The UN voiced deep concern Friday at legislative reforms in Nicaragua that had allowed it to strip more than 300 dissidents of their citizenship, warning this was against international law.
"The recent legislative reforms in Nicaragua allowing for citizenship-stripping on arbitrary grounds run contrary to Nicaragua's obligations under international and regional human rights law," the UN refugee agency said.
"International law prohibits the arbitrary deprivation of nationality including on racial, ethnic, religious or political grounds," it said.
The statement came after a Nicaraguan court under President Daniel Ortega this week stripped the citizenship from 94 exiled dissidents and declared them to be "traitors to the fatherland."
Among them was perhaps Nicaragua's most acclaimed living author, Sergio Ramirez, who once served as vice president under Ortega, a Catholic bishop, Silvio Baez, and several former comrades-in-arms of Ortega in the leftist Sandinista Front that came to power in 1979, only to lose elections in 1990.
The same measure was applied to 222 dissidents, who were released from jail and expelled last week, with the Ortega government yanking their citizenship after putting them on a charter flight to Washington.
Ortega came back to power after 2007 elections, and has steadily seized control over all branches of government.
Since large-scale street protests erupted against his rule in 2018, Ortega has employed heavily armed paramilitary squads to crush opposition and jailed all major opposition figures.
"The exercise of fundamental rights, including freedom of expression, freedom of assembly or other rights associated with a person's political views, can never justify the deprivation of nationality," UNHCR stressed in its statement.
It also highlighted that Nicaragua is a party to international conventions on reducing statelessness, and pointed to a global action plan requiring all states to "prevent denial, loss of deprivation of nationality on discriminatory grounds."
UN chief Antonio Guterres has also expressed alarm at Nicaragua's recent moves to strip dissidents of their citizenship.
"It bears recalling that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that everyone has a right to a nationality and that no one should be arbitrarily deprived of it," Guterres's spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters on Thursday.
"The right to nationality is a fundamental human right," he said.
"There should be no persecution or reprisals against human rights defenders or individuals expressing critical views."
