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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.
Section 2 Respect for Civil Liberties, Including:
a. Freedom of Speech and Press
The Constitution provides for freedom of speech and a free
press, and the Government in large measure respects these
rights. Diverse viewpoints were freely and openly discussed in
public discourse, in the privately owned print media, in the
broadcast media, and in academic circles.
The news medium with the largest audience is radio, but polls
show that television is the primary source of news,
particularly in the cities. Listeners can receive a wide
variety of political viewpoints, especially on Managua's
45 radio stations. In 1994 there were no incidents of radio
stations being attacked or subjected to incidents of sabotage,
as occurred in previous years. There are seven television
stations, five of which carry news programming with marked
political overtones. The remaining two stations carry no local
news. There is no official state censorship, nor is
self-censorship practiced.
As a consequence of the lack of complete civilian control over
the police, police harassment of journalists has continued. In
July police attacked journalist Melba Sanchez as she covered
the assault by ex-RN members on local government buildings in
Chinandega. The police beat her with fists and rifle butts and
destroyed her camera. Partly as a result of this action, the
representatives of the two journalists' unions, the three main
human rights NGO's, the president of the National Assembly's
human rights commission, and the chief of police signed a
cooperative agreement for the protection of the human rights of
journalists on July 27. In an unprecedented move, the
Inspector General of Police disciplined the officer involved in
the Sanchez beating. The punishment of 15 days' confinement to
desk duty, however, was widely regarded as too light to be an
effective deterrent.
Freedom of the press is also potentially qualified by several
constitutional provisions, one of which stipulates that
Nicaraguans have a right to "accurate information," thereby
providing a legal basis by which the freedom to publish
information the Government deems inaccurate could be abridged.
Although the right to information cannot be subject to
censorship, there is retroactive liability established by law,
defined as a "social responsibility," implying sanctions
against irresponsibility by the press. Finally, the
Constitution provides that "the mass media are at the service
of the national interests," implying that the Government may
suppress media activity it decides is not in the national
interest. There were no instances of the Government citing
these provisions to suppress the media, although in early
October the Government closed down an independent news show on
government-owned Radio Nicaragua for 24 hours after it
unfavorably reported a meeting of the Social Democratic Party
attended by Minister of the Presidency Antonio Lacayo. The
Government gave no justification for the closure, nor for the
quick reopening under heavy press pressure.
The Constitution recognizes, and the Government respects in
practice, academic freedom in higher education.
b. Freedom of Peaceful Assembly and Association
The Constitution recognizes the right to peaceful assembly
without prior permission. It also recognizes the right to
public assembly, demonstration, and mobilization "in conformity
with the law." Demonstrators must obtain permission for a
march after registering its planned size and location with
police. The authorities routinely grant such permission.
The Constitution provides for the right to organize or
affiliate with political parties, and opposition and
independent associations functioned freely without government
interference or restriction. Private associations do not have
legal status until they receive this designation from the
National Assembly, which it routinely confers.
c. Freedom of Religion
The Constitution provides for freedom of religion, and the
Government respects this in practice.
d. Freedom of Movement Within the Country, Foreign
Travel, Emigration, and Repatriation
The Constitution provides for the right to travel and reside
anywhere in Nicaragua and to enter and exit the country
freely. There are no government restrictions on movement
within the country. The right of citizens to return to
Nicaragua is not specifically established in the Constitution,
but, in practice, the Chamorro Government has not restricted
anyone's return. The Constitution provides for asylum, and
political refugees expelled from Nicaragua cannot be sent back
to the country persecuting them. In 1994 there were no reports
of political violence against any returning Nicaraguan citizens.
In 1993 the Government attempted to strip former Red Brigade
terrorist, Alessio Cassimirri, of his citizenship and to deport
him. Cassimirri has been accused in the 1978 murder of Italian
Prime Minister Aldo Moro. At year's end, the Supreme Court was
still debating the case, which must decide whether the
annulment of the citizenship which the Sandinista government
granted him in 1988 was legal.
