The Nicaraguan Democratic Concertation (CDN), regrets the serious situation faced by the inhabitants of the indigenous and Afro-descendant communities of the Autonomous Regions of the Caribbean Coast, where the invasion of settlers is growing daily, dispossessing them of their lands and even provoking massacres as they use weapons of war.
We are especially concerned about the destruction of the Bosawas biological reserve and its surroundings, since, as local leaders have denounced, if the current rate of destruction continues, the Mayangna and Misquito nation will disappear in less than two decades.
The situation is so serious that a few days ago, during the 55th session of the United Nations Human Rights Council, the Group of Experts on Human Rights in Nicaragua (GHREN), presented a report in which it concludes that since 2018, the Ortega Murillo regime with support from officials in the area and partisan sympathizers, has “committed violations and abuses of the collective rights of indigenous peoples and Afro-descendant communities”, from the Northern and Southern regions of the Caribbean Coast.
According to the GHREN report, these violations include the right to self-determination, autonomy, self-government, free, prior and informed consent, the right to participation, and violations and abuses of the right to their lands and resources.
Although GHREN confirms that as of 2018 these violations increased systematically, they date back to 2014 when the dispossession of lands by settlers began with the support of political operators that the Ortega Murillo regime maintains in the regional governments. Indigenous leaders and eight forest rangers that the regime keeps imprisoned, have denounced that armed groups in complicity with the Police and the Army, have forced entire communities to abandon their
their territories.
The CRC calls for the support of governments and human rights and environmental organizations to force the Ortega Murillo regime to cease violence against indigenous and Afro-descendant populations and to halt the deterioration of the Bosawas biological reserve, considered the lungs of Central America.