Hundreds of Nicaraguans live under constant watch, ordered to report daily to their local police stations, send photos proving their whereabouts, and ask permission every time they leave their homes.
HAVANA TIMES – “Maribel” felt anxiety flooding her when she saw the police patrol cars pull up at her home. It was 6 pm on Wednesday, May 3, 2023. Without explanation, they ordered her to open the door and began to “turn everything upside down,” searching high and low. They opened drawers, rifled through the clothing, moved the furniture around, and seized all the electronic devices they found.
“They didn’t hand me any kind of search warrant, nor did they tell me what they were looking for,” she states. When the police had finished searching her home, Maribel thought they were going to take her to jail for having participated in the 2018 civic protests against the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo. Instead, they took her to a court in Managua, where she joined other patrols carrying people who’d been detained in different parts of Nicaragua.
After several hours in the Courthouse, Maribel’s fear began to grow. Finally, they brought her to a hearings chamber, where a judge accused her of four crimes: “spreading fake news, undermining the national sovereignty, organized crime, and terrorism.” To her surprise, they then assigned her “conditional liberty,” a term the dictatorship uses for a system of “de facto house arrest.” Those so assigned are allowed to stay in their own homes, with the stipulation that they sign in every day at their city’s main police station.
The crime of this woman from northern Nicaragua was to have participated in the protests of the April [2018] Rebellion. “I’d already stopped protesting, because you can’t in the country, but I continued sharing posts against the dictatorship on social media. I stopped doing that too, when they imprisoned Monsignor [Rolando] Alvarez,” she explains.
Hundreds under this system of de facto house arrest
In a police operation that lasted 12 hours, according to stories of affected citizens that Confidencial was able to compile, some 190 people from 13 of Nicaragua’s departments were put through this system and ordered to sign in daily at their police stations.
In general, the procedure for signing in is similar in all the police delegations – those on “conditional liberty” sign a Book of Records, have their picture taken, and leave.
On May 13, 2023, another police raid was carried out during the night, adding another 80 citizens to the list of those under de facto house arrest, all with the same obligation to sign in daily at their city’s police station.
Similar operations were documented in April 2024 in the North and South Autonomous Regions of the Caribbean Coast; and again in July 2024, in the Pacific departments of Managua, Masaya, Carazo, and Leon. On these occasions, those detained weren’t even put before a judge. Instead, it was simply the Police that imposed the order to sign in daily.
As of the present, there’s an undercount of Nicaraguans being subjected to the system of de facto house arrest implied by an order to report daily, without having been formally accused or tried. Organizations that monitor the situation in the departments outside the capital estimate that there are currently between 200 and 260 Nicaraguans ordered to sign in daily at the police stations in different parts of Nicaragua.
This is effectively a new repressive measure in a country that, since 2018, has been living under a police state. The citizens it affects must not only report to the police daily, but they must also send photos when ordered to; ask permission to leave their homes, municipalities, or departments; and remain under surveillance by plain-clothes police or Ortega sympathizers.
Told they’re “under investigation”
In these recent operations, the obligation to report daily to the National Police began with visits from officers who identified themselves as members of police intelligence. Then, the citizens were notified that they are “under investigation” and that, for the duration of the inquiry, they must report daily to the nearest police station.
In the electronic system of the Judicial Power, the accusation against Maribel and all those arrested in the first raid was available for a few days but later disappeared. “Many continue to sign in, even though there is no accusation, and the vast majority fled the country,” the citizen reports.
The judge’s order for Maribel indicated that she had to appear at ten in the morning, but when she arrived the next day at the station, they told her she had to do so at six in the morning. “It doesn’t matter if it’s a holiday, if it’s raining, if it’s the weekend, or if you’re sick,” she points out.
In February 2024, they also informed her that if she wanted to leave her apartment, she had to give three days’ notice. “I did it for medical reasons, but it’s difficult to notify them every time you want to move,” she says.
The first time Maribel left her apartment, the police never responded to her, even when she arrived to sign in at the station on the same day as her medical appointment. “I took a risk and left because it takes three months to reschedule those appointments,” she says.
Although she knows many people have left, in her case, she is afraid to leave her family behind. “I have someone sick, who depends on me, and in another country, I don’t know if they will be able to receive care,” she laments.
One day, when she couldn’t go to the station because she was in the hospital, she says the police came there to take pictures of her and have her sign. “I could see in their faces that they felt compassion for me,” she explains.
“We’re political prisoners, but we don’t count”
The same day and hour that Maribel was detained, “Rodolfo” – yet another citizen who had actively participated in the 2018 protests against the regime – was being taken to Managua from the southern part of the country. He received the same orders.
He describes his current situation as “exhausting,” because he’s constantly under threat that if he fails to come in and sign, they’ll take him to the feared El Chipote jail.
“I know people who’ve been hospitalized, and they come right there to make them sign; also some who couldn’t come one day, so the Police came to look for them and warn them that the next time they’d be prisoners,” he notes.
Rodolfo lives relatively near the police station