Luis Almagro calls for foreign intervention in Nicaragua (again)

Even over the holidays things didn’t calm down for Nicaragua. During the break the Secretary-General of the Organisation of American States, Luis Almagro, has tried to begin proceedings against Nicaragua under the Inter-American Decmocratic Charter. He cited Article 20 of the Charter, which states it can be activated when a “member state produces an alteration in the constitutional order that seriously harms democratic order” (see here for a typical report on the story, which was taken from Associated Press coverage).

Nicaragua’s Foreign Minister, Denis Moncada Colindres, responded immediately, writing to his fellow Ministers in the OAS. He said:

“The Inter-American Democratic Charter does not empower Secretary General Luis Almagro to support coup groups against the State and the legally constituted Government of Nicaragua, as Mr Luis Almagro has done in violation of the Charter of the OAS….”.

A full radio interview with Denis Moncada is available here on a US public radio station.

The aim of the move by Almagro is not to expel Nicaragua from the OAS (though that is possible), but to speed up the sanctions against Nicaragua proposed by the United States in the recently signed off NICA Act.

Nicaragua clashed with Almagro earlier this autumn, when the OAS Secretary General called for military intervention in Venezuela. His remarks came days after US Senator Marco Rubio (who has been the main cheerleader for the Nicaraguan opposition during the attempted coup) called for military action to remove President Maduro, and also called for the international community to ‘asphixiate the dictatorsip which is being installed in Nicaragua” (see here). Almagro’s remarks were widely condemned, even as he tried to say he had been misquoted. However he still drew criticism for his increasingly hawkish views (see here for a response from the OAS Ambassador from Antigua and Barbuda – No Vigilante Action in the Americas).

The Nicaraguan opposition visited Washington this autumn after Almagro’s military intervention comments. Violeta Granera, an ex-vice presidential candidate with the PLI and a former minister in the Bolanos Government 2000-7, joined fellow Liberal Jose Pallais (a former deputy Foreign Minister during the Chamorro Government 1990-97) to lobby Alamagro to activate the Democratic Charter (see here).

The pair are no strangers to Almagro, or indeed in calling for the activation of the Democratic Charter. In 2016, three days before the presidential elections which Daniel Ortega won with over 70% of the vote, the pair travelled to Washington to meet with Almagro. On his return Jose Pallais said their dialogue with the OAS was “the first step before the activation’ of the Democratic Charter” (see here).

The OAS meeting will take place next week. Almagro’s call can expect support from Trump’s United States and the Brazilian government led by President Jair Bolsonaro, widely described as a fascist. The US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, travelled to Brazil on Jan 2 to attend Bolsanaro’s inauguration. Their agenda, and indeed the agenda of Almagro, is clear. Pompeo said Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua were countries that do not share the democratic values that unite the United States and Brazil. “We have an opportunity to work alongside each other against authoritarian regimes,” he said at a news conference (see here).

by their friends…

On Friday night, whilst Wales NSC is hosting Dr Florence Levy in Mold, another type of meeting will be held in London. SOSNicaraguaUK have organised their most high profile meeting so far, with Bianca Jagger and Felix Maradiaga. Jagger, although a longstanding opponent of the Sandinistas, has been a fairly benign figure in the human rights movement. However, how this squares with her recent meeting with now ex-US envoy to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, is anyone’s guess. The extreme Right in the Republican Party – Ileana Ros Lehtinen and Marco Rubio amongst them – queued up to mourn the political passing of Haley four days after this photo (see here).

Maradiaga is another kettle of fish. He’s one of the self-appointed poster boys of the Nicaraguan opposition, and the darling of the #SOSNicaragua crowd. He has met with many right-wingers in Washington and actively lobbied for the NICA Act. In September, Haley used her presidency of the UN Security Council to invite Maradiaga to address the UN as a ‘member of Nicaraguan civil society’.

