Tag: nicaragua

Silenced Voices and Sealed Coffins in Nicaragua

Mauricio Alonso Prieto once championed Sandinista socialism, but like many of his fellow countrymen, he became part of the opposition and came to “question the authoritarian direction of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) under the leadership of Daniel Ortega” and Rosario Murillo.  

This week, that cost him his life. 

On July 18, authorities in Nicaragua arrested — or kidnapped — Alonso, his wife, and his adult son, who is a worship leader at the evangelical Christian La Roca de Nicaragua Church. A group of “uniformed police officers and ‘volunteer’ officers wearing masks and dressed in black or blue” conducted a raid at the home of Pastor Rudy Palacios Vargas, the founder of La Roca de Nicaragua Church Association. These “officers” detained others in the home as well, including the pastor and various family members. Alonso and his family just happened to be there for a visit and were not part of the warrant. 

Authorities released Alonso’s wife the same day, but held him and his son “incommunicado” at the 3rd Police District. On July 28, a Nicaraguan digital news outlet reported that the two men, along with the pastor and his relatives, were now housed at “La Granja,” an overcrowded Nicaraguan prison notorious for abuse and mistreatment of prisoners. The men apparently went through a “fast-tracked” virtual hearing during which they were charged with treason and conspiracy.   

After weeks of no communication, Alonso’s wife got a call on August 25 stating that her husband had died, though there were no other details. His family learned that the Ortega-Murillo regime would not allow them the options families traditionally want when they lose a loved one. There would be no wake, no final goodbyes, no autopsy. The family received Alonso’s body in a sealed casket, and they were forced to have a funeral immediately under police observation. Despite his wife’s pleas, they would not allow her imprisoned son to attend the funeral either. 

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Biased UN Report on Nicaragua Ignores Victims of US-Backed Opposition Violence

Reynaldo Urbina rides his motorbike around the streets of Masaya, Nicaragua, with agility, despite having only one arm. Nearly seven years ago, at the height of a US- supported coup attempt against Nicaragua’s left-wing Sandinista government, Urbina was one of those guarding the city’s municipal warehouse when it was attacked by around 200 armed protestors. Warned of the impending attack, the guards had been ordered to hide their weapons and not resist capture, to minimize casualties.

But Urbina was suspected of knowing the whereabouts of the city’s mayor, whom the hooligans sought to assassinate, so they threw him to the ground and smashed his left arm with a rifle butt until it was practically destroyed. Urbina escaped, but his arm could not be saved, and was later amputated.

When a team was sent by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to Nicaragua to collect evidence on human rights abuses a few weeks later, Urbina was among those offered by the government as a witness. But the team refused to meet him.

The UN’s 40-page report, issued in August 2018, devotes just five paragraphs to violence by anti-government factions; the rest blames the government and its supporters for practically every other violent incident, including many (like an arson attack on a pro-Sandinista radio station) that were clearly part of the coup attempt.

Some time after the coup attempt, Nicaragua’s then vice-minister for foreign affairs, Valdrack Jaentschke, described an exchange with Paulo Abrão, who was the Executive Secretary of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. The IACHR was another of the bodies which had launched investigations of human rights abuses in 2018. Valdrack had asked Abrão why visiting investigators were not collecting evidence of the severe opposition violence which had taken place. Abrão gave two reasons: that human rights abuses can only be carried out by the state, and that violence by civil society groups is just “common criminality” and therefore not within the investigators’ mandate.

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170 Years of US Aggression Against Nicaragua

When the Monroe Doctrine was declared, in 1823,  it was aimed at European colonial powers. It told them to butt out: the US “sphere of influence” included all of Latin America and the Caribbean. During the past two centuries,virtually every Latin American and Caribbean country has had to endure US intervention and interference in their internal affairs. The coups, political manipulation and aggression directed by Washington have been relentless.

One of the most victimized countries has been Nicaragua. In this article, I will review the different types of aggression used by Washington against Nicaragua. This is not ancient history; the interference continues to today. The methods change but the purpose remains the same: to subjugate nominally independent countries and use them in the interests of US corporations, elites and government. When nations resist domination and insist on independence, the US goal becomes to prevent them from succeeding.

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Germany Buries the Evidence of Complicity in Genocide: Nicaragua Exposes It

Last Thursday, Dr Ghassan Abu-Sittah, the British-Palestinian war surgeon, gave his first address as the newly-appointed rector of Glasgow University, chosen in recognition of his work at al-Shifa hospital in Gaza. The following day he flew to Berlin, where he had been invited to address a major conference about Palestine. On arrival he was taken away by police, interrogated for several hours and eventually told he had to leave Germany and wouldn’t be allowed to return until at least the end of April. Any attempt to speak to the conference via Zoom could result in a fine or even a year’s prison sentence. By the time he was released he couldn’t have taken part in the conference anyway, since it had been already invaded by at least 900 police and closed down. Berlin’s mayor said that it was ‘intolerable’ that the conference was taking place at all.

