Haydeé Castillo

Organization
The Leadership Institute of Las Segovias, Segovian Women’s Movement

Activity
Women’s rights; political, environmental and territorial rights

Attacks
Damage to vehicle, threats, harrassment, disparagement, stigmatization and criminalization

THE FACTS – According to defender Haydeé Castillo, on Sunday, September 9th, individuals presumably related to para-police forces, threw stones that broke the windows of her family vehicle, which was parked outside her home in Ocotal, Nueva Segovia. el municipio de Ocotal, departamento de Nueva Segovia.

This act comes on top of a long chain of repeated, systematic attacks, especially threats, blaming, incrimination attempts, criminalization, and smear campaigns that the defender has undergone since the beginning of the socio-political and human rights crisis that has plagued Nicaragua since last April, all of which we have exposed in former collective alerts.

We of IM-Defensoras interpret this attack, perpetrated with physical violence against the property of Haydeé Castillo just outside her home, as an alarming sign of the intensification of the risk to which the defender is subjected.

Therefore, we state our strong condemnation and rejection of this most recent attack and demand that the government of Nicaragua put an immediate end to the repression, violence and impunity with which the para-police forces operate; we hold them responsible for any harm that may befall Haydeé Castillo.

By the same token, we call on the international community to stand in solidarity with the defender and to acknowledge her longstanding work and key role in the Leadership Institute of the Segovias, as well as her work in the defense of human rights in Las Segovias and in Nicaragua as a whole. Defending rights is a right.