NICARAGUA — Brooklyn Rivera died while in Nicaraguan government custody on or shortly after September 29, 2023, following nearly three years of imprisonment. The Nicaraguan government reported that Rivera was in critical condition in the hospital, connected to a mechanical ventilator with multiple organ failure, and later claimed he died from a bacterial infection after his health deteriorated following a case of COVID-19.

Rivera, a leader of the Miskito people from Nicaragua’s northeast coast, was arrested on September 29, 2023, after returning to the country in secret. He had been banned from reentering Nicaragua by President Daniel Ortega and Vice President Rosario Murillo following his April 2023 appearance at a United Nations forum on Indigenous people in Geneva, where he criticized the government. Upon his return, Rivera lived in hiding until his detention. The Nicaraguan government accused Rivera of terrorism.

The U.S. Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs stated on social platform X: “This repression, violence and inhumanity is abhorrent. We reiterate our call for his and all political prisoners’ unconditional release NOW.” The U.S. does not recognize Ortega’s presidency and has previously condemned Nicaragua’s treatment of political detainees. Manuel Prado, international representative for the Yatama Indigenous Party, had warned before Rivera’s death: “We do feel like Ortega will allow him to die.”

A coalition of Nicaraguan Indigenous groups said: “We know that who is responsible for this very grave situation that he is in, for the violations of human rights, is the Sandinista Ortega-Murillo regime.” American human rights lawyer Reed Brody, a member of a group of U.N. experts on Nicaragua, criticized the government’s handling of Rivera’s case: “They took him alive, and after refusing to tell his family, his lawyer, the world anything about his fate, then they call him brother. Unconscionable cynicism on the part of the government to make it seem like they were trying to help him.” Brody also noted that at least six political prisoners have died in custody since 2019 and that the U.N. group has documented 124 cases of arbitrary detention of Indigenous people in Nicaragua since 2018.

Rivera played a key role in the resistance to the Sandinista government in the late 1970s and 1980s as part of the U.S.-backed Contra movement. He later helped establish Nicaragua’s northeast coast as an autonomous region and founded Yatama, the Organization of the Peoples of Mother Earth, in the late 1980s.