Faber Antonio López Vivas
“If the police didn’t kill my son, why are they hounding me?”
Murdered in Jinotepe, July 8, 2018
Faber Antonio López Vivas, the son of Fátima Belarmina Vivas Torres, had joined the police force in 2014. He was assigned to a delegation in El Rama, but was reassigned to the Special Police Operations Division (DOEP) to receive a course on canine techniques in Managua. He had been taking the course for six months but was placed on street duty to repress the population following the protests on April 18. He did not agree with the police actions.
“If the police didn’t kill my son, then why are they hounding me?” asks doña Fátima. After reporting the death of her son, she was harassed, threatened, and forced to flee the country.
Facts
Fátima Vivas, Faber’s mother, blames the police for her son’s murder. “My son was tortured, according to the coroner consulted. He had wounds from a knife, his fingers were broken, his fingernails had been pulled out, and his eyeballs had been removed. He had innumerable wounds in his arms.” The motive for the crime, according to Vivas, was because her son had requested his discharge from the police ranks, but apparently they did not accept his request. Another police officer told me that her son had thought about deserting with her, but he wasn’t successful.
According to the National Police, officer Faber Antonio López Vivas died on July 8, 2018, due to gunshots by “armed terrorists.” According to a Nicaraguan government report, this day the Anti-Riot Elite Unit, of which Faber was a member, arrived in Jinotepe to jointly take down a large number of roadblocks erected by the opposition in different municipalities of Carazo, together with local police. The unit was attacked by a sharpshooter, and Faber was hit by nine bullets.
Faber López had called his family one day earlier, saying he was going to resign from the police. When he didn’t contact them the next day, it was because he had been murdered by the police. Faber López never called them again.
Memory
Chontales
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