Cristiana Chamorro Barrios
Date of birth: 1954
Arrested on: 02 June 2021
Current: In exile in the USA since February 2023

Cristiana Chamorro Barrios was born in Nicaragua in 1954. She was arrested on June 2, 2021, in Managua, Nicaragua, during a police raid involving 200 police officers at her home. The basis for this was the accusation of tax evasion, which also deprived her of her chances of running for the presidential elections in November 2021, in which she wanted to run against dictator Daniel Ortega. Chamorro Barrios was stripped of his citizenship and expelled from the country in February 2023, along with 221 other prisoners critical of the government. She has been in exile in the USA ever since.

Cristiana Chamorro Barrios was also the director of the Foundation for Freedom of the Press, which bears her mother's name, the "Violeta Barrios de Chamorro Foundation (FVBdC)", until January 2021, when President Daniel Ortega introduced a law that forced all organizations that received funds from international sources to register as foreign institutions. This made it extremely difficult for NGOs that rely on donations and international cooperation to carry out their work in Nicaragua without being exposed to outrageous taxes and other conditions imposed by Ortega's socialist policies on international institutions.

Arrest

Cristiana Chamorro Barrios was arrested during a police raid on her home in Managua, Nicaragua, on June 2, 2021. Her arrest marked the beginning of a wave of persecutions and arrests against the opposition. She is accused of money laundering and tax evasion, which is the result of a sham investigation launched against her by Daniel Ortega and his government in May 2021. Daniel Ortega and his government accuse Chamorro Barrios of committing these crimes while she was serving as director of the FVBdC.

Background

Her father was Pedro Joaquín Chamorro, a critic of the Somoza government and director of the newspaper La Prensa. Her mother is Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, who was president of Nicaragua from 1990 to 1996. Cristiana’s father was murdered in 1978 because of his commitment against the dictatorship of Somoza Debayle. Ex-president Somoza later fled to Miami in the United States and was tried in absentia for his crimes after the revolution in Nicaragua: he was convicted of the murder of Pedro Joaquín Chamorro, but never returned to Nicaragua.

Cristiana’s mother defeated Daniel Ortega, the leader of the Sandinista revolution, as opposition leader in the February 1990 elections and ruled until 1996. Cristiana's brother is Pedro Joaquín Chamorro Barrios, also a journalist and political prisoner.

Long-standing dictatorship in Nicaragua

Daniel Ortega is the leader of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), a socialist political party in Nicaragua. He is also the president who has been in office the longest in Nicaragua: he first took office in 1979 (after the FSLN deposed Somoza Debayle in a coup d'état) until Violeta Barrios de Chamorro defeated him in democratic elections in 1990. Ortega took over the presidency again in 2007 and has been in office ever since. In 2021, he imprisoned all seven presidential candidates who wanted to run against him in the elections, starting with Cristiana Chamorro Barrios, in order to ensure his victory and the continuation of his term for the fourth consecutive year. It is believed that Daniel Ortega feared the candidacy of Cristiana Chamorro Barrios the most, as she was favored in the polls as opposition leader for a victory in the November 2021 elections and thus for the removal of Ortega.

As of August 2024