Section 3 Respect for Political Rights: The Right of Citizens
to Change Their Government
Citizens exercised their right peacefully to change their
government in the first election under the 1987 Constitution,
which took place in February 1990. The 14-party UNO coalition,
the FSLN, and several smaller parties contested the election,
which international observers declared free and fair. The
Constitution centers political power in the executive branch,
which consists of the President, Vice President, and a Cabinet
appointed by the President. The President is both Head of
State and Head of Government, as well as commander in chief of
the defense and security forces. Currently the President is
also Minister of Defense, but this is not constitutionally
mandated. The Vice President has no constitutionally mandated
duties or powers. Both are elected for 6-year terms by direct
popular vote.
The National Assembly exercises legislative power. Its members
also serve 6-year terms. Ninety members are elected under a
proportional representation system from nine departments or
regions; defeated presidential candidates, of which there are
two, also receive seats in the Assembly, provided they won a
certain minimum percentage of votes in the previous
presidential election. In December 1993, the National Assembly
resumed operation following a 15-month period during which the
withdrawal of the UNO coalition, which had moved into
opposition to President Chamorro's Government, denied the
legislature a working quorum. Deputies from the FSLN, the
center group (former UNO deputies who had defected to a
progovernment stance in mid-1992), and three parties which had
either defected or been expelled from UNO joined to reactivate
the Assembly and consider a legislative agenda that included
constitutional reform. Although the remaining UNO members
continued to insist that only a special constituent assembly
should enact constitutional reform, the UNO deputies gradually
rejoined the Assembly in January. Later in the year, the
coalition espoused constitutional reform by the Assembly in
which the UNO deputies participated.
Local elections held in the two Atlantic Coast departments in
February were witnessed by over 150 international election
observers and judged free and fair.
An independent branch of government, the Supreme Electoral
Council, administers elections. All elections are by secret
ballot, with all citizens aged 16 and over having the right to
vote. There are no restrictions in law or practice against
women, indigenous groups, or other minorities voting or
participating in politics. A woman serves as President of the
Republic, and women hold a ministerial-level post and other
senior positions in government. Two members of the National
Assembly are Miskitos; indigenous people are represented in
government at both the local and national levels.
Section 4 Governmental Attitude Regarding International and
Nongovernmental Investigation of Alleged Violations
of Human Rights
Four major local nongovernmental human rights organizations
operate freely without government interference: the Nicaraguan
Center for Human Rights, the Permanent Commission for Human
Rights, the Nicaraguan Association for Human Rights, and
Cardinal Miguel Obando y Bravo's verification commission. In
addition, CIAV, pursuant to its expanded mandate authorized by
the June 1993 OAS General Assembly, carries out human rights
related activities covering all those affected by the
Nicaraguan civil war, whatever their political affiliation.
Human rights groups operated without impediment in Nicaragua.
However, their reports of human rights abuses committed by EPS
and police personnel to responsible officials of these
institutions or to concerned civilian authorities seldom
elicited concrete responses. The Government took no action
regarding the unsolved March 1993 murder of CENIDH activist
Leonel Gonzalez despite repeated requests from that
organization to reopen the case.
Since its establishment in September 1992, the Tripartite
Commission has been the most effective mechanism for raising
human rights allegations to an official level and eliciting a
response from government authorities. However, the Government
has implemented only three of the Commission's recommendations.
On December 1, police lieutenant Julio Cesar Toledo threatened
a CIAV official attempting to serve a judge's release order for
a former resistance member being illegally detained in a Somoto
prison. The day before, Lieutenant Javier Martinez and Captain
Denis Tinoco had threatened the judge who signed the order.
Despite formal complaints lodged by both CIAV and the judge,
the three police officials received only mild administrative
reprimands.
Section 5 Discrimination Based on Race, Sex, Religion,
Disability, Language, or Social Status
The Constitution prohibits discrimination on the basis of
"birth, nationality, political belief, race, gender, language,
religion, opinion, national origin, economic condition, or
social condition."
