Stateless Nicaraguans seek help from the United States and Spain in reuniting families

Tegucigalpa, March 9 (EFE). – Political prisoners and Nicaraguans who have been denied citizenship by their country’s authorities have urged the United States, Spain and other countries that granted them citizenship to help them obtain family reunification.

“We urge the government of the United States and other sister countries that have offered us their citizenship to take actions that will lead to our immediate reunification with our families,” the group of Nicaraguans said in a statement.

Nicaragua has revoked the citizenship of 317 Nicaraguans, including writers Sergio Ramirez and Gioconda Bailey, Archbishops Rolando Alvarez and Silvio Páez, former leader of the revolution Luis Carrion, and legendary ex-fighter Dora María Telles, a veteran human rights advocate. Vilma Núñez, journalist Carlos Fernando Chamorro, among others, are highly critical of Daniel Ortega’s government.

In their letter, the stateless Nicaraguans affirmed that “the regime continues to intimidate, threaten and harass our loved ones, including our minor children, and those with disabilities or other conditions of vulnerability, by preventing them from obtaining the official documents necessary to obtain valid passports to leave Nicaragua legally” .

They ask them to agree to the legal mechanisms

Therefore, they “respectfully request the executive and legislative branches of the United States to consider approving legal mechanisms so that the 222 passengers on the flight to freedom, as well as the 94 siblings who were subsequently unlawfully deprived of their Nicaraguan citizenship, can obtain refugee status or asylum seekers urgently.”

In this way, they added, they would be able to receive “the necessary assistance from the corresponding federal agencies, achieve rapid social and labor integration in this great nation, and obtain physical and emotional health services to overcome the trauma and consequences thereof.” The physical and psychological torture to which the dictatorship agents were subjected.

In the document, they also thanked “all the brotherly countries that adhered to the continuous demand for the release of all political detainees and prisoners.”

“And in particular to the peoples and Governments of Spain, Chile, Argentina, Colombia, Mexico, Panama, Honduras and Brazil, who have offered us the possibility of obtaining their nationality and/or asylum, prior to their dispossession, as well as the immigration facilities declared by Ecuador and Costa Rica.”

The Nicaraguans who were stripped of their citizenship issued the statement a month after the release of 222 political prisoners expelled from their country, including prominent Nicaraguan opposition figures, who were flown to Washington on a plane chartered by the US government.

They ask for Bishop Alvarez’s release

Bishop Rolando Álvarez, who is highly critical of the Sandinista government, refuses to board the plane and is exiled, and a day later he is sentenced to 26 years and 4 months in prison after being found guilty of crimes considered “treason to the homeland”. He was deprived of his nationality and transferred from house arrest to Modelo Prison.

The Nicaraguan authorities also revoked their citizenship, on February 15, to 94 Nicaraguans.

In the statement, they also denounced “the persecution of the Catholic Church, as well as other Christian denominations in Nicaragua, by a regime that continues to imprison and exile pastors, chaplains, religious and committed laity who have raised their prophetic voices.”

In particular, they demanded “the immediate and unconditional release of 37 political prisoners still kidnapped in the Irgastolas dictatorship, in particular the Bishop of Matagalpa, Monsignor Rolando José Álvarez Lagos, Monsignor Leonardo Urbina Rodriguez, and Priest Manuel Salvador García”

They also urged “the international community to continue to apply the necessary pressure for their release and the restoration of democracy, gradually taken from the Nicaraguan people during more than 40 years of bad Sandinista rule.”