Maradiaga is described in the publicity for the Friday meeting as an ‘academic and social entrepreneur’ by SOSNicaraguaUK. His ‘social entrepreneurship’ includes a spell working with Grupo Coen, the network of firms owned by one of Nicaragua’s richest families; and currently Pioneer Capital Partners, a venture capital firm specialising in Latin America.

Whilst he tried to present himself as an ‘independent spokeman’ for Nicaragua, the organisations he is associated with are kept afloat by a lake of US money. The former Secretary General of Nicaragua’s Ministry of Defence under the neo-liberal Bolanos administration has headed up Nicaraguan organisations awash with dollars from the US National Endowment for Democracy. They include:

Movement for Nicaragua – $395,423 from the NED for ‘democracy promotion’ over four years

IEEPP – $224,161 from the NED – the IEEPP has also been linked to some of the students who toured the UK and Europe during the summer

Leadership Institute for Civil Society – set up by Maradiaga in 2007, it is funded by the National Democratic Institute, part of the NED ‘family’

Fundacion Libertad, set up by Maradiaga in 2012

The last organisation is one of the most interesting. It’s funding is not obvious, but its alliances are clearer (see here). The US Atlas Network is a right wing libertarian organisation with a web of partners throughout Latin America. It is particularly notorious for its activities in Brazil (see here for a expose in the Intercept last year). The German Friedrich Naumann Foundation is another ultra-free market organisation up to its neck in Latin America. It funds the RELIAL network (see here), with some crossover with members of the Atlas Network.

As the saying goes, ‘By their friends ye shall know them’ (to mis-quote Matthew). We know who Maradiaga’s friends are. And we now know who SOSNicaraguaUK’s friends are as well.

Don’t forget our meeting on Friday:

an unusual and extraordinary threat

So it came to pass. Trump, following in Reagan’s footsteps, has passed an Executive Order describing Nicaragua as an ‘unusual and extraordinary threat’, and declared ‘a state of emergency to deal with that threat‘. On the same day, the NICA Act passed the US Senate, which will allow it to be signed off by Trump in the near future. The sanctions it contains on Nicaragua seek to cut the country off from international loans, which help fund economic development and social programmes. There’s no doubt that the sanctions will lead to hardship and, in some cases, threaten lives. But that is their point. Like the blockade against Cuba and the sanctions against Venezuela, they are there, as Nixon ordered the CIA in Chile, to ‘make the economy scream’.

Just in case we were in any doubt, the White House National Security Advisor, John Bolton, helped us understand in a speech on November 1. Bolton has been at the heart of US imperialism for decades. In his speech he praised Brazil’s fascist president Jair Bolsonaro. He went on to name Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua as the ‘troika of tyranny’, with Bolivia also in his sights.

On Saturday in Adelante! Latin America Conference 2018 these countries were attacked by SOS Nicaragua UK for standing in solidarity with each other. Even a cursory glance at their twitter feed reveals that the agenda goes beyond changing the government in Nicaragua. Venezuela and Bolivia are also due for the same treatment.

SosNicaraguaUk‏ @NicaraguaUk 21h21 hours ago SosNicaraguaUk Retweeted Lau

Exigimos libertad de expresión y #LibertadParaLosPresosPolíticos y demandamos #Justicia en #LatinoAmerica. Fuerza para #SOSNicaragua #SosVenezuela #SOSBolivia

It is important to put the attempted coup in a regional context. You only need to look over the border in Honduras. The country has been receiving global attention because of the ‘caravana’ of refugees which made its way to the US border before the mid-term elections in early November. Very few articles looked at the reasons why.

Honduras during the 1980s was known as ‘USS Honduras’. the US Army’s Central American aircraft carrier. Today the US is strengthening its presence in Honduras, particularly around the Soto Cano Air Base, where 600 US military personnel are permanently stationed. It is the centre for the US military’s operation against drugs in Central America, and has recently seen its runway facilities improved. President Manuel Zelaya’s opposition to the US presence in Honduras was one of the main reasons he was removed in a coup in 2009 (see here for an analysis of the effects of the US military presence on Honduras).

