Nicaraguan opponents persecuted in exile: Costa Rica is no longer a quiet refuge

A couple was attacked by gunfire one midday in January in a university area in central Costa Rica and many thought it was just another scene of hitmen and drug trafficking criminals, but other doubts soon began to arise.

The victims were a well-known Nicaraguan opposition member named Joao Maldonado and his wife, two years and four months after a first armed attack against the activist on Costa Rican soil, where he took refuge after the repression following the 2018 social outbreak in Nicaragua, as well as Tens of thousands of Nicaraguans did it.

The attack against Maldonado gave reason to suspect political reasons such as those he had mentioned in an interview in September, when he assured the local newspaper

La Nación

that Ortega groups operate in Costa Rica to “hunt” opponents, a complaint that coincided with information that in the past senior officials of the Intelligence and Security Directorate (DIS) had admitted.

One day after the attack, the Government of Rodrigo Chaves denied that it had any signs of cells organized or hired by the Ortega regime, but doubts remained in the air and two months later, with Maldonado and his partner already out of the hospital, there is no any explanation from local authorities about that attack.

The apparent attempt to kill the couple motivated a majority of Costa Rican deputies to condemn the attack and the scant explanations on the part of the Government;

Only the eight pro-government legislators opposed it.

“This does nothing more than cast a series of doubts on the government's efforts to protect Nicaraguan refugees in our country,” said the motion approved in the Legislative Assembly of the country that for decades has housed the Nicaraguan population and that most critical activists de Ortega received after the 2018 crisis.

Since that year, Costa Rica has received more than 200,000 refugee requests from Nicaraguans, who are part of almost half a million people from that country who live in the Central American country (around 10% of the total population), according to calculations that include nationalized residents without documentation.

However, in 2023, refugee requests decreased to 28,500, 35% of what was registered in 2022. Only 2,660 requests were resolved in the year (one in four was rejected), while some 172,000 applicants are still waiting for a response.

“Two relatives were going to come to Costa Rica in December, but I told them that it is no longer the same and that one is not safe here either,” said Uriel Martínez, a farmer who participated in the protests in Nicaragua and now works for hours on a coffee farm in Costa Rica.

The numbers are not encouraging for the community that in the past was received with open arms while hearing harsh criticism of the Ortega government from San José.

Now the climate is different, as opposition legislators mentioned when recalling words from Rodrigo Chaves in which, unlike previous Costa Rican governments, he acknowledged having “an extremely cordial and constructive relationship” with Ortega, as he told the Efe agency in December. .

Months ago he had answered a CNN journalist that he preferred not to use the word “dictatorship” to refer to the neighboring government, since he replied that it was not his place to qualify it.

The risk of extradition

This speech by Chaves adds to the climate of insecurity and uncertainty perceived by leaders of the Nicaraguan opposition community in Costa Rica.

Since the Costa Rican president toughened the requirements for granting refuge in 2022 and disqualified the political motives for the majority of them by calling them “economic migrants,” human rights organizations raised the alarm, but concern has not stopped growing and 2024 has arrived. There are new elements: the scope of Nicaraguan court orders and the risk of extraditions.

This is the possibility that Costa Rican judicial authorities respond to the requests of Nicaraguan prosecutors or judges as if the Judiciary in that country were not under the orders of the Executive governed in an authoritarian manner by Daniel Ortega and his wife Rosario Murillo.

It already happened in mid-February with an opposition leader who had been denied refuge or political asylum by the immigration authorities of San José, which facilitated the surrender after learning of the international alert activated by Managua, according to human rights organizations.

There is also another case of a man named Reinaldo Picado, who was a councilor for an opposition party in the municipality of Caribe, whose asylum request was rejected in August by the Foreign Ministry without explaining reasons.

He also has a refugee request pending, but weeks go by and he does not receive a favorable response, while an extradition request remains active.

The organizations also highlight the case of Gabriel Leonidas Putoy, an indigenous professor who was a political prisoner in Nicaragua and managed to flee to Costa Rica, but has just lost his job because his bank accounts were closed due to court orders issued in his country "by the crime of obstruction of functions to the detriment of the State,” according to the newspaper

La Prensa

, which operates based in San José for the Nicaraguan public.

