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Title: Nicaragua Human Rights Practices, 1995
Author: U.S. Department of State
Date: March 1996
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) candidate, Daniel Ortega. She delegated significant
executive authority to her son-in-law, Antonio Lacayo, who served as
Minister of the Presidency for 5 years until he resigned in September.
The executive branch coexists with an increasingly activist National
Assembly, whose powers were augmented as a result of reforms to the 1987
Constitution which were enacted in July. These reforms followed 9
months of political and institutional struggle between the executive and
legislative branches, which contributed to paralysis of the Supreme
Court and interrupted the work of the Supreme Electoral Council (the two
other coequal branches of government). The stalemate was overcome only
after Catholic Cardinal Miguel Obando y Bravo was brought in as a
guarantor for the negotiated settlement.
The President is commander-in-chief of the army and nominal Minister of
Defense; there is no Defense Ministry. On February 21, General Humberto
Ortega stepped down after 16 years as head of the army, and President
Chamorro named General Joaquin Cuadra as his successor for a 5-year term
of office in accordance with the 1994 Military Code. In a
constitutional reform symbolic of strengthened civilian control and
depoliticization of the military, the Sandinista Popular Army was
officially renamed the Army of Nicaragua. The Ministry of Government
oversees the National Police, which are formally in charge of internal
security; however, they share this responsibility on a de facto basis
with the army in rural areas. Members of the security forces committed
human rights abuses.
Nicaragua is an extremely poor country. The economy is predominantly
agricultural, dependent on sugar, beef, coffee, and seafood exports,
with some light manufacturing. The economy grew for the second year
(after 10 years of negative growth) at a rate of 4 percent. Despite
significant foreign debt relief negotiated during the year, the country
continued to have a precarious balance of payments position and remained
heavily dependent on foreign assistance. Although investment increased,
the slow and complicated resolution of confiscated property claims and
uncertainty over the political succession in 1996 continued to dampen
the investment climate. The estimated rate of unemployment was 18
percent, while total unemployment and underemployment may have exceeded
50 percent. Inflation, which reached hyperinflation levels in the late-
1980's through 1990, was 11 percent in 1995. The estimated per capita
annual income is $458.
The security forces continued to commit human rights abuses, although
fewer than in previous years. Murders, extrajudicial killings, reports
of torture and widespread mistreatment of detainees by police, and
violence by criminal bands in rural areas of northern Nicaragua were
common. A January 6 incident near the northern town of La Maranosa
resulted in the deaths of 13 members of a criminal band and 2 army
personnel. Local human rights groups pointed to credible evidence that
the army ambushed the band, while the army claimed that it only acted in
self-defense. In May a civilian judge absolved army personnel of all
wrongdoing.
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-led Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights
(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) recorded 370 ex-RN
members killed from June 1990 through August 1995, with 71 of these
deaths occurring during 1995. The number and percentage of these deaths
attributed to the security forces continued to decline from previous
years. The conviction rate among the killers, particularly but not
exclusively of the ex-RN, was so low that a state of impunity could
still be said to exist.
The security forces continued to resist implementing recommendations
issued by the Tripartite Commission composed of the Government, the
Catholic Church, and OAS/CIAV. In September the Commission submitted a
fourth report to President Chamorro, covering an additional 33 cases,
which showed that only 14 of 120 recommendations contained in the three
previous commission reports had been complied with. Of the 111 members
of the security forces named in the report, only 4 were found guilty of
homicide and 3 of negligence--none of whom served a full sentence. In
response to requests from the army and the Ministry of Government,
President Chamorro asked the Supreme Court to review cases involving
army and police officials whom the military court system had either
found not guilty or failed to prosecute. The Supreme Court agreed to
this request, and a three-judge panel was named to review the cases. By
year's end, however, the panel had not ruled on a single case.
A weak judiciary continued to hamper prosecution of human rights
abusers. Arbitrary arrest and detention, the slow pace of justice, and
poor prison conditions also remained problems. On December 13, the
National Assembly passed legislation creating an independent Attorney
General for Human Rights, to be staffed in 1996. Violence against
women, including rape and domestic abuse, remained a serious problem,
but public officials took 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 Other Extrajudicial Killing
The civil war formally concluded in June 1990 with the demobilization of
the Nicaraguan Resistance; however, Nicaraguan society continued to be
politically polarized and heavily armed. In particular, the rule of law
and basic infrastructure did not extend to rural areas. Reflecting
these sources of instability, the level of violence primarily criminal
in nature has increased over previous years in the traditionally
conflictive, poverty-stricken northern and north-central zones. At the
same time, OAS/CIAV reported that deaths of demobilized RN combatants
attributed to police and army officials continued to fall, both in
number and as a percentage of total homicides, from a monthly average of
6.1 in 1990 to 1.1 in 1995. The latter represents a 72 percent decrease
from 1994. A total of 71 deaths in 1995 brought to 370 the number of
demobilized RN members who died under violent circumstances since the
beginning of the Chamorro administration. Of the 71 dead, according to
OAS/CIAV, the security forces killed 13, and unknown other assailants
killed 25. OAS/CIAV attributed the remainder--33 deaths--to fellow ex-
RN members or to Recontras (rearmed resistance members).