In the decade under Reagan huge joint US-Honduras military wargames consisted of thousands of US troops landing in Honduras, then leaving their equipment for the Contra. Trump has already talked about a military invasion of Venezuela. So watch out for ramped up military ‘wargames’ in Honduras. We know what the results will be.

The people you meet in Nicaragua…

Since 1994 Wales NSC has organised 14 delegations to Nicaragua. Over 24 years we have had upwards of 300 meetings and visits. We have met with everyone from Government Ministers to community groups, Sandinistas and non-Sandinistas, to try to give the delegations as broad a picture of Nicaragua as possible. As one Sandinista said to us in our last visit in February, ‘go back and tell everyone about the good and the bad’, as no place is perfect.

As well as the formal meetings you also meet up with fellow visitors, and their impressions also help build up the picture. One of our members went out to work in Nicaragua between delegations in 2010 and 2011, and that’s when he met up with Carl-David and Wyatt, two young men from the United States, wanting to find out more about Nicaragua and with a taste for adventure.

People’s trajectories in Nicaragua are always interesting. Some that we’ve met up with have gone from community activists to Assembly Members. Some working in NGOs are now leading voices in the opposition, turning up in the National Dialogue. But what happened to Carl-David was particularly unusual.

Fairness and Accuracy?

In May his by-line – Carl-David Goette-Luciak – started turning up in the Guardian, the Washington Post and the BBC, amongst others. His reports were highly critical of the Ortega government, to the point he seemed almost embedded with the opposition. A cursory glance at his social media would have confirmed this. His re-tweets were often from opposition leaders, and many of his ‘friends’ on Facebook were historical opponents of the FSLN from the time of the split in the party in the mid-nineties.

His standard line (which was music to the ears of publications like the Guardian), was that this was the violent suppression of a peaceful insurrection. The one-sided nature of coverage of the violence has been examined by FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, in the United States), which looked at 45 articles posted by Reuters (see here). As more and more articles from Carl-David appeared in the mainstream media,  social media started asking what exactly was Carl-David’s agenda? There were accusations that he had witnessed and wilfully ignored opposition violence.

As the evidence built up (which is one of the things journalism is supposed to do), it was finally all gathered together in an article by Max Blumenthal (see here), published on Sept 26. It details Carl-David’s involvement with the opposition, his failure to report opposition violence, and as the accusation of bias increased, his attempts to remove photos of himself and opposition leaders from his social media.

Who Guards the Guardian?

Predictably, the Nicaraguan government finally lost patience with him and he was deported on October 1. Even more predictably, the Guardian said he was kicked out for “covering Nicaragua’s political upheaval” (see here for the full account). The Guardian stated that Blumenthal’s article was a “lengthy, insinuation-infused attack on the journalist”, and just in case we were left in any doubts about the young man’s motives, they quoted his father: “He is driven by his love for the Nicaraguan people and nothing else.”

The Guardian also called up as evidence the Committee to Protect Journalists, who had issued a statement on September 26, denouncing the smears and threats against Goette-Luciak. Our own National Union of Journalists then bravely joined the fray, raising ‘serious concerns about the safety of journalists in Nicaragua.” It is worth noting that the NUJ said nothing when the pro-government station Radio Ya was burnt to the ground, forcing the 22 workers there to flee.

So is this yet again another example of Nicaraguan government’s persecution of anyone who opposes them, and how fortunate we are to have a free press in the UK and the US, who act only with integrity and concern for the truth?

Perhaps so. Except for one thing.

Remember Carl-David’s friend, Wyatt, at the beginning of the article? The two young adventurers wanting to find out more about Nicaragua? Well Wyatt Reed went back to Nicaragua with Carl-David in 2016.  Back in the United States two years later, and reading his friend’s articles, he finally felt the time had come to speak out (see here for an extended interview with him in the Canary). He wrote to the editor of the Guardian after their report on Carl-David’s deportation – the letter is reproduced below. Up to now he’s had no reply.

