Indigenous Leader Brooklyn Rivera Dies in Nicaraguan Custody

NICARAGUA · HUMAN RIGHTS

Brooklyn Rivera, one of the most influential indigenous leaders of Nicaragua’s Caribbean coast and head of the Yatama party, has died in state custody at 73 after nearly three years of detention. The government attributes his death to illness; human-rights organizations, which had classified him as a political prisoner subjected to enforced disappearance, dispute the official account.

What is known about Brooklyn Rivera’s death

Nicaragua’s health ministry confirmed on Sunday afternoon that Rivera had died from health complications after nearly three years in detention. According to the government statement, he suffered physical and neurological deterioration as a consequence of a bacterial infection generated by COVID-19.

Days earlier, on May 27, the authorities had for the first time released photographs and medical reports showing Rivera in critical condition, connected to mechanical ventilation, after a long period in which his family and the international community had requested proof that he was alive.

How rights groups describe Brooklyn Rivera’s detention

Human-rights organizations and outlets close to Yatama say Rivera was held in conditions they describe as enforced disappearance for almost three years. They report that the government concealed the death for many hours before acknowledging it, and without recognizing his status as a political prisoner.

Amnesty International had classified him as a prisoner of conscience. In May, a group of United Nations experts requesting proof of life said he was among a group of people they considered to have been forcibly disappeared, and warned that detention conditions in Nicaragua were reported to be inhumane. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights had documented the violent police raid on his home at the time of his arrest.

By the count of human-rights organizations, Rivera is at least the seventh political prisoner to die in state custody since the wave of repression that began in 2019, in one of the most prominent cases of enforced disappearance denounced inside and outside the country.

A dispute over the body

Sources close to Yatama say the government is refusing to hand Rivera’s body to his family, who wish to honour his expressed will to be buried in Sandy Bay on the Caribbean coast, where his mother is buried. They say his remains are being held under police custody.

Rights groups have linked the heavy police presence reported in areas of Rivera’s political influence to an effort to pre-empt any demonstrations of rejection following his death.

Who Brooklyn Rivera was

Rivera was a founder and the principal figure of Yatama, whose name means Children of Mother Earth, a party defending the political and territorial rights of indigenous and Afro-descendant communities on Nicaragua’s Caribbean coast. For decades he campaigned for the autonomy of native peoples and against the encroachment of settlers on indigenous lands.

In 2005, Yatama won a landmark ruling at the Inter-American Court of Human Rights recognizing the violation of indigenous peoples’ political participation rights. Rivera was a sitting member of parliament when he was detained, having participated weeks earlier in a United Nations forum on indigenous issues in New York.

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The wider context

Rivera’s death again drew attention to the situation of political prisoners in Nicaragua, where co-presidents Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo have held power since 2007. The United States had called for his release and described his treatment in critical terms.

The case adds to a broader international debate over detention conditions and the treatment of opposition figures in the country, which Rivera’s prominence as an indigenous leader has now placed back at the centre of attention.

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