To address the issue of ex-RN deaths, President Chamorro established the
Tripartite Commission in September 1992. The Commission, composed of
the civilian Government, the Catholic Church, and OAS/CIAV, issued three
reports during 1993, covering investigations of 88 deaths and including
120 recommendations for followup action by the Government and security
forces, ranging from arrest of known perpetrators to investigations of
probable obstruction of justice. In September the Tripartite Commission
submitted to President Chamorro a fourth report, covering an additional
33 cases plus an evaluation of the compliance level of all
recommendations contained in the three reports issued in 1993. The
Commission verified that only 14 of the 120 recommendations contained in
the first three reports had been fully implemented. Of 73 members of
the police named in the three reports, 36 were tried on criminal charges
and 5 were convicted. Of 38 military officials named, 20 were tried and
2 were convicted. According to OAS/CIAV, none of those convicted served
a complete sentence.
Senior army and police officials had long impeded the work of the
Tripartite Commission by refusing to implement its recommendations or
respond to its requests for information. However, on June 6 army
commander General Joaquin Cuadra asked President Chamorro to have the
Supreme Court review cases involving military personnel. The Minister
of Government submitted a similar request on July 11 for review of cases
involving the police. The Supreme Court president agreed to form a
three-judge panel of court members to review the cases (10 from the army
and 9 from the police) but had produced no rulings by year's end.
Armed bandit groups blocked highways, burned vehicles, and engaged in
robbery, kidnaping for ransom, and murder in the conflictive northern
and north-central zones. Clashes between these bands and security
forces resulted in numerous deaths on both sides and heightened tensions
in the area. In response, the Government initiated "plan cafe" (also
known as "plan norte") in November 1994. During the succeeding 6
months, the Government deployed increased numbers of army and police to
guard coffee transport routes and to protect farmers from extortion or
kidnaping. Local human rights groups reported very few cases of human
rights abuses by the security forces deployed in the plan, and producers
gave the army and police high marks for responsiveness to public
security needs.
On the night of January 6, 11 members of the Meza family criminal band--
a group with a well-documented history of extortion, arson, and murder--
as well as 2 other civilians associated with the Mezas and 2 army
enlisted men were killed under questionable circumstances near La
Maranosa, in the northern department of Jinotega. OAS/CIAV records
listed two of the deceased (including one of the soldiers) as
demobilized former RN members; up to three others may have also been
associated with the RN. The army contended that the 13 civilians, who
were being transported in an army vehicle to a disarmament site but who
had not yet been disarmed, attacked their military escorts, killing 2
soldiers, and were themselves killed in an ensuing firefight with
military personnel in a trailing vehicle. Although a police
investigation corroborated the army's version, local human rights
groups, OAS/CIAV, and the National Assembly's Human Rights Commission
issued reports to the contrary. They cited forensic evidence, the
volume of spent bullet cartridges and military supplies found in the
vicinity, and eyewitnesses who claimed that the civilians had already
been disarmed and that a squad of soldiers had deployed hours earlier at
the site of the incident. These organizations concluded that the army
had carried out a premeditated ambush, even a massacre. A civilian
judge absolved the army of wrongdoing (see Section 1.e.).
On July 14, police lieutenant Marvin Torres shot and killed Camilo
Sanchez while interrogating him in a police detention cell. Torres
claimed that he shot Sanchez in anger after the latter confessed to
sexually molesting a minor. With full police cooperation, the Attorney
General's office pressed charges against Torres. Despite initial
support for Torres from a public frustrated with the lack of successful
prosecutions in child abuse cases, no evidence of Sanchez's confession
existed except for Torres' testimony. The judge charged Torres with
murder and denied him bail. Torres' trial was still pending at year's
end.
On the night of September 24, off-duty army Major Ivan Gutierrez was at
a local amusement park with his family when some men made disparaging
remarks about his daughter. Gutierrez removed his family and returned
to kill Carlos Jose Salinas. According to eyewitnesses, Salinas was not
even involved in the incident. Gutierrez was charged on October 6 with
homicide and imprisoned pending trial which had not begun by year's end.
Many other incidents of political and extrajudicial killings dating as
far back as 1990 remained unresolved by year's end. In November 1991, a
special Presidential Commission charged with investigating the February
1991 assassination of former RN commander Enrique Bermudez was dissolved
after it claimed that there was a lack of evidence. The authorities
took no action to reopen the case in 1995.