To the editor,

As a long time friend and former collaborator of your correspondent with the Nicaraguan opposition, I feel compelled to make a few points clear in light of the recent media frenzy over the deportation from Nicaragua of Carl–David Goette Luciak. I must be extremely clear: in the six months we lived and worked together in Nicaragua we were both very open about our plan to use our friendships with Nicaraguan opposition figures to push for the end of the Sandinista government and create careers for ourselves as journalists or consultants in the process. We were not CIA—but we were in many ways serving its same historical purpose.

I must stress that I wish no ill will on Carl-David. I’ve known him since middle school, we were best friends for much of our lives, and I want only to set the record straight. Having already spent several years in Nicaragua, I had made connections with multiple prominent anti-government groups at the time of our partnership. And since I introduced him to many of them, I feel compelled to state publicly that any notion we had of being impartial and objective journalists was simply a lie. We arrived together in Managua in January 2016 without prior journalistic experience but with a shared understanding that the Nicaraguan government represented a fundamental betrayal of socialist ideals, and the shared understanding that the ruling Sandinista party needed to be removed from power. 

In the time since, I’ve come to understand that regardless of our personal feelings on the Nicaraguan president or government, any illusions we had of being uniquely capable of helping the Nicaraguan people achieve self-determination were ultimately founded in a kind of white savior complex. I left, realizing Americans cannot liberate the Nicaraguan people. Not thirty years ago, when the US government created the Contra army to fight a decade long war against socialist Nicaragua, and not now. Americans can only help destroy their government, and in the process hand power over to the same conservative neoliberals who seek to roll back the Nicaraguan safety net, privatize national resources, and undo a decade of improvements in poverty reduction and healthcare.

I have many disagreements with the Sandinista party. However, I do not feel that the violent overthrow of their government can in any way benefit working class Nicaraguans. I mourn with them the tragic deaths of the hundreds killed in the gunfights between police and armed opposition. But if the Sandinista government falls we must ask ourselves: how many tens of thousands more will die when the health clinics are closed? How many children will go barefoot, hungry, and uneducated if their welfare state is abolished? They can’t just fly back to the United States. Unlike them, the westerners who bring about “regime change” rarely have to stick around and suffer the consequences.

Wyatt Reed

The NGOisation of Nicaragua

It looks like the worst of the violence in Nicaragua is over. It would seem that the self-declared aim of the opposition – to remove Daniel Ortega from power – has failed, at least for now. Though it is likely that there will be sporadic outbreaks of further violence, both sides will now examine the reasons why protests over pensions turned into violent confrontation which led to 300 dead, and what looks like a soft coup (see here for an on the spot account by a US human rights activist) .

After the initial protests and deaths, the opposition coalesced around the Alianza Civica. Many of the players in this unlikely alliance came from the business sector (previously happy to sit down with the Sanindistas); civil society; and students. Some of the organisations were directly funded by the National Endowment for Democracy. Others had decided the wind was now blowing against the Ortega Presidency, and it was time to jump ship. All were held together by the ‘mediation’ of the Catholic Church. Ironically, the church could be said to have sown the seeds of a lot of the discontent with the Sandinista government when they manoeuvred to get rid of the right to abortion three weeks before the Presidential election in 2006, which the FSLN won after 16 years out of power.

Contradictions in the Nicaraguan opposition

If you want to find out what the opposition hoped for, you can do no worse than read this by Azahálea Solís (who was part of the National Dialogue), written shortly after the National Dialogue talks broke down at the end of May. The reality is this was the high point in the opposition to the Ortega government, with a single demand for him to step down with elections to follow quickly.

This was explicit from the beginning. Miami-born student leader Lesther Aleman received widespread praise from some sections of the Nicaraguan and international press when he told Daniel Ortega in the first Dialogue meeting: “This is not a dialogue table, it is a table to negotiate your departure, and you know it very well because it is the people who have requested it!… Surrender before the entire population!”

