Nicaragua’s Ortega and Murillo institutionalize paramilitary groups behind the deaths of over 350 people

In 2018, in the city of Estelí, in western Nicaragua, young people protesting against the government of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo were killed. On Wednesday of this week, the Sandinista regime swore in 1,700 members of the newly created “volunteer police” who attended the event dressed in white shirts, black cargo pants and black balaclavas. The swearing-in of thousands more took place in the Department of Madriz, in the north, and in the coming days other similar ceremonies are scheduled in other cities as part of a drive to institutionalize paramilitary groups, as established by the new Political Constitution tailored by the presidential couple to guarantee that the family dynasty will remain in power.

In addition to burying what was left of the separation of powers, officially creating the position of “co-president” for Rosario Murillo, and allowing the appointment of vice-presidents without putting it to a popular vote, among other prerogatives, the Ortega-Murillo Constitution legitimizes in its Article 97 — still in the process of being approved — the creation of the “Volunteer Police,” which is defined as an auxiliary body of the National Police. In other words, according to human rights organizations, it is a way to legitimize the repressive paramilitary force that in 2018 was responsible for murdering the majority of the 355 people who were peacefully protesting against the regime.

That year, with the streets overflowing with protesters, the police — the government’s main organ of repression — was overwhelmed. The Sandinista regime turned to paramilitary groups to quell the discontent. The individuals who were recruited were retired Sandinista military personnel, civilians and public employees who, using war weapons such as AK-47 and Dragunov rifles, shot to kill, aiming at the heads, necks and chests of the protesters. It was a massacre that a group of United Nations experts later classified as “crimes against humanity.” In late December 2024, Argentina’s justice system issued an international arrest warrant against Ortega and Murillo over these crimes.

Faced with abundant evidence of paramilitary action in coordination with the National Police and state institutions, Commissioner General Francisco Díaz, the chief of the National Police and in-law of the presidential couple, said in 2019 that these groups were “volunteer police.” After Díaz’s statements, “co-president” Murillo instructed the official propaganda machine to use the term “heroes of peace” to describe these heavily armed men who patrolled the streets in Toyota Hilux trucks.

During the swearing-in ceremony in Estelí, Commissioner Díaz said that they were “proud” of the Comandante Julio Buitrago Urroz Volunteer Police, as this unit has been named. “The peace that is enjoyed in Nicaragua must be maintained and protected,” added the police chief, emulating the rhetoric of his in-law Rosario Murillo. The latter claims that the paramilitaries managed to dismantle a coup attempt, without mentioning that in order to do so, the regime not only imprisoned and killed people, but has since also confiscated assets, withdrawn citizenship, exiled and relentlessly persecuted thousands of citizens considered critical with the government.

Training of public employees

The previous Constitution prohibited the existence of illegal armed groups and required the Nicaraguan Army to eradicate them. But the latter, also involved in the government repression, never did so. On the contrary, these contingents coordinate, through the Directorate of Information for Defense (DID), to persecute opponents even beyond Nicaraguan borders, such as in Costa Rica, where thousands of exiles have settled down. The Nicaragua Never Again Human Rights Collective has documented cases of “extraterritorial repression.”

Thus, with the new Constitution, the creation of the “the Volunteer Police as an auxiliary body to support the National Police, comprised of Nicaraguan citizens offering their services voluntarily and temporarily,” was authorized. The text adds that “there cannot be more armed bodies in the national territory than those established in the Constitution, nor military ranks other than those established by law.”

Although they have lowered their public profile in recent years, the paramilitaries have not ceased their operations. They always operate in coordination with the armed forces and continue to kidnap opponents, either to take them to prison or to forcibly exile them, dumping them on the border with Costa Rica.

During 2024, the regime forced thousands of public employees to receive military training in various clandestine camps around Nicaragua. At that time, EL PAÍS documented cases of teachers and security guards forcibly displaced to camps to prepare for “any coup attempt.” A security expert consulted by this newspaper claims that the large number of “volunteer police” who have begun to be sworn in come from these groups of public officials forcibly trained under penalty of dismissal or jail.

“The actions we are seeing, from my point of view, are intended to terrorize the population, because Ortega and Murillo are at a critical moment in the dynastic succession, due to the changes they are making to the Constitution,” adds this expert. “They are very afraid of the discontent of the people, which is becoming deeper and more widespread even among their own supporters. That is why they are holding these public events with great pomp: they were formed as a military body and they are being presented to the public wearing balaclavas. But if one looks at the photographs, behind the balaclavas there are people who do not look happy. It is very likely that among them there are convinced paramilitaries, but there are also public employees who were forced into military training.”

The Sandinista flag, a new national symbol

The week began with the lawmakers of the National Assembly, all of them submissive to the dictates of Ortega and Murillo, approving, section by section, the new Political Constitution. Among more than a hundred reformed articles, the legislators established on Wednesday, January 15, that the red-and-black flag of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) is established from now on as a national symbol.

The symbolic decision encapsulates the consolidation of a “family dictatorship” in which, from its very beginning in 2006, when Ortega returned to power, the confusion between family, state and party began to take shape, according to critics of the Sandinista administration. Article 13 of the reformed constitution mandates that “the national symbols are: the national anthem, the blue-and-white and the red-and-black flags of the anti-imperialist struggle of General Augusto C. Sandino and of the Sandinista Popular Revolution, and the national coat-of-arms.”

Since Ortega’s return to the presidency, there has been criticism about the fact that the Sandinista flag has been present in all activities by state bodies, even above and beyond the national flag. At one point Juan Carlos Ortega Murillo, son of the presidential couple, went so far as to say “that the red-and-black defends the blue-and-white.” Thus, for more than a decade, the Sandinista flag has flown in schools, patriotic parades, hospitals, ministries and even shows up on official state stationery.

In 2018, citizens clung to the blue-and-white flag as a form of protest and resistance against the repression. It was a symbolic confrontation that continues to this day. The government claimed the Sandinista flag at its events, while citizens waved the national flag and burned the Sandinista one in the streets. There are at least two cases of protests in which the regime agents arrested and tortured opponents for burning the Sandinista flag. The first victim was Sergio Beteta, who on December 21, 2020 was arrested for setting fire to the flag of the Sandinista Front on a public street. Beteta was released and exiled to the United States, along with 221 other political prisoners, on February 9, 2023. Three young women — Adela Espinoza, Gabriela Morales and Mayela Campos — burned another Sandinista flag on August 18, 2023, in protest of the closure and confiscation of the Central American University (UCA), where some of them had studied. The three were also prosecuted and then exiled to Guatemala on September 5, 2024.

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