On January 27, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights formally
accepted the case of 16-year-old Jean Paul Genie for review on the
charge of obstruction of justice. Genie was slain in October 1990 in an
incident involving the motorcade of then army commander General Humberto
Ortega. The Court rejected the Government's argument that it lacked
authority in the case due to the fact that Nicaragua had not yet
accepted the Court's jurisdiction at the time of the incident. On
December 9, the Court formally issued summonses for General Ortega,
current army commander General Joaquin Cuadra, and four other government
and army officials involved in the case to testify on September 6, 1996.
While those involved claimed that the Inter-American Court had no
jurisdiction in Nicaragua, the then vice Foreign Minister, Jose Pallais,
called on all Nicaraguans to cooperate with the Court and to honor
obligations to the international community, although he claimed that the
witnesses were called before the Court as private citizens. In June
1994, a military court had declared General Ortega and his bodyguards
innocent of the killing. The Genie family appealed this decision to the
Supreme Court, but by year's end the court had not ruled in the matter.
On July 14, the Attorney General's office petitioned the Supreme
Court to order the immediate arrest of former army Lieutenant Colonel
Frank Ibarra. Ibarra was sentenced in 1993 to 20 years'
imprisonment for the November 1992 murder of Dr. Arges Sequeira Mangas,
director of the Association of Nicaraguan Confiscated Property Owners.
A Leon appellate court upheld the sentence in March 1994. The Supreme
Court has not ruled on the Attorney General's petition nor on an appeal
filed by Ibarra's lawyer to overturn the appellate court ruling on the
grounds that a presidential amnesty covered Ibarra's crime. Ibarra has
remained at large since Sequeira's death.
b. Disappearance
While there were no reports of politically motivated disappearances in
1995, there was no progress in resolving the case of Mario Benjamin
Mendez. He was last seen being led by three soldiers and a policeman
into the mountains outside the northern town of Juigalpa on October 27,
1994. Mendez had been prominently involved in a local land dispute.
Witnesses to the incident, one of whom police threatened and severely
beat, identified the policeman and two of the soldiers. The army
subsequently reported that the two soldiers had deserted, and no action
was ever taken against the policeman.
c. Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or
Punishment
There were no confirmed reports of torture by the authorities during
1995. However, there were credible reports that police frequently beat
and otherwise physically mistreated detainees, often to obtain
confessions. Human rights groups attributed these abuses in part to the
prevailing state of impunity, as well as to a lack of training in
sophisticated investigative techniques that would enable the police to
avoid resorting to crude, often brutal methods. CENIDH and other
observers argued that the lack of adequate budget support for
professional training, salaries and benefits, and proper equipment and
supplies hampered efforts to improve police performance. In addition,
the physical remoteness of judicial centers prevents prisoners'
relatives from personally monitoring the status of ongoing cases, which
detracts from police responsiveness to the public.
The Office of Civil Inspection for Professional Responsibility of the
Ministry of Government also is responsible for monitoring allegations of
illegal detention and police abuse. Through October the office formally
received 194 complaints. However, the office concluded that only 33 of
these were human rights cases; these figures represent a decline from
the same period in 1994--341 and 47, respectively. Civil inspection
officials credit this drop in part to the public's willingness to
present complaints directly to the police. Because no internal
mechanism exists, the office is unable to verify if those suspected of
abuses are ever formally punished. According to the office, the
authorities did not punish any police official for any of the abuses
recorded. The unit's small budget and staff hamper the investigation of
complaints, and no internal mechanism exists to pressure the Ministry of
Government to take corrective action once the unit submits a complaint.
Members of the unit consider its location in the Ministry building--
which during the Sandinista era was the site of the feared Interior
Ministry--to be an intimidating factor for those seeking to lodge
complaints of police or prison abuse.
The prison system in Nicaragua remained overcrowded and underfunded,
with medical attention virtually nonexistent and malnutrition a constant
problem. According to government statistics, prisons had an inmate
population of 3,299, an average of 60 percent overcapacity, as of mid-
December. The prisons of Esteli, Chinandega, and Juigalpa housed more
than double their intended capacity. The 1995 prison budget was
actually less than the 1994 budget, although the inmate population
increased by 12 percent. Prison officials calculated that the daily
expenditure on prisoners fell from $3.67 per prisoner in 1992 to $3.06
in 1995. Press reports at the end of the year announced the deaths of
two inmates for lack of medical attention.
An estimated 10 percent of the prison population was between the ages of
15 and 18. A lack of separate juvenile detention centers required
youths to be housed in the same prisons as adults. Although prison
officials often tried to separate youths and adults in different wings
of the institution, crowded conditions generally made it impossible to
prevent juveniles' contact with older prisoners. While only Managua has
a separate prison for women, there have been no reports of problems
ensuing from mixed facilities.