By the end of the third meeting at the end of May opposition organisations were acively encouraging a military coup. On June 1 electoral observation organisation Etica y Transparencia called on “the corresponding authorities to ensure the appearance in the courts of these two (Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo) thus-far alleged criminals” and on the Army to “ensure implementation of the prompt and necessary arrests, as well as  a fair trial.” Etica y Transparenica have long received National Endowment for Democracy funding through the National Democratic Institute. In 2012 one of EyT’s leading lights made the jump in the other direction after 11 years with Etica y Transparencia. Abril Perez became a Reagan-Fascell Fellow at the National Endowment for Democracy, where she still works today.

Seen from two months on, it’s easy to see that if the oppositon had not obsessed with removing Ortega here and now via a soft coup, instead of making changes to the electoral system and timetable (which was already being discussed with the Organisation of American States), then they would now be in a strong position. The OAS said that electoral reform proposals would be presented to the government in January 2019.

Instead, the Alianza went down the road of more road blocks, more confrontation, more economic pain. Or what Michael Healy, one of the business leaders in the National Dialogue, stated: “We are willing to pay the price [of continued street conflict] to see Ortega leave.” The reality was, of course, it wasn’t Healy and his fellow members of the Alianza who were paying the price on the streets. Their position is comprehensively taken apart here, describing the contradictions which existed within the Alianza.

Contradictions at home

Those same contradictions exist with those who having been supporting the opposition outside of Nicaragua – Wales and the UK included. At first glance their criticism of the FSLN governments since 2007 comes from the left. Ortega has betrayed Sandinismo, with Nicaragua’s neo-liberal ‘navigation of capitalist waters’ (as one journalist described it to us in February). It is curious then to see SOSNicaraguaUK re-tweeting messages from Florida Republican Congress members, some of the most reactionary in the US. Stranger still to see them re-tweeting Trump Vice President Mike Pence, who’s politics are straight out of The Handmaid’s Tale. The VP for Gilead has called for the removal of a string of governments in Latin America.

Many of the opposition supporters in the UK have had long relationships with Nicaraguan NGOs. Many of the NGOs sprung up after the chaos that engulfed Nicaragua when the revolution ended in 1990. The huge experiment in participatory democracy in 1980s Nicaragua cleaved into two halves – a ‘professional’ NGO sector which attracted foreign funding, and grassroots organisations (‘GROs’, like the co-operatives, unions and the Movimiento Comunal) which were left to themselves. Their fates couldn’t have been more different. From 1990 to 2005 NGO numbers grew from 300 to 2,000, and their funding grew from $90 million in 2000 to $289 million in 2005. GROs fared less well. Trade union membership fell from 22% in 1989 to less than 8% in 2008. The number of co-operatives fell from 3,800 to 400 in 1999 (see here for an excellent analysis of the NGOisation of Nicaragua). The success of the NGOs were due to neo-liberal programmes emphasising the sector over governments, and many of the brigadistas during the 80s moving into positions within aid and funding agencies, and channelling funds to ‘trusted partners’ in Nicaragua.

To a great extent this has been reversed since the FSLN regained power in 2007. Trade unions membership has grown considerably, and the number of co-operatives has passed 4,500. At the same time the funding of NGOs in Nicaragua has been squeezed, as donor countries have either chosen to prioritise other regions, or have refused to support an Ortega-led Nicaragua.

Accountable to whom?

What has all this got to do with the unrest? Many of Nicaragua’s NGOs have thrown in their lot with the opposition. Many of the grassroots organisations – like the ATC, the Co-operative sector, and the Movimiento Comunal – have continued to call for support for the National Dialogue. Unlike the trade unions, these three have no formal link with the FSLN. On many occasions they have challenged the government on their policies. But they still were quick to support the dialogue.

