by Michael K. Lavers
A well-known LGBTQ activist in Nicaragua who was arrested last September says he was tortured while in custody. Ulises Rivas on Monday said members of Nicaragua’s National Police on Sept. 1, 2019, arrived at his niece’s volleyball game in Comalapa and arrested him because “they had an arrest warrant.”
A source with whom the Washington Blade spoke after Rivas’ arrest said he had been accused of robbing a woman. Rivas sent the Blade a screenshot of a message posted to a pro-government Facebook group that said he has also been accused of “inciting violence, destabilizing the peace” of his neighborhood and “hiding under the false flag of protectors of the environment.”
Rivas spoke with the Blade less than two weeks after the Nicaraguan government released him and 90 other political prisoners from prison.
Rivas noted Waldemar Sommertag, the papal nuncio in Nicaragua, and the International Committee of the Red Cross played a role in the prisoners’ release, along with pressure from the international community. Rivas said his neighbors continue to protect him, even though he remains under house arrest and government surveillance.
Hundreds of people have been killed in Nicaragua since protests against the government of President Daniel Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, began in April 2018 in response to proposed cuts to the country’s social security benefits and the response to a wildfire at the Indio Maíz Biological Reserve on Nicaragua’s Caribbean coast. Read more via Washington Blade