By: Staff Writer
September 29, 2026
A United Nations group of experts detailed the level of the Nicaraguan government’s human rights violations in a new report.
The report, “The anatomy of State cruelty: Enforced disappearance and death in custody in Nicaragua,” has verified 161 cases of enforced disappearance of varying duration, ranging from a few days to several years, that have occurred since April 2018 and believes that the true number is certainly higher given the pervasive fear of retaliation and the near total dismantling of independent civil society in the country.
President Danie Ortega and his wife and co-president, Rosario Murillo, recently suspended elections indefinitely in a move criticized as cementing their effective dictatorship over the Central American nation.
The report charts an evolution of the tactics used by the Nicaraguan government to silence dissent and target “an increasingly diverse range of victims”.
It also provides evidence in support of their belief in “coordinated action of multiple State institutions, under a chain of command reaching senior levels of Government” to repress opposition.
The paper further documents eight cases of individuals detained on political grounds who died in State custody after enduring inadequate medical care, unsanitary conditions and, in several cases, torture or other ill-treatment.
Their profiles illustrate how the systematic denial of adequate healthcare and humane conditions of detention, particularly for older detainees and those with chronic illnesses, has produced preventable deaths.
The report also detailed inconsistencies in the government’s account of the in-custody death of Indigenous Miskito leader Brooklyn Rivera, who was imprisoned for 32 months with almost no contact with his family before he died in May.
The official statement after his death linked it to complications following a previous COVID-19 infection, which previous statements in the days before never mentioned. An independent assessment from Physicians for Human Rights said the explanation was “not medically coherent.”
Its assessment also found that the “timing of the illness and the pattern of organisms identified both point to the infections having been acquired in custody or in hospital, rather than in the community.”