The difference between the NGOs and GROs is striking for a very important reason, one which was highlighted by the research above. The grassroots organisations are constituted from the ground up, accountable to their members, and speak on their behalf. The NGOs have no formal accountability to their beneficiaries (they rarely have members), and are more accountable to their donors than Nicaraguans. As we have noted elsewhere, many of the most vocal organisations in the oppostion have received over $4 million from the National Endowment for Democracy over the past four years. Even more striking, USAID pumped $31 million into Nicaragua last year.

What is puzzling is that many of the supporters of SOSNicaraguaUK know this. Many have visited Nicaragua for decades, have long lasting friendships within the NGOs, but have also worked with the grassroots organisations.

So why have they decided to privilege the viewpoint of the NGO sector, whilst ignoring independent organisations in Nicaragua which are democratic and bottom-up, and who call for a National Dialogue as the best way to avoid further bloodshed in the country? Here are some of the views from Nicaragua they don’t share.

Extract from Statement by ATC, May 17 (Association de Trabajadores del Campo has 52,000 members, and is a member of Via Campesina)

Historically, the ATC has been a participant in the Sandinista struggle. In truth, we have not felt consulted or represented by the current FSLN government. The current coup attempt makes use of these historical contradictions and is trying to co-opt the symbols, slogans, poems and songs of Nicaragua’s Sandinista Revolution, since of course the rightwing has none of its own. However we may feel about Daniel Ortega, the ATC would never contribute to making chaos and sowing violence in order to force the collapse of the democratically elected government in order to install a more docile, Washington-friendly neoliberal government. There are clearly real frustrations in sectors of the
population, especially youth, and if these sectors are unable to find popular organizing processes, they will end up being the cannon fodder for a war, which would be the worst possible situation for the Nicaraguan people.

Extract from statement by SOPPEXCCA, July 12 (SOPPEXCCA is a second tier co-operative with 15 co-operatives made up of 650 families. Similar statements have been issued by the co-operative sector body CONACOOP).

‘The UCA SOPPEXCCA, as an entity of organised small producers, promotes a culture of peace, harmony, respect for the law and democratic participation.

We therefore give our support to peaceful solutions and call for an end to the culture of violence generated in our country owing to the events that we are experiencing and which affect us both individually and collectively, since the peace that we enjoyed in our Nicaragua disappeared in the most abrupt and tempestuous fashion.

We feel the grief of many Nicaraguan families who have lost loved ones, tranquillity and have to face up to the consequences.

We, as Nicaraguans, will also face consequences as it is evident that there will be an economic slowdown that will affect the majority of our people, especially the poorest families, the majority.

Sadly, many dreams are being left behind as we wait for the shining light of peace to emerge again; reconciliation and work will be our standard bearers as we endeavour to lift our country out of the poverty levels we find ourselves in.

No amnesty for liars

The El Sueno Existe festival held in Machynlleth, mid-Wales, last week was a hotbed of debate. SOSNicaragua, who’s clearly-stated aim is to overthrow the Nicaraguan government, were there in force, including two Nicaraguan speakers flown in from Belgium for the event.

But the opposition kicked off with a statement from the floor from a representative of Amnesty International, who is also a former active member of the Nicaragua Solidarity Campaign. His message was simple, the Nicaraguan government ‘has killed over 300 protesters’.

The purpose of the message is clear. It is intended to undermine the Nicaraguan government, and make it easier for it to be removed. There’s only one thing that’s wrong with it – it’s a lie, and isn’t even based on the sources that Amnesty uses.

Amnesty’s report at the end of May relied heavily on Nicaraguan human rights organisations to provide them with information, as well as the local media (see here for their report on the violence in Nicaragua). It was also compiled after a limited number of interviews (30 face to face), and examining the documentation of 16 deaths. It used local newspapers as a source, and reviewed video and photo images, many of which are shared on social media. The report was heavily criticised at the time by a former Amnesty Prisoner of Conscience (see here).

Since then it has increased its estimates of the deaths, to the point where the Amnesty representative in El Sueno claimed over 300 -protesters have died. But even one of Amnesty’s main sources, CENIDH, doesn’t agree with this. In a recent report in Nicaraguan on-line magazine Confidencial (which is aligned with the opposition), CENIDH states at least 52 of the 292 dead are police and government supporters (see here).