Police station holding cells (where suspects can legally be detained for
48 hours before evidence must be presented to a judge) were equally
overcrowded. Officials claimed that suspects were often left in these
cells during their trials, as budgetary shortfalls often restricted the
use of scarce fuel for the frequent transfers from prison to distant
courtrooms. As a result of overcrowding in both the cells and in
prisons, police and penitentiary officials issued urgent calls for
increased budgets to build more facilities and increase food purchases.
Government officials claimed that their budget, already stretched thin,
could not meet these demands.
On September 18, university student Cardo Jiron was killed in cross fire
between police and a gang which was in the process of assaulting Jiron.
The criminals fled after initiating fire on the police. Police detained
and severely beat several students who were with Jiron, believing them
to be part of the gang even though they had no weapons. Three of the
police were charged in the case.
On December 13, a demonstration by university students and others
outside the National Assembly left 2 protesters dead, 66 demonstrators
wounded (10 by gunfire according to police officials), and 8 police
officers wounded. (That demonstration followed a December 12 incident
in which the students had "invaded" and temporarily shut down the
national airport and forcibly occupied two government ministries.)
Police officials denied issuing an order to open fire and claimed that
individual officers were forced to fire in self-defense when attacked by
demonstrators hurling rocks and firing homemade projectiles. Some human
rights groups contended that the demonstrators turned violent only after
the police fired tear gas and acted with excessive force against
peaceful demonstrators. The police were not adequately prepared to
control the violence, and on December 14, suspended 14 officers
suspected of being involved in the incident, pending further
investigation. A commission composed of the police, the civil
inspection unit, and the attorney general's office reported that the
demonstration had not been authorized, cited the students for initiating
the violence, accused some police officials of "unauthorized and
unnecessary use of firearms," and called for the outfitting of riot
police with nonlethal equipment. A trial of police officers suspected
of firing on the crowd is scheduled for the spring of 1996.
d. Arbitrary Arrest, Detention, or Exile
Arbitrary arrest and detention by the police were common. The Police
Functions Law requires police to obtain a warrant prior to detaining a
suspect and to notify family members within 24 hours of the detainee's
whereabouts. However, the police rarely comply with this law.
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 constitutional reforms instituted in July reduced from 72 to 48
hours the time police may legally hold a suspect before
they must bring him before a judge for initial sentencing. The judge
must either then order the accused released or transferred to prison.
Human rights groups complained that the police often held detainees
illegally beyond the 48-hour deadline, as they had when the 72-hour rule
was in effect, only to release them without formally charging them of
any crime.
In July police officials issued a public warning that delays in the
transfer of detainees from police station detention cells to prison were
creating dangerous levels of overcrowding of more than 30 percent beyond
the designed capacity of the detention cells. This was rapidly
depleting the annual food budget.
The Reform Law of Criminal Procedures provides for bail for certain
crimes. The Nicaraguan Association for Human Rights (ANPDH) recorded
171 complaints of illegal or arbitrary detention by the National Police,
out of 377 police-related complaints received through November. CENIDH
charged that 60 percent of all complaints it received from January to
August were filed against the police.
Local human rights groups conducted a series of human rights seminars
with members of the police, for both active officers at their regional
headquarters and new recruits as part of their initial training.
Exile is not practiced. There were no reports of political violence
against any citizens returning from self-imposed exile overseas as a
consequence of the civil war of the past decade.
e. Denial of Fair Public Trial
The judicial system comprises both civil and military courts. The 12-
member Supreme Court of Justice is the system's highest court and is
also responsible for nominating all appellate and lower court judges. A
political crisis from mid-1994 until the enactment of constitutional
reforms in July created internal political divisions within the court.
A frequent lack of a quorum of seven judges often prevented the issuance
of binding legal decisions. The reforms expanded the court's
composition from a maximum of 9 to 12 magistrates, extended their term
of office from 6 to 7 years, and mandated the court's division into
specialized chambers on administrative, criminal, and civil matters.
The reforms also permitted the National Assembly and the executive
branch to submit lists of candidates to fill court vacancies. The
National Assembly elected 1 new justice on May 3 and 5 additional
justices on July 21 to bring the court up to its new complement of 12.
In April the Supreme Court dismissed a local magistrate in Bluefields
for administrative incompetence after he authorized the provisional
release of several boat crewmen charged with transporting cocaine. In
contrast, Supreme Court officials maintained they had no authority to
intervene with a Sandinista judge in Managua who was alleged to have
failed to meet legal deadlines during 1995 for issuing an arrest warrant
against a former high-level Sandinista official who had repeatedly
refused to appear for questioning in the investigation of a May 1993
explosion of a terrorist arms cache in the Santa Rosa neighborhood of
Managua. The judge resigned on December 8. Human rights and legal
groups complained about the delay of justice caused by judicial
inaction, sometimes for years, as with the Jean Paul Genie case before
the Supreme Court (see Section 1.a.).
