Managua Using Intimidation, Dissidents Say

Sandinista state security police have interrogated, admonished, fingerprinted and photographed scores of opposition leaders and other suspected dissidents in the last two months.

Government officials say the action is aimed at enforcing security laws and breaking up counterrevolutionary conspiracies. Critics say it is intended to stifle dissent.

Persons detained or summoned by the General Directorate of State Security have included opposition politicians, clergymen, lay church workers, union officials and Nicaraguan employees of the U.S. Embassy.

‘Frighten and Threaten’

Lino Hernandez, head of the Permanent Commission on Human Rights in Nicaragua, said the government is conducting a campaign of intimidation against dissidents “to frighten them and threaten them so that they won’t criticize the revolutionary process.”

Hernandez, an outspoken critic of the leftist government, added, “I think it has been an advancement in the process of establishing an increasingly closed, more controlled society.” He estimated that at least 350 to 400 people have been detained or called in for interrogations and warnings since Oct. 15.

That was the day the government announced that it was suspending a series of civil rights, including freedom of expression and the right of assembly, under a renewed and broadened state of emergency. Officials said the new emergency decree was necessary because of the guerrilla war being waged by U.S-backed anti-Sandinista rebels.

Summoned to Casa 50

Many people have been summoned to a building in the center of Managua called Casa 50 (House No. 50), the public relations office of the General Directorate of State Security. Some have been taken to detention cells and interrogation rooms in nearby state security installations.

The fingerprinting and photographing is “to make them feel like prisoners,” Hernandez said. “They are made to feel like they are in jail and they are warned that the next time it won’t just be for a few days.”

Some people have been released after an hour or two and some have been held for several days. About 20 people are still being held, Hernandez said.

There have been no reports of beatings or torture but many reports of mistreatment. Hernandez said that three women, lay Catholics who helped organize a public reception in Chinandega province for Nicaragua’s Cardinal Miguel Obando y Bravo, were forced to do exercises in the nude.

Many of those called in are associated with Roman Catholic and evangelical Protestant organizations that have been at odds with revolutionary policies.

Msgr. Bosco Vivas, auxiliary bishop of Managua’s Catholic diocese, said that about 50 priests and at least 100 other people active in church affairs have been called in. Some of the priests have been accused of political activities, including preaching against the military draft.

Vivas said that some lay Catholics have been forced to sign statements falsely implicating church officials in illicit sexual activities and that others have been threatened with reprisals against their relatives if they do not become government informants.

Censorship Toughened

Government censorship policy has also been toughened since Oct. 15. Vivas said censorship of the nation’s Roman Catholic radio station “has turned more rigid, more ironclad.” Also, the Permanent Commission on Human Rights has been told to stop distributing its mimeographed monthly reports.

La Prensa, the only opposition daily newspaper, has been prohibited from passing around photocopies of articles censored out of the paper. And the amount of material censored “has increased tremendously, from 40% to 60%” of total news content, La Prensa editor Jaime Chamorro said in a recent press conference.

The government suspended publication of the newspaper for two editions because Chamorro passed out copies of censored articles at the news conference.

Although censorship and pressure on dissidents are not new, the notable increases in both are important changes, according to a foreign diplomat who has little sympathy for the Sandinistas. “It is to intensify the climate of fear, to make people keep their heads down,” the diplomat said.

Chance for ‘Correction’

Commander Omar Cabezas, a high official in the Interior Ministry, said those who have been called in or detained have been given “an opportunity” to correct their conduct.

“We called them in because they were violating laws,” he said during a recent press conference. The state security agency is part of the Interior Ministry.

Cabezas said Protestant clergymen who were called in had been preaching “in their religious services” against the military draft law. “To preach the violation of a law of the republic in this country--and in all civilized countries of the world--is a crime,” Cabezas said.

One of the ministers accused by Cabezas is the Rev. Ignacio Hernandez, director of the Biblical Society of Nicaragua. However, Hernandez, a minister of the Nazarene Church, denied that he had been preaching against the draft or anything else, adding that he has not had a church to preach in for several years.

