The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) condemned death in custody of the State of Nicaragua of the Miskito indigenous leader Brooklyn Rivera, after remaining in a situation of forced disappearance since September 2023 and called on the international community to maintain scrutiny of the country.
“The IACHR urges the international community to maintain scrutiny over Nicaragua, demand an end to repression, and ensure accountability for all human rights violations recorded in the country that remain unpunished,” they say in a statement.
Regarding Rivera’s death, they indicate that on May 31, 2026, the IACHR became aware of his death, “after more than two years during which the Nicaraguan regime kept his whereabouts hidden and refused to provide information about his health condition.”
“This reprehensible fact has a collective impact given Brooklyn Rivera’s career as a historical leader of the Miskito people and defender of the territorial rights, as well as the autonomy of the indigenous peoples of the Caribbean Coast,” the statement indicates.
The organization also criticized that the Government led by Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo did not deliver Rivera’s body to his relatives and members of his community who came to claim it, and that, rather, six of them “They were arbitrarily detained and their whereabouts are unknown.”
Alert for political prisoners
Rivera’s death, according to the IACHR, “reveals once again the serious situation of people detained for political reasons, whose whereabouts and health condition remain unknown.”
“At what point will they call us to tell us that our family member has died?” That’s the question they ask relatives of political prisoners in forced disappearance in Nicaragua after Rivera’s death in state custody.
The relatives of five political prisoners also denounced that the case of the Miskito indigenous leader has increased fear that other detainees in the custody of the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo could die in the same circumstances.
The IACHR recalled that in 2025, it condemned the death in state custody of Mauricio Alonso Petri and Carlos Cárdenas Zepeda, “in whose cases their relatives remained for weeks without information about their whereabouts and state of health, and were only certain of their death when their bodies were handed over, amidst threats and intimidation.”
In the statement they urge Nicaragua to “guarantee the life and integrity of all people in its custody or subject to its jurisdiction and release all people detained for political reasons,” including Rivera’s relatives and members of the community.