The 1994 Military Code allows the civilian court system to try members
of the military charged with common crimes, and by the end of November,
137 cases (10 involving the army and 127 involving the police) were
being processed by the civil system. As a result, a civilian judge in
Jinotega heard the "La Maranosa" case (see Section 1.a.) and on May 24
dismissed all charges against 21 army officials involved in the
incident. Local human rights groups decried the Attorney General's
report to the court for failing to take fully into account the reports
on the incident by the human rights groups and the National Assembly's
Human Rights Commission. They also criticized the judge's failure to
summon eyewitnesses and family members to testify or to consider
forensic evidence relevant to the case. Some observers alleged that the
army had pressured the judge directly to obtain acquittals in the case
and reported that relatives of the Meza family did not appeal the local
judge's verdict for fear of army reprisals. The army denied interfering
in the judicial process.
In all criminal cases, the accused has the right to legal counsel, and
defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty. The presiding
judge appoints attorneys from a standard list to represent indigent
defendants, but because they are not paid by the State, many attorneys
pay the $1.50 fine rather than represent a client without receiving any
compensation. This contributed greatly to the slow pace of justice, as
many prisoners spent more than a year in jail without a trial. The
Permanent Commission for Human Rights (CPDH) has estimated that nearly
half of all those incarcerated in the prison system have 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 provides 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. The Government respects these rights in practice,
and there were no credible reports of official interference with the
right of privacy.
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 respects these rights in practice. The privately owned
print media, the broadcast media, and academic circles freely and openly
discussed diverse viewpoints in public discourse with no interference
from the Government.
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 receive a wide variety of political viewpoints, especially on
Managua's 45 radio stations. There are five television stations, three
of which carry news programming with partisan political content. There
is no official state censorship, nor is self-censorship practiced.
On the night of July 21, in the context of an apparent campaign of
harassment of Catholic Church-linked institutions by unidentified
parties (see Section 2.c.), vandals broke into the Church's official
radio station, Radio Catolica, and stole transmission equipment that
prevented the station from broadcasting for several hours until the
parts were replaced. Station officials described the break-in as a
"warning" carried out by professional criminals.
Freedom of the press is potentially qualified, however, by several
constitutional provisions. The Constitution stipulates that Nicaraguans
have the right to "accurate information," thereby providing an exception
by which the freedom to publish information that 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 the potential for
sanctions against irresponsibility by the press. The Legislature did
not modify these provisions in the constitutional reforms, but neither
did the Government invoke these provisions to suppress the media.
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." The law
requires demonstrators to obtain permission for a rally or march by
registering its planned size and location with police. The authorities
routinely granted 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 to conduct private fund
raising or receive public financial support until they receive this
authorization from the National Assembly, which it routinely confers.
Some human rights and political groups criticized the Assembly for
extending legal recognition in January to the pro-FSLN Revolutionary
Front of Workers and Peasants (FROC), which in July 1993 had attacked
the town of Esteli robbing five local banks and killing and wounding
scores of citizens. Supporters of the FROC argued that a 1993
government amnesty had cleared its record and pointed to the Assembly's
April 1994 legal recognition of the 380-Northern Front, a group of
formally disarmed Recontras which likewise had been amnestied, as a
precedent.
c. Freedom of Religion
The Constitution provides for freedom of religion, and the Government
respects this right in practice.
On May 3, the Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a public statement
criticizing the impasse between the executive and legislative branches
on the pending constitutional reforms. On the night of May 8, a small
bomb exploded outside the Church of San Felipe in Leon. Similar small
nighttime explosions occurred at Catholic churches and offices,
principally in Managua, Leon, and Masaya, during subsequent months in
what appeared to be a campaign by anonymous individuals or groups to
intimidate the Church. Cardinal Miguel Obando y Bravo and other church
officials also received numerous telephone threats during the year;
Church spokesmen attributed the explosions and threats to an organized
effort by anti-Church elements to prevent the planned February 1996
visit of Pope John Paul II. In early August, the police arrested three
persons, including an army lieutenant, in connection with supplying the
bombers with explosives, but the attacks continued. On August 29, a
military court convicted Lieutenant Alberto Elvir Quiroz and sentenced
him to 6 years' imprisonment for misappropriation of military property.
A civilian court later convicted him and a former soldier of terrorism
and theft. Despite these convictions, the small bombings continued
through the end of the year.
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. The law requires
citizens to obtain an exit visa to leave the country, but immigration
authorities routinely granted these. However, the law also allows a
judge to order immigration officials to deny exit visas to those
involved in court cases if there is reasonable suspicion that the
accused will abscond. Judicial experts agree that the spirit of this
law was violated when the publisher of the daily newspaper La Tribuna
was denied an exit visa in October after his paper published excerpts
from a public report by the Comptroller General's office alleging
corruption in the property registrar's office. On November 6, a court
of appeals overturned the decision.
There are no government restrictions on movement within the country.