Women
While there is no legal discrimination against women, they
continued to suffer discrimination in the male-dominated
culture prevalent in much of society. Women occupy senior
positions in government, the trade union movement, and social
organizations, but are underrepresented in management positions
in the private sector. They are the majority of workers in the
traditionally low-paid educational, textile, and health service
sectors. A report the International Foundation for Global
Competitiveness published in August claimed that women worked
on average 21 more hours per week than men, 77 hours to
56 hours. Moreover, the report concluded, 41 percent of all
households headed by women in 1993 lived in a state of poverty
(up from 32 percent in 1992).
In a July report covering the southwestern portion of the
country, the Nicaraguan Social Security Institute (INSSBI)
stated that "every 24 hours five women are sexually assaulted
by strangers, five more by members of their own family." The
report claimed that the majority of the assaults took place in
the countryside and in the poorer areas of the cities. CENIDH
quoted police statistics for 1993 of 1,741 cases of assault
against women, of which 40 percent were crimes of rape.
Because victims often were reluctant to publicize their
charges, it is likely that such abuse was significantly
underreported.
Local human rights groups reported that police sometimes
intervene to prevent injury in cases of domestic violence but
that they rarely charge the perpetrators because they consider
domestic violence a "private" crime for which the victim, not
the State, should press charges. A victim wishing to prosecute
must first have an injury examined and registered by a forensic
doctor; women's groups complained of the scarcity and
inaccessibility of female forensic doctors. Most domestic
violence cases thus go unreported, not only because of the
difficulty of prosecution but also for fear of spousal
reprisal. Those cases that actually make it to court usually
result in a not guilty verdict due to judicial inexperience
with and lack of legal training related to such violence.
The Ixchen centers and the Luisa Amanda Association of
Nicaraguan Women, a Sandinista mass organization, provided
medical and psychological counseling to women, as well as legal
advice in divorce cases and to victims of rape and other
violence. In November these groups joined with some 20 other
Nicaraguan NGO's dedicated to women's issues to create the
"Women's Network Against Violence" to promote women's rights
and to pressure the Government to ratify the Inter-American
Convention for the Prevention, Punishment, and Eradication of
Violence Against Women, which Nicaragua signed on June 9, 1994.
Judging from available statistics, women appear to have equal
or better access to education than men. For example, net
enrollment for girls in the primary grades is 79 percent,
compared to 76 percent for boys. An the secondary level, it is
33 percent for girls and 26 percent for boys.
Children
Children 15 years and younger make up 46 percent of Nicaragua's
population. The Government is publicly committed to children's
human rights and welfare, but resources for programs for
children are inadequate. The INSSBI estimated that it receives
from 5,000 to 6,000 cases of mistreatment annually for children
under the age of 10. The authorities conduct investigations if
a parent makes a formal complaint, but this rarely happens.
Every year the media carry stories of dozens of children
abandoned or killed by parents who are too poor or otherwise
unable to take care of them. Because of the economic situation
of many families, thousands of children must work in the fields
alongside their parents or in the streets as vendors or beggars.
Indigenous People
The indigenous people are concentrated in four major areas. On
the Atlantic coast and in the eastern highlands are the Miskito
(numbering 160,000), the Sumu, the Rama, and the black Carib
(these last three exist in very small numbers). The Government
considers these peoples identifiable tribes.
The Miskito tribe is the largest ethnic group in the North
Atlantic Autonomous Region (the RAAN, one of two such regions
created in 1987 from the former department of Zelaya). The
indigenous people of the RAAN (the Miskito and the Sumu) have
their own political party, the Yatama, with strong
representation in regional and municipal councils. Indigenous
people participate in government at both the local and national
levels. However, in many instances, the Government makes
decisions at the national level without adequate departmental
or community consultation. Therefore, as in previous years,
there were complaints that the authorities exclude the
indigenous peoples of the Atlantic coast from meaningful
participation in decisions affecting their lands, cultures,
traditions, and the allocation of natural resources.