Cabezas also said that Hernandez and another Nicaraguan minister had been detained as they returned from the United States last month with “a large sum of dollars that were not brought into the country through legal channels.”

Hernandez, 57, said in an interview that he had not been out of the country for almost six months.

CIA Link Charged

Cabezas said Hernandez and other Nicaraguan pastors had met in Washington with officials of the conservative Institute on Religion and Democracy, which the commander called “a branch of the CIA.” He said the institute was trying to send money to its allies in Nicaragua for a campaign against the Sandinista government.

Hernandez denied having any contact with the institute. “I don’t know who they are; I don’t know what they do,” he said.

He was summoned to Casa 50 on the morning of Nov. 1. He said he was fingerprinted, photographed, interrogated and held until 2 a.m. Nov. 2.

“The first things they asked me were about my relations with the American Embassy,” Hernandez said. He said he explained that his only contact with embassy personnel has been at social gatherings.

State security agents also warned him “to be careful” about his relations with the Roman Catholic church, he said. His Biblical Society sells Bibles and other imported religious materials to church groups, including the Catholic Church.

Clergymen ‘Corrupters’

“I don’t think this government has any interest in the continued spread of religion,” Hernandez said. He said his interrogators called clergymen “corrupters of the children” and “ideological diversionists.”

Jimmy Hassan, head of the Campus Crusade for Christ in Nicaragua, listed a dozen Protestant leaders--including Hernandez and himself--who have been called in or detained by security agents since Oct. 15.

Hassan said armed policemen and state security agents came to get him at his house at 6 a.m. Oct. 31.

“They put me in a room in Casa 50,” Hassan said. “A lieutenant and two second lieutenants started to insult me in loud voices, saying I was their enemy, that I shouldn’t fool around with state security, that I was pro-imperialist, that I was an enemy of the revolution, that I was a friend of the American Embassy.

“According to them, the American Embassy was paying me and a lot of other people. . . . That is an invention.”

Pistol to His Head

Hassan said one officer criticized him for “presenting Christ as the solution to problems and distancing young people from Marxism.” He said another held a cocked pistol to his head and told him that he had better start collaborating with the government.

Since that day, Hassan said, state security agents have had his home under surveillance. His Campus Crusade office is closed because the agency confiscated his files, religious literature and office equipment.

Seventeen Nicaraguan employees of the U.S. Embassy in Managua have been called in for interrogation, and the United States has formally protested to the Nicaraguan government.

The 17 were asked what they do, whom they work for in the embassy and to what offices they have access. Nicaraguan security agents have tried to recruit a few of them as informants, a diplomatic source said, adding that the agents have said, “You are going to work for us; you will collect information.”

Like others called in, the embassy employees have been fingerprinted and photographed.

Union Leaders Summoned

Several union leaders, including two who are also members of Nicaragua’s main Communist party--the Nicaraguan Socialist Party--have been summoned for similar sessions.

“They accuse us of trying to incite strikes,” said Alejandro Solorzano, one of the Socialist labor leaders. “That is absurd.”

Leaders of more moderate opposition parties also have been detained or called in. Seven of them are Social Christians, according to a list issued by the political party last week. “Chronology of Sandinista Repression Since Oct. 15,” reads the title of the mimeographed list.

The leaders include Luis Rivas Leiva, who was ordered to report to Casa 50 on Oct. 20. Rivas Leiva said that Cmdr. Lenin Cerna, head of the General Directorate of State Security, personally admonished him to limit his political activities.

Cerna was “tremendously bad-mannered, with bad language,” Rivas Leiva said.

He speculated that because the Sandinista government’s energies are being absorbed by the war, it wants to reduce domestic political opposition to a minimum.

“They want all of their energies on the war front,” Rivas Leiva said. “They want to frighten people so that there will not be an outbreak of enthusiasm for the civic struggle against them.”