The right of citizens to return to Nicaragua is not established in the
Constitution, but, in practice, the Government has not restricted
anyone's return. The Constitution provides for asylum, and political
refugees cannot be expelled to the country persecuting them.
In 1993 the Government attempted to strip former Red Brigade terrorist,
Alessio Cassimirri, of his Nicaraguan 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 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 national elections of February 1990, the first election under the
1987 Constitution. The 14-party National Opposition Union (UNO)
coalition, the FSLN, and several smaller independent parties contested
the election which international observers declared free and fair.
The 1987 Constitution centers political power in the executive branch,
headed by the 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. The Vice
President has no constitutionally mandated duties or powers. Both are
elected by direct popular vote. The constitutional reforms enacted in
July reduced the terms of office of the President and Vice President
from 6 to 5 years and prohibited the President's reelection, beginning
with the next national elections in the fall of 1996. Also prohibited
from running for election as President are all relatives, by blood or
marriage, of the incumbent president, an issue which President
Chamorro's son-in-law (who was Minister of the Presidency until his
resignation on September 7) publicly questioned as a violation of his
political rights. In addition, a group of ministers and vice ministers
challenged the constitutionality of the new provision requiring them to
resign their posts 1 year prior to running for high elective office in
1996. As of year's end, the court had not ruled on these issues.
A single-chamber National Assembly of 92 members exercises legislative
power. Its current members, elected concurrently with the President and
Vice President in 1990, also serve 6-year terms. Deputies elected in
1996 will serve 5-year terms. The constitutional reforms also
stipulated that 20 deputies will be elected in 1996 by proportional
representation from national lists and 70 from lists presented in each
of the nine departments or regions; defeated presidential candidates, of
which there currently are two, also receive seats in the assembly,
provided that they won a certain minimum percentage of votes in the
previous presidential election.
On July 4, the President accepted 65 amendments to the 202-article
Constitution of 1987, which had been passed by the National Assembly,
ending a 9-month dispute between the executive and legislative branches.
Moderate Sandinista deputies, who had broken away from the FSLN, joined
with other parties to form the required 60 percent majority to pass
these reforms. This gave the legislative branch many new powers that
traditionally had belonged exclusively to the executive branch,
including powers over budget and taxation, ratification of international
financial instruments signed by the Government, and the right to
nominate members of the Supreme Court and Supreme Electoral Tribunal,
the Comptroller General, the Attorney General, and the Superintendent of
Banks.
The Assembly had sought unsuccessfully to enact and implement these
reforms unilaterally in February after the President refused to do so.
After the Supreme Court voided the Assembly action in April, political
negotiations between the two branches, overseen by a support group of
five friendly governments (Canada, Mexico, Netherlands, Spain, and
Sweden) were held but produced no results. Eventually, Cardinal Obando
y Bravo served as a guarantor in talks that produced an agreement called
the Framework Law or "Ley Marco," which led to President Chamorro's
promulgation of the reforms.
The Supreme Electoral Council, an independent and coequal branch of
Government composed of five magistrates, administers elections. All
elections are by secret ballot; all citizens age 16 and over have the
right to vote. The 1994 Military Code specifies that the Defense
Intelligence Directorate (DID) is specifically prohibited from
undertaking "political intelligence activities." Despite this
prohibition, proconstitutional reform legislators denounced army colonel
and former DID Director Lenin Cerna for using military intelligence
operatives to try to influence--in part through intimidation of key
deputies--the outcome of elections to the National Assembly's governing
board in January. The army denied these accusations; the authorities
failed to undertake any official investigation.
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 a woman was elected in
October as the new Vice President after the incumbent resigned to run
for president in 1996. Women also hold ministerial and vice ministerial
level posts, other senior positions in government, and legislative seats
in the National Assembly. Two members of the National Assembly are
Miskito Indians; 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
Human rights groups operated without government interference, with rare
exceptions. Major organizations included the Nicaraguan Center for
Human Rights, the Permanent Commission for Human Rights (CPDH), the
Nicaraguan Association for Human Rights, the Episcopal Center for
Development, and Cardinal
Miguel Obando y Bravo's Verification Commission. The OAS's
International Support and Verification Commission, which was first
installed in Nicaragua in 1990 to oversee the repatriation, disarmament,
resettlement, and protection of human rights of the members of the
Nicaraguan Resistance, continued its mission. In June 1993, the OAS
General Assembly expanded the mandate of OAS/CIAV to monitor the human
rights of and provide assistance to all those affected by the Nicaraguan
civil war, regardless of political orientation. On June 9, the
Government extended the OAS/CIAV mandate through June 1996.
Army and police officials rarely took action to respond to human rights
groups' accusations of abuses by military or police personnel. The
Government took no further action regarding the unsolved March 1993
murder of CENIDH activist Leonel Gonzalez despite repeated CENIDH
requests to reopen the case.