Despite the judicial nature of these arrest warrants, the leaders from exile see Ortega's hand there, since in Nicaragua there is a centralization of all the powers of the State around the president and vice president Murillo, with "total control" over the system judicial, as indicated in a report presented in February by the Group of Human Rights Experts on Nicaragua, attached to the United Nations, in which it warns about the persistence of crimes against humanity.

In Costa Rica, the local Security Minister, Mario Zamora, told EL PAÍS that part of his Government "immigration policy has not changed at all", that all decisions about shelters obey technical criteria and extraditions are the responsibility of the Power. Judicial.

The refugee rules had been modified by Rodrigo Chaves decree at the end of 2022 with the intention of “bringing order” and stopping what he considered to be “abuses” of protection seekers, as he pointed out that many are actually “economic migrants” and are not politically persecuted.

Later, the Constitutional Chamber ordered to annul part of the decree for violating the Magna Carta and international conventions, but a year has passed and there is still no certainty about the current rules.

The atmosphere is, to say the least, uncertain.

“The possibility of extradition represents an enormous danger because we know what happens in the prisons there.

The Costa Rican authorities act almost in complicity with the Nicaraguan authorities,” Ana Quirós, an activist with the Unidad Azul y Blanco organization, told EL PAÍS.

She was imprisoned before migrating to Costa Rica in November 2018. She has Costa Rican nationality, which allowed her not to have been left stateless when in February 2023 the Ortega Government withdrew the nationality of her and more than 300 opponents.

“Change in open arms policy”

“In this Government in Costa Rica there is a change in the policy of open arms that had always been maintained,” adds the activist in harmony with Luciano García, a refugee in Costa Rica and director of the NGO Hagamos Democracia, illegalized in Nicaragua.

“We feel that little by little we are becoming exposed,” warns the leader in reference to the risk of being deported.

It points to the threat of living in marginality due to lack of regularization with current migratory methods and even of being affected by violence for political reasons as could have happened with Joao Maldonado, although some sectors of the community still avoid drawing conclusions about that attack. .

“We don't know the truth nor is there anything proven, but it is a reasonable doubt [the idea of ​​a politically motivated attack directed from Managua] and even more so in a context like this [in Costa Rica].

where it is not difficult to hire a hitman,” adds García in relation to the sharp increase in homicides that Costa Rica is experiencing as part of the fight between drug trafficking gangs.

Yefer Bravo is close to Maldonado and a member of the Nicaraguan Exile Unit group in Costa Rica.

He points out that what happened with his friend is just an expression of the danger they perceive while the Costa Rican authorities seem to want to evade the problem.

“It is disappointing that the State of Costa Rica lends itself to this internationalization of persecution of opponents.

We have feelings of disappointment, frustration and at the same time indignation,” he commented.

Hence, the request for help that they have launched to the international community.

In Geneva, businessman and former presidential candidate Juan Sebastián Chamorro reported the threat of court orders with the Group of Human Rights Experts on Nicaragua and Alberto Brunori, representative of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.

“The dictatorship wants to expand its repression abroad, with arrest warrants and extradition requests.

The international community has taken note,” he posted on his X account.

This change in the welcoming climate in Costa Rica has made a part of Nicaraguans decide to move to the United States, some traveling the 4,700 kilometers by land, but the majority remain in Costa Rican territory because returning to Nicaragua is an audacity to which few dare.

Many live with additional fear of pain for not being able to return, with difficulties in accessing jobs in an adverse work environment and a cost of living that is gross in relation to Nicaraguan parameters.

“There is no sensitivity to understand the dimensions of the disaster in Nicaragua,” explains Carlos Sandoval, a sociologist expert in migration, in addition to pointing out as possible factors an affinity towards the authoritarian current that on different scales is expanding in the region or a possible convenience economic in a Costa Rica-Nicaragua bilateral relationship.

Among the suspicions of Nicaraguan leaders is the need for diplomatic agreements that impact decisions within the Central American Bank for Economic Integration (CABEI), whose loans are strategic for both governments.

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