The German section of the International Society for Human Rights (ISHR) and the German Evangelical news agency IDEA have named Catholic Christian Lesbia del Socorro Gutiérrez Poveda (known as Lesbia Gutiérrez) from Nicaragua as “Prisoner of the Month” for July 2025. The 59-year-old Caritas staff member was taken by security forces for “questioning” on August 10, 2024. At Caritas in the Diocese of Matagalpa, she was responsible for supporting small-scale producers. The local bishop is Rolando Álvarez Lagos, who was arrested in August 2022, later sentenced to 26 years in prison, and ultimately deported to the Vatican in January 2024.

At around 10 a.m., two plainclothes police officers initially arrived at the “La Guadalupana” farm near Matagalpa asking for Gutiérrez and inquiring about the Caritas project she managed. Later, more officers arrived, including uniformed and armed personnel, who demanded she accompany them to Managua for questioning without presenting a warrant. Since then, her family has received no official information about the committed Christian’s whereabouts from the authorities of the Sandinista dictatorship. However, the family was asked to send monthly food packages to the women’s prison “La Esperanza.”

Since mass protests against the socialist dictatorship of President Daniel Ortega and his Vice President and wife Rosario Murillo in 2018, critics have faced intense persecution through fabricated charges, imprisonment, torture, and denationalization. Mere suspicion of dissent is enough. Thousands of civil society groups, church institutions, and media outlets have been declared illegal.

The German section of ISHR and IDEA are calling on the public to write appeals to President Daniel Ortega requesting official information on Gutiérrez’s location and health, and to demand her immediate release. Since April 2024, the Nicaraguan embassy in Berlin has been closed, so letters should be sent to the diplomatic mission in Vienna.