In May OAS/CIAV formally complained to the Government after a military
jeep fired on one of its vehicles three times. The army claimed that
the soldiers were firing at "wild animals" and not at the vehicle. The
Government called the actions "irresponsible" and said that the army
would discipline those involved in the incident. There has been no
information as to whether any such discipline was imposed.
In June CENIDH filed a complaint with the Inter-American Court of Human
Rights against the Government after police injured several CENIDH
officials during police attempts to break up a demonstration of striking
workers outside a Managua match factory.
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. Recognizing a lack of police training in human rights (see
Section 1.c.), ANPDH, CENIDH, and CPDH conducted numerous human rights
workshops both at the police training academy and at various police
headquarters throughout the country. OAS/CIAV began implementing an
indigenous human rights network among isolated rural northern
communities.
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. In
practice, however, the Government makes little or no effort to combat
discrimination. Few, if any, discrimination suits or formal complaints
were filed with government officials.
Women
The police created four "women's commissariats"--two in Managua, one in
Esteli, and one in Masaya--in response to a growing body of evidence of
domestic abuse directed against women. The centers are annexed to local
police stations and staffed by female police officers. They provide
both social and legal help to women and mediate spousal conflicts.
Despite this effort, however, local human rights groups reported that
while police sometimes intervened to prevent injury in cases of domestic
violence, they rarely charged perpetrators because they considered
domestic violence a "private" crime for which the victim, not the State,
must press charges. A victim wishing to prosecute must first have an
injury examined and registered by a forensic doctor; women's groups
criticized the scarcity and inaccessibility of female forensic doctors.
Most domestic violence cases thus went unreported because of the
difficulty of prosecution and the victims' fears of spousal reprisal.
Those cases that actually reached the court usually resulted in a not
guilty verdict due to judicial inexperience with, and lack of legal
training related to, such violence.
While there is no legal discrimination against women, they continued to
suffer discrimination in the male-dominated culture prevalent in much of
society. Women are underrepresented in management positions in the
private sector, and they constitute the majority of workers in the
traditionally low-paid education, textile, and health service sectors.
According to government statistics, women have equal or somewhat better
access to education than men. Net enrollment for girls in the primary
grades is 79 percent, compared to 76 percent for boys. At the secondary
level, 33 percent of girls and 26 percent of boys are still enrolled.
Children
Children 15 years and younger make up 46 percent of Nicaragua's
population. The Government expresses its commitment to children's human
rights and welfare publicly but does not commit adequate funding levels
for children's programs. The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF)
estimates 6,000 children have been abandoned by their families, some
2,000 live in orphanages, and approximately 1,800 are in foster homes.
Every year the media carry stories of dozens of parents who abandoned or
killed their children because they were too poor or otherwise unable to
take care of them. Because of the economic situation of many families,
it is common for children to be found working in the fields alongside
their parents, and UNICEF estimates some 20,000 work in the streets as
vendors or beggars.
People With Disabilities
The Government has not legislated or otherwise mandated accessibility
for the disabled.
Indigenous People
Comprising about 6 percent of the country's population, the indigenous
people live primarily in the northern autonomous region (RAAN) and
southern autonomous region (RAAS), created in 1987 out of the former
Department of Zelaya, which border the Caribbean Sea and comprise 47
percent of the national territory. The Government reported in May that
four major identifiable tribes are the Miskito (numbering 140,000), the
Sumu (15,000), the Garifona (1,500), and the Rama (1,000).
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 and one deputy in the National Assembly.
Indigenous people participate in government at both the local and
national levels. The 1987 Autonomy Law requires the Government to
consult the indigenous regarding the exploitation of their areas'
resources. The central Government often made decisions without adequate
departmental or community consultation. As in previous years, some
indigenous groups complained that central Government authorities
excluded the indigenous people of the Atlantic coast from meaningful
participation in decisions affecting their lands, cultures, traditions,
and the allocation of natural resources. Critics of government policy
cited official statistics that unemployment approached 70 percent in the
RAAS and was nearly 90 percent in the RAAN, far above national averages.
National/Racial/Ethnic Minorities
Most Nicaraguans are of mixed background, and ethnicity is not a barrier
to political or economic success. However, various indigenous groups
from both the RAAN and the RAAS sometimes linked the Government's
failure to expend resources in support of the Atlantic coast population
to the largely ethnic, racial, and religious (principally members of the
Moravian church) minorities that predominate in that region.
Section 6 Worker Rights
a. The Right of Association
The Constitution provides for 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 and be granted legal
status before they may engage in collective bargaining. Some labor
groups reported occasional delays in obtaining this status and claimed
that, in some cases, the Labor Ministry deliberately interfered with the
already lengthy bureaucratic process to make it still longer. Nearly
half of the formal sector 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 vote of all the workers in an enterprise
to call a strike. It also restricts strikes in rural occupations where
production 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. Unions generally
regard these lengthy procedures as too expensive and time consuming and
frequently ignore them when initiating a strike, a practice which
continued in 1995, resulting in a majority of strikes being declared
illegal. The Labor Code prohibits retribution against strikers and
union leaders for legal strikes. However, this protection may be
withdrawn in the case of an illegal strike.