The fledgling, Atlantic coast-based Center for Human, Citizen,
and Autonomous Rights strongly links autonomous rights with
human rights for the inhabitants of the region and contends the
central Government has granted business concessions in the
autonomous regions without consulting the two relevant regional
governments. The 1987 autonomy law deals with the ethnic
minorities of the Atlantic Coast. It pledges that indigenous
people shall have the right to participate in the exploitation
of the resources of the region. While the law stipulates the
structure of the Atlantic Coast governments, it does not
outline any specific mechanism or regulations the central
Government should employ to determine use of local resources.
National/Racial/Ethnic Minorities
Most Nicaraguans are of mixed mestizo background, and ethnicity
does not appear to be a barrier to political or economic
success. Various indigenous groups from both the northern and
the southern Atlantic regions have criticized the Government
for its failure to expend resources in support of the Atlantic
coast population, which mainly comprises ethnic, racial, and
religious minorities (particularly, members of the Moravian
church). Successive central governments in Managua have
traditionally neglected the minorities on the Atlantic coast.
This has often taken the form of making decisions on
exploitation of resources in the region without adequate
consultation.
People with Disabilities
The Government has not legislated or otherwise mandated
accessibility for the disabled. In August the FSLN's
Organization of Handicapped Revolutionaries joined with the
ex-RN-based Institute of War Victims in petitioning the Social
Security Institute to provide aid to victims of Nicaragua's
civil war--some of whom have been waiting over 30 months for
such help. The Social Security Institute says that it pays
benefits to some 30,000 victims of the civil war, including
partly or totally handicapped victims, widows, orphans, and
mothers of war victims, each of whom receives an average of
$21 monthly. The Institute claims that those who protested in
August either had verification cases pending or are ineligible
for the benefits because they have outside employment or other
disqualifications.
Section 6 Worker Rights
a. The Right of Association
The Constitution guarantees the right of workers to organize
voluntarily in unions. Legally, all public and private sector
workers, except those in the military and the police, may form
and join unions of their own choosing, and they exercise this
right extensively. New unions must register with the Ministry
of Labor, which must grant legal status before they may engage
in collective bargaining; some labor groups report occasional
delays in obtaining this status. It is likely that in some
cases, the Labor Ministry has deliberately interfered with the
already lengthy bureaucratic process to make it lengthier.
Nearly half of the work force, including agricultural workers,
is unionized, according to labor leaders.
Nicaragua's unions are independent of the Government.
Affiliation to or activity in political parties or associations
is grounds for dissolution of a trade union under the existing
Labor Code; however, the Government does not enforce this
provision. Many unions and federations are affiliated with
political parties, most notably with the FSLN, the Nicaraguan
Socialist Party, the Christian Democratic Union, and, until
1992, the Nicaraguan Communist Party.
The Constitution recognizes the right to strike. The Labor
Code requires a 60-percent majority of all the workers in an
enterprise to call a strike. It also restricts strikes in
rural occupations where produce may be damaged. Workers may
strike legally only after they have exhausted other methods of
dispute resolution, including mediation by the Ministry of
Labor and compulsory arbitration. As a result, unions regard
these lengthy procedures as too expensive and time-consuming
and frequently ignore them when initiating a strike; this
practice continued in 1994, with the majority of strikes
declared illegal.
The Labor Code prohibits retribution against strikers and union
leaders for legal strikes. However, this protection may not
extend to illegal strikes. In June the Supreme Court voted to
uphold a 1993 government decision to fire 144 customs workers.
The Court justified its decision in part by citing an unrelated
1992 strike, in which the authorities claimed lives were
endangered when demonstrators blocked the runway of the
international airport. Transportation strikes to protest high
fuel prices occurred in January and August, with relatively
little violence.