Others have challenged this number as well. In a detailed analysis by Enrique Hendrix (see here), who is open about his support for the Sandinista government, he goes through the list of names compiled by human rights organisations in Nicaragua (ANPDH, CIDH and CENIDH), from April 18 – June 25. They add up to a total of 293 deaths, more than CENIDH’s figure a month later. This is partly explained by the fact that one of the organisations, the ANPDH, has consistently stoked the fires by exaggerating the numbers. As of two days ago, it was reporting in the United States that nearly 450 had died.

As the author of the analysis states, at the end of June:

 A significant number of these deaths, however, are *not* the responsibility of the Nicaraguan government.  When all the cases are examined individually, they can be broken down into the following categories:

51 deaths not related to protests in any way

60 persons killed by the *opposition* to the Nicaraguan government

59 deaths of demonstrators (protesters, anti-government opposition, roadblockers)

46 persons passing by the protests (not involved)

77 names with incomplete data and/or whose context could not be determined

Why is there such a huge difference? Since the beginning solidarity organisations have been saying the situation is extremely complex; information has been hard to verify, particularly after much of the country was shut down with tranques (roadblocks); and too many people have been killed on both sides.

This uncertainty is not shared by Amnesty International. Part of the reason may be their Director for the Americas, Erika Guevara-Rosas. She travelled to Managua with the Amnesty delegation that compiled their May report. Even a cursory glance at her twitter feed shows she is openly siding with the opposition, regulary tagging #SOSNicaragua, and re-tweeting Fox News.

********

@ErikaGuevaraR Jul 23Erika Guevara-Rosas Retweeted Fox News

1 Ortega is a professional liar 2 He accepts existence of paramilitaries, the ones who operate in collusion with his police 3 He said no peaceful demonstration is attacked. I was there as @amnesty observing the Mothers march and witnessed police and paramilitaries brutal attacks

Guevara-Rosas is also selective in what she choses to share on her Twitter feed. On July 13 she tweeted about the police clearing the tranques from Monimbo and Masaya, after the area had been cut off from the rest of the country for weeks. Tragically one police officer and two protesters died during the operation.

The previous day there had been greater loss of life in El Morrito (see here), something which Guevara-Rosas was silent about, as were much of the international media. Perhaps this had something to do with the fact that the dead were four unarmed policeman and a teacher? Or that in this case it was the protesters who were armed. Or even that the march was led by Francisca Ramirez, leader of the anti-canal movement, who changed her story several times about the killings as she was challenged.

Anyone familiar with Guevara-Rosas work will not have been surprised by what she is pumping out and sharing on behalf of Amnesty. Before the 2016 Presidential elections in Nicaragua she wrote a piece (see here) telling her readers about four things they should know about the election. One of the four things was that women are second class citizens in Nicaragua, and she directly attacked the government’s record on maternal mortality. Unfortunately for Guevara-Rosas, the people who do know about these things – the Pan American Health Organisation, which is part of the WHO – says maternal mortality has been cut by more than half since the Sandinistas took over in 2007 (see here).

Amnesty has given up all pretence to be an impartial source of information about human rights in Nicaragua, something it now shares with other ‘independent’ human rights organisations in the country. One of them, the ANPDH (who’s claims did so much to ratchet up the tension at the beginning of the violence), has a long history. United States funding for the ANPDH goes back to the Contra War, where it openly supported the counter-revolution. It is also interesting to note that the OAS’s main human rights organisation, the IACHR, moved to ‘protect’ the head of the ANPDH at the beginning of June, as a ‘human rights defender’ (see here).

