UN report calls for international action as Nicaragua's government deepens repression

GENEVA (Reuters) - The United Nations has urged the international community to respond to what it called human rights violations by Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega's government as it seeks to further consolidate power, according to a report published on Wednesday.

Ortega, a former leftist rebel who initially came to power in 1979 and returned in 2007, has been extending his control by allowing his presidency to "coordinate" judicial and legislative duties as well as expanding state control over media.

The UN report accuses Ortega and his wife, Rosario Murillo, who serves as co-president, of having "transformed the country into an authoritarian state where no independent institutions remain."

The UN experts urged legal action against Nicaragua, highlighting human rights abuses in the Latin American country, which they said follow patterns that have been previously established as crimes against humanity.

Ortega's government in the past has ignored reports from the UN and the Organization of American States, which it says are part of an international campaign against it.

Nicaragua experienced mass anti-government protests in 2018 when Ortega's crackdown on dissent resulted in the death of over 350 people and sparked an international outcry over rights abuses.

The UN report also implicated the Nicaraguan army in the violent crackdown, contradicting previous denials.

POLITICAL REFORM

A wide-ranging constitutional reform to expand presidential powers over other branches of government, unveiled by 79-year-old Ortega in November and in force since earlier in February, has "eliminated what little remained of institutional checks and balances," according to the United Nations report.

The reform, passed by lawmakers from Ortega's Sandinista Front, which controls Congress, allows either co-president to name an unlimited number of vice presidents, which has generated speculation that one or more of Ortega and Murillo's eight children living in Nicaragua could eventually be picked.

The reforms have been defended by government allies as deepening a nearly 50-year-old revolution which began in 1979 when Ortega and fellow leftist guerrillas overthrew a right-wing family dynasty, and for years acted as a Cold War-era antagonist of the United States.

(Reporting by Emma Farge in Geneva and Aida Pelaez-Fernandez in Mexico City; Editing by Christian Plumb and Chris Reese)