Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, under sanctions for human rights abuses, has sworn in 30,000 hooded civilians as a “volunteer police” force the opposition fears will be used as a tool of political repression.
The recruits, dressed in white T-shirts and black pants — all wearing ski masks hiding all but their eyes — were paraded before Ortega and his co-president and wife Rosario Murillo at a ceremony in the capital Managua late Wednesday.
The force was created under a constitutional reform that also elevated Murillo to the position of “co-president” and granted the couple control of all state entities.
In a report in Geneva Wednesday, a group of UN human rights experts said Ortega’s leftist government had recruited ex-combatants, retired soldiers and police, judges and public employees for a “volunteer” force to support the national police.
This force “evokes the nefarious role of masked groups that led the lethal repression of the 2018 anti-government protests” that left more than 300 people dead, one of the UN experts, Reed Brody, told AFP.
The Managua government considers the 2018 protests an attempted coup sponsored by Washington.
Ortega has engaged in increasingly authoritarian practices, tightening control over all sectors of the state with the support of Murillo in what critics describe as a nepotistic dictatorship.
Ortega first served as president from 1985 to 1990 as a former guerrilla hero who helped oust the US-backed Somoza regime, and returned to power in 2007. Nicaragua has jailed hundreds of opponents, real and perceived, since then.
Ortega’s government has shut down more than 5,000 NGOs since the 2018 mass protests.
Thousands of Nicaraguans have fled into exile, and the regime is under US and EU sanctions. Most independent and opposition media now operate from abroad.
The UN experts report said Ortega and Murillo have “deliberately transformed the country into an authoritarian state where no independent institutions remain, opposition voices are silenced, and the population -– both inside and outside Nicaragua –- faces persecution, forced exile, and economic retaliation.”
