The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) has granted precautionary measures in favor of four Nicaraguan indigenous people and forest rangers who are currently detained in the Jorge Navarro Penitentiary Center, on the outskirts of Managua.

Precautionary measures are the way in which the IACHR urgently requests a State to protect one or more people who may be in danger. It does so when it considers that there may be irreparable damage: the loss of a life, being a victim of serious violence, or damage to health.

In that regard, the IACHR is asking the Ortega-Murillo dictatorship to immediately protect the lives of Rodrigo Bruno Arcángel, Olvier Bruno Palacios, Evertz Antonio Bruno Palacios, and Stony Alberto Bruno Smith, all imprisoned since 2023, because they are in grave danger inside “La Modelo”.

But how did the IACHR reach this conclusion? As long as the Ortega-Murillo dictatorship does not offer information about the current state of each of them in prison, they could be found to be suffering from physical, mental, and emotional damage and deprived of any adequate medical care.

Rodrigo, Oliver, Evertz, and Stony were arrested on August 13, 2023, in an operation carried out by the Directorate of Special Police Operations (DOEP) and the Ecological Battalion of the Nicaraguan Army. The four are park rangers in the Kahkah sector, in the Mayangna territory, within the Biosphere Reserve of Bosawás. 

The Mayangna and Miskito communities are ancestral Indigenous peoples who inhabit the Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua and Honduras. These communities engage in subsistence fishing, agriculture, and hunting, maintaining a strong connection with the forest and its resources.

For this reason, the Mayangnas and Miskitos act as forest rangers on a voluntary and communal basis, motivated by the defense of their ancestral lands against the invasion of settlers: people who illegally exploit the resources of reserves such as Bosawás and Indio Maíz.

On numerous occasions, the Mayangnas have denounced the usurpation of lands by exploiters, as well as the actions of the Police and the Army against the forest rangers and indigenous people, but not against the gangs of settlers who illegally occupy their protected territories.

To make matters worse, the situation is even more serious if one does not lose sight of the fact that indigenous communities, in addition to caring for the forest out of tradition, also do so in accordance with Law 445°of Nicaragua, “Law of the Communal Property Regime of Indigenous Peoples and Ethnic Communities”.

The Human Rights Collective for Historical Memory of Nicaragua and the Río Foundation indicated that, in addition to all the risks they face, the four rangers could have restrictions on communicating in both Sumo and Miskito, the languages ​​used by the Mayangna people.

In the resolution on precautionary measures, the IACHR also asked the Ortega-Murillo dictatorship to end human rights violations in Nicaragua.