NICARAGUA – Police vehicles and police officers in riot gear descended in and around the town of Santa Cruz de la India, Nicaragua, as its community members prepared for planned meetings with representatives from the International Finance Corporation (IFC) on Monday. Since 2017, the mine area has seen an increasingly heavy police presence.
The IFC’s Compliance Advisor Ombudsman (CAO) seeks to meet with community members to assess their complaint that an IFC-funded gold mine is proceeding without proper community consultation and may contaminate their water and violate their human rights. The mine is owned by UK-owned Condor Gold. Today, police wearing riot gear and carrying high-caliber weapons entered the community as they awaited the CAO team’s arrival. Community members are peacefully maintaining the calm and photographing the police presence to the extent they feel safe to do so–often from behind half-closed doors to avoid escalating tensions while also documenting this arbitrary and unwarranted show of force and alerting international networks to help protect their safety.
The meetings with the CAO are now underway, but the heavy and militarized police presence in Nicaragua has become a constant. These police actions are excessive and can only be interpreted as a form of intimidation against the community. Although community members fear for their safety in the streets of their own town and are deeply concerned that they may be targeted with arrests or violence, they feel compelled to assemble and show their unified opposition to the mine, at all costs. CIEL is monitoring the situation closely and supporting the situation as we can. Please stay alert as conditions are tense and evolving.
Updated: November 22, 2018, 1:12pm EST
