed through hours earlier.  Both CPDH and ANPDH
later testified to the absence of combatants in the village.
The EPS publicly acknowledged the attack and accused the patrol
leader of "negligence" but took no further action.

On May 2, some 300 police officers armed with clubs and guns
violently evicted 450 families of squatters, many of whom were
former members of the EPS and the RN, and destroyed their
makeshift homes in an area known as "Villa Reconciliacion."
The land was claimed by a cooperative represented by a former
Sandinista official, Oscar Loza, accused of murdering two
prisoners during his tenure as operations chief of the FSLN
security service.  Although the police maintained that they
were acting under official orders, the magistrate publicly
stated that he had never issued an eviction order, and the
police never produced any evidence that one existed.

A group of EPS soldiers reportedly chasing a group of local
bandits entered the village of Puerto Viejo on April 23 and
claimed that several men fired at them from the house of
Porfirio Rayo.  Mrs. Rayo later said the army opened fire
without warning, killing a stranger and her husband, mortally
wounding her 23-year-old son and injuring her two other
children.  She denied any involvement of her family in criminal
activity; investigations by ANPDH, CIAV, and CPDH supported
Mrs. Rayo's testimony.  The authorities took no action to
resolve this incident.