PRESS RELEASE : UK Statement on Nicaragua [April 2023]
The press release issued by the Foreign Office on 19 April 2023.
On the fifth anniversary of the April 2018 pro-democracy protests in Nicaragua, the UK calls upon the Nicaraguan Government to reinstate democracy, re-establish the rule of law, and restore respect for human rights.
In the five years since the protests, the Nicaraguan Government has continued to disregard its national and international commitments to respect and uphold human rights and fundamental democratic and civic freedoms. Thousands of civil society organisations have been outlawed, independent media operators have been silenced, and hundreds of representatives of civil society, pro-democracy activists, journalists, and opposition officials and politicians have been imprisoned, stripped of their citizenship and had their assets seized.
The UK shares deep international concern at the situation in Nicaragua. We call on President Ortega and the Nicaraguan Government to restore full respect for the human rights of all Nicaraguans and allow international human rights bodies including the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to return to Nicaragua to carry out their legitimate mandates. We continue to call for the immediate and unconditional release of all political prisoners, and for those Nicaraguans who have been deprived of their nationality to have it restored, and for all those people who have been wrongfully stripped of their assets to have them returned.