Both a brief strike by electrical workers in January and a 7 week
teachers' strike in the spring ended peacefully and with minimal
violence. However, on May 17 a demonstration organized by the violence-
prone Sandinista Transport Cooperative "Parrales Vallejos" resulted in a
clash with police that left two demonstrators and one police officer
dead. CENIDH officials and the pro-Sandinista media claimed that the
officer died as a result of "friendly fire," but an investigation by the
Ministry of Government's civil inspection unit agreed with the
Government's account that gunfire originating from the striking union's
compound killed the officer and that the two demonstrators were killed
when police returned fire.
On January 18, President Chamorro partially vetoed a reform of the
country's 50-year old Labor Code which the National Assembly had passed
in late 1994. Because it was otherwise occupied with the constitutional
reform debate and other priority legislative matters, the National
Assembly had not taken action on the veto by year's end and agreed to
work out differences with the executive as part of the constitutional
reforms compromise reached in June.
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 generally sought to foster resolution of pressing
labor conflicts, usually in the public sector, through informal
negotiations rather than through formal administrative or judicial
processes. Despite unfavorable economic conditions and unfamiliarity
with the practice during a decade of central government planning and
political direction under the Sandinistas, collective bargaining is
becoming more common in the private sector.
Seventeen firms, employing some 7,000 workers, operated in the single
export processing zone (EPZ); a second zone is in the process of
opening. In June the Minister of Labor reminded employers in the zone
that while they receive tax concessions, the law does not exempt them
from compliance with any of its labor provisions. Managua-based
representatives of the American Institute for Free Labor Development
(AIFLD) contend that the Labor Ministry has thus far failed to enforce
its call for compliance with the Labor Code. Of the 17 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 other firms. Local labor leaders told the AIFLD
representative that employers threatened workers with dismissal if they
join a union. EPZ officials maintained that no union has received
sufficient support from the workers to allow one to form and that the
workers receive better wages and benefits than the average worker.
c. Prohibition of Forced or Compulsory Labor
The Constitution prohibits forced or compulsory labor, and there is no
evidence that it is practiced.
d. Minimum Age for Employment of Children
The Constitution prohibits child labor that can affect normal childhood
development or interfere with the obligatory school year. The current
Labor Code allows children between the ages of 12 to 16 to work but only
with parental permission. The law limits the work day for such children
to 6 hours and prohibits night work. Children under age 14 are
prohibited from working in factories but can be used in agricultural
work if the work does not interfere with their schooling. While the law
requires school attendance through the sixth grade, it is not enforced.
Moreover, because of the economic needs of many families and little
government initiative, child labor rules were rarely enforced except in
the small, modern sector of the economy.
A recent UNICEF study, citing 1993 statistics, estimated that some
108,000 children under the age of 15 are involved in some sort of labor
in the formal and informal sectors of the economy. The same report
estimated that 72,000 children under the age of 15 help with planting
and harvesting crops. Children age 10 or older often worked for less
than $1.00 per day on the same banana plantations and coffee plantations
as their parents. Many small children work in the busy streets of
Managua hawking merchandise, cleaning automobile windows, or begging.
e. Acceptable Conditions of Work
Over the objections of the trade union representatives, a commission
made up of representatives from the Government, labor, and the private
sector set sectoral minimum wages in mid-1991. The labor groups argued
that the monthly minimum wage rates were inadequate given the high cost
of living. Adjusted periodically, the minimum wage in November ranged
from $30 (236.70 cordobas) in the agricultural sector, through $39
(307.71 cordobas) for central government employees, to $65 (512.85
cordobas) in the banking sector. 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 paid their workers less, particularly in the agricultural
sector. However, recent Ministry of Labor surveys indicate that some 86
percent of urban area workers earned more than the minimum wage.
The Constitution provides for 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 weekly.
The Ministry of Labor's Office of Hygiene and Occupational Security is
responsible for verifying compliance with health and safety standards.
The office lacks adequate staff to enforce these extensive standards.
Workers have no specific right to remove themselves from dangerous work
situations without jeopardy to continued employment.
In 1995 the International Labor Organization's Committee of Experts
(COE) cited Nicaragua for its failure to enact changes in the Labor Code
that would grant workers in small agricultural enterprises equal rights
to workers' compensation as those granted to other wage-earners. The
COE also noted that the Government had taken no steps to ban night work
by women. However, the COE did note that women's organizations and
female deputies in the National Assembly disagreed with any attempts to
restrict female integration into the work force and called for
legislation that would regulate maternity protection instead.
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