FILE PHOTO: Police officers stand guard in Masaya, Nicaragua August 28, 2019. REUTERS/Oswaldo Rivas/File Photo
(Reuters) - Nicaraguan authorities swore in more than 1,400 masked civilians to form part of a new "volunteer" police force on Friday, raising concerns from human rights groups that President Daniel Ortega's government is formalizing a paramilitary force.
WHY IT'S IMPORTANT
Opposition figures and human rights groups have raised concerns that the force is an attempt to institutionalize armed civilians loyal to Ortega. They say some of the new recruits were implicated in the deadly suppression of anti-government protests that erupted in 2018.
BY THE NUMBERS
More than 4,000 people have been inducted into the force over just three days this week across the Central American nation, according to the government's official news site.
CONTEXT
Changes to Nicaragua's constitution that include the formation of the new force have been approved by the government-controlled legislature. Set to come into force in the coming weeks, the changes will concentrate power in the hands of Ortega, who has been in office since 2007, and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo.
KEY QUOTES
At a swearing-in ceremony on Friday in the small northern city of Ocotal, national police chief Francisco Diaz described the new force as one that will support existing police officers, and is voluntarily formed by civilians who will "defend peace and security."
Gioconda Belli, a Nicaraguan poet and prominent opposition voice in exile in Spain, wrote on social media: "Without any scruples, Ortega and Murillo make 1,500 paramilitaries swear loyalty to them with their faces covered by balaclavas. A lawless, repressive army that has been given constitutional status."
(Reporting by Gabriela Selser; Editing by David Alire Garcia and Rosalba O'Brien)