Speaking about his experience afterwards, Dr Abu-Sittah referred to the fact that Germany had – also last week – been defending itself at the International Court of Justice against charges by Nicaragua that it is an accomplice to genocidal war. ‘This is exactly what accomplices to a crime do’ he said. ‘They bury the evidence and they silence or harass or intimidate the witnesses’.

Watching the live feed of Germany’s lawyers at the Hague a few days earlier had been an odd experience. They gave the impression of being affronted that Germany had been accused of such crimes, especially by a small country which, they argued, had no stake in the case. Also, Israel could not yet be said to be committing genocide, because the ICJ has not yet determined the case brought against it by South Africa, which Germany had supported Israel in contesting. Because Israel was not party to the new case, it should simply be thrown out.

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Bogus Report on Nicaragua by “60 Minutes” Exposed as Propaganda from CIA-linked National Endowment for Democracy

[Below is an open letter to 60 Minutes written by Susan Lagos, a Spanish and ESL teacher who has lived in Ciudad Dario, Matagalpa, Nicaragua for 18 years. The letter was originally posted by The Alliance for Global Justice.—Editors]

“A 60 Minutes team [should] actually come to Nicaragua to interview the people that live here whose lives have improved amazingly since 2007 with free universal education and health care.”

Dear 60 Minutes:

I was appalled to see your program on Nicaragua of June 19, 2022.

I have enjoyed many other 60 Minutes programs, but this one was totally one-sided and false. I have lived in Nicaragua since 2004, and traveled here many times in the 1980’s and 1990’s. So I have lived among people with a totally different reality than those you interviewed. 

The two women you interviewed are the wives of Juan Sebastián Chamorro and Felix Maradiaga, from among the wealthy, closely connected with the U.S. government, who studied in U.S. universities and who speak English. Berta Valle, wife of Maradiaga, happens to be from the family down the block from me in Ciudad Dario, Matagalpa, Nicaragua.

The Chamorro and Maradiaga non-profits (IEEPP and FUNIDES respectively) were funded by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), founded to do overtly what the CIA has done covertly and also by other U.S. organizations like the International Republican Institute (IRI) and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), U.S. foundations, and similar European organizations.

The USAID has given more than half a billion dollars to Nicaraguan nonprofits like these since the Sandinistas regained the presidency in 2007. The USAID also organized and funded a destabilization plan known as RAIN (Responsive Action in Nicaragua) for the pre and post November 2021 election periods which is likely still functioning.

In August 2021 the Public Prosecutor’s office accused Maradiaga and Chamorro of being part of a major group conspiring with the U.S. against Nicaragua continually since 2009 and headed by Manuel Orozco Ramírez. Orozco is an associate of Creative Associates International (CAI), a global agency funded by USAID to “engineer political transitions” with over US$2 billion in U.S. government contracts as reported by Mintpress.

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All US Elections Are Fraudulent; Shut Up About Nicaragua

Western media are blaring headlines today about a rigged election, not in the United States or any of the other powerful nations allied with it whose elections are consistently fraudulent from top to bottom, but in the small Central American nation of Nicaragua.

A Google search brings up only news stories disparaging the Nicaragua election and its results. As flagged on Twitter by Left I on the News, CNN’s coverage of President Daniel Ortega’s victory featured a chyron with scare quotes around both the words “election” and “wins”, and a newscaster flatly stating “Ortega got 75% of the vote, results that we know are illegitimate.”

New York Times correspondent Natalie Kitroeff reported that Ortega has been “arresting all credible challengers; shutting down opposition parties; banning large campaign events; closing voting stations en masse” and that “there were no billboards or campaign posters” for the opposition, all claims that have been squarely refuted by observers reporting on the scene like Wyatt Reed, Ben Norton, Margaret Kimberly, Ahmed Kaballo, Caleb Maupin and others.

This mass media concern trolling about Nicaragua’s elections would not be so outrageously absurd were the elections of the US and its allies anywhere remotely close to free from fraud and manipulation.

There’s a common misconception that nothing ever changes in the US political status quo because an ideological tug-of-war between two equal and opposing factions keeps things in a state of stasis where it’s impossible to advance changes which would benefit ordinary Americans. In reality those two “factions” are in complete alignment in all but the most superficial ways, the electoral contests between them are dominated by a donor class with a vested interest in protecting the status quo, the candidates who compete in them are pre-selected by a corrupt and meticulously vetted primary process to ensure the public only ever gets to cast votes for those who will preserve oligarchy and empire, and third parties are constitutionally prevented from ever becoming politically viable.

All US elections for positions of real power are fraudulent. None of them ever permit real opposition. It’s a one-party system controlled by plutocratic and military institutions fraudulently disguised as democracy, and yet people who call themselves “journalists” have the temerity to criticize the integrity of Latin American elections without ever criticizing their own.

Just once it would be great to hear widespread discussion of US election rigging in the same alarmed tone we hear mass media concern trolls talking about nations like Nicaragua, Bolivia or Venezuela. “Very alarming how third parties are forbidden from participation in the US presidential debate.” “Concerned about the way any real opposition to the US power structure is banned from mainstream media.”

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