The 1994 International Labor Organization's (ILO) Committee on
Freedom of Association issued a report critical of the
Government for various 1992 arrests of union officials without
sufficient cause, who were later released without charge. The
ILO's Committee of Experts (COE) noted that the draft text of
the new Labor Code (which the National Assembly passed on
December 22 but was not signed into law by year's end) did not
remove restrictions on the right to strike of rural workers,
grant the right to associate of public servants, or reduce the
number of workers in an enterprise required to call a strike to
a simple majority.
Unions freely form or join federations or confederations and
affiliate with and participate in international bodies.
b. The Right to Organize and Bargain Collectively
The Constitution provides for the right to bargain
collectively. The Chamorro Government's labor negotiations
continued primarily to be ad hoc efforts to resolve pressing
labor conflicts, usually in the public sector. Despite
unfavorable economic conditions and unfamiliarity with the
practice, following 10 years of central planning, collective
bargaining is becoming more common in the private sector. In
1994 the ILO's COE argued that the labor law provision
requiring Ministry of Labor approval of collective agreements
violates Convention 98 on the Right to Organize and Collective
Bargaining ratified by Nicaragua in 1967.
During 1994 13 firms, employing some 5,000 workers, operated in
the single export processing zone. Although the zone's firms
receive tax concessions, Nicaraguan law does not exempt them
from compliance with any of its labor provisions. Nevertheless,
of the 13 enterprises, only 1 (a state-owned firm) has a
union. Labor leaders and employers have provided conflicting
accounts as to why unions do not represent workers in the other
firms. Labor leaders contend that employers have told workers
that they will be fired if they join a union. Free trade zone
officials maintain that no union has received sufficient
support from the workers to allow one to form and that the
workers already receive more than adequate benefits.
c. Prohibition of Forced or Compulsory Labor
The Constitution prohibits forced or compulsory labor, and
there is no evidence that it is practiced. In 1991 the
Assembly repealed the decree which empowered the police to
impose penalties involving compulsory labor, a move
specifically applauded in the ILO's 1994 COE report.
d. Minimum Age for Employment of Children
The Constitution prohibits child labor that may affect normal
childhood development or interfere with the obligatory school
year. Education is compulsory to age 12, and the law prohibits
employment of children under the age of 14. Nevertheless,
because of the prevailing economic conditions, more than
100,000 children reportedly work up to 12 hours a day. Many
are employed on family farms. Many children aged 10 or older
work for less than $1.00 per day on the same cotton farms,
banana plantations, and coffee plantations where their parents
are employed. Many small children work in the busy streets of
Managua hawking merchandise, cleaning automobile windows, and
begging. Although the Ministry of Labor rarely enforces it,
the child labor law is generally observed in the small modern
sector of the economy.
e. Acceptable Conditions of Work
Over the objections of the labor representatives, a commission
made up of representatives from government, labor, and the
private sector set sectoral minimum wages in mid-1991. The
labor groups argued that the monthly minimum wage rates
(ranging from $30 in the agricultural sector, through $39 for
central government employees, to $65 in the banking sector)
were inadequate, given the high cost of living. According to a
1991 estimate by the Government's National Commission on the
Standard of Living, the minimum wage did not provide a family
of four with the income to meet its basic needs. Enforcement
of the minimum wage is lax, and some employers reportedly pay
less, particularly in the agricultural sector. However,
Ministry of Labor surveys indicated that some 86 percent of
urban area workers earned more than the minimum wage.
The Constitution establishes an 8-hour workday with weekly rest
and establishes the right to a safe and healthy workplace. The
standard legal workweek is a maximum of 48 hours, with 1 day of
rest.
The Ministry of Labor's Office of Occupational Health and
Safety is responsible for verifying compliance with health and
safety standards. The Office lacks adequate staff to enforce
these extensive standards. The ILO's COE criticized the
Government for the Ministry's failure to enforce standards
Nicaragua has committed to implement regarding the threat of
occupational cancer, including measures for special protection
for workers at risk and periodic medical examinations of these
workers during and after their exposure. Workers have no
specific right to remove themselves from dangerous work
situations without jeopardy to continued employment.
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