Another human rights organisation, the Comision Permanente de Derechos Humanos de Nicaragua, has received substantial funding from the US National Endowment for Democracy (see here for more on the NED, in an extract from William Blum’s classic Rogue State). Last year the CPDH received the following from the NED:

Promoting Access to Justice and Human Rights in Nicaragua

Comision Permanente de Derechos Humanos de Nicaragua

 $72,440

To promote and protect human rights in Nicaragua. The project will provide legal assistance to citizens facing challenges in accessing the justice system. Human rights conditions in prisons and detention facilities will be monitored and and proposals for their improvement will be presented to relevant authorities.  International mechanisms will be used to monitor and report human rights violations and raise awareness about the country’s international obligations to protect human rights.

 Promoting Free and Fair Municipal Elections

Comision Permanente de Derechos Humanos de Nicaragua

Supplement: $39,000

To promote free and fair elections in Nicaragua. In partnership with other organizations, local activists and volunteers will receive training to monitor and document any voting irregularities during the November 2017 municipal elections. A call center will receive reports of human rights violations during election day and inform the public about its findings.

Of course, all the above could be dismissed as cherry picking, selective use of sources, and starting from a pre-determined bias which only gives room for one side of the story. But then again, isn’t that what SOSNicaragua, Amnesty and people like Erika Guevara-Rosas have been doing since the end of April?

Nicaragua Solidarity Campaign Action Group briefing

The Nicaragua Solidarity Campaign Action Group issued a new statement yesterday about the current situation in the country. It describes the events over the past three months, and repeats its support for the National Dialogue as a way of resolving the crisis which has shaken the country since April. See here for the full statement.

El Sueno Existe – the Dream Lives On

Over the weekend Wales NSC shared a platform with the UK Nicaraguan Ambassador in the ‘El Sueno Existe’ festival in Machynlleth in mid-Wales. It was an opportunity to challenge the mis-information that has been coming from the mainstream media like the Guardian and the BBC, and organisations like SOSNicaragua.

Supporters of SOSNicaragua and the former solidarity organisation Sheffield Esteli Society, were out in force, putting their viewpoint. One of them, a worker with Amnesty International, again claimed that over 300 protesters have been killed by the government. Wales NSC has always acknowledged that violence has involved deaths on both sides, and this was one of the main reasons to support the National Dialogue.

However the opposition, who’s view Amnesty supports, always claim that the government is responsible for all the deaths. The dead include over 20 police officers, government workers, and FSLN supporters who have been tortured, murdered and set on fire. Amnesty has a responsibility to be impartial, something which it is failing to do. It received stinging criticism from a former Amnesty Prisoner of Conscience, the Nicaraguan-American, Camilo Mejia, after publishing its first report (See here).

Amnesty, Sheffield Esteli and SOSNicaragua also present the young people who have been touring the United States and Europe as the inheritors of the Sandinista revolution. Again we challenged them on this. We highlighted the ties between the organisations they are linked to and the United States’ National Endowment for Democracy.

These links are never made apparent when the students are presented to audiences. The students who visited the United States on behalf of the Alianza Civica (Nicaragua’s opposition co-ordinating body), met with the most right wing elements of the Republican Party, including Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen.

Their visit was funded by Freedom House, which in turn is supported by the National Endowment for Democracy. The NED was set up in the 1980s, partly as a result of the CIA’s aid to the Nicaraguan opposition being exposed. It became a way of channelling money legally to undermine governments the United States disagrees with, many of them in Central and South America. NED’s history in Nicaragua, including recent funding, is set out here, by an author who is not sympathetic to the Nicaraguan government.

To make matters worse for the opposition, the students then went on to meet Neto Muyshondt, the ARENA mayor of San Salvador (see here). Those with any knowledge of Central American history will know about ARENA’s ties to the death squads, most notoriously the death squad assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero, and later six Jesuits. Once this PR disaster was realised, tweets relating to the meeting were deleted, and some of the Nicaraguan opposition tried to distance themselves from the visits (a common tactic once they backfire).

The biographies of some of the students touring Europe, including the UK, make for interesting reading (see here). One is a founder member of the Movimiento Civico de Juventudes, which was set up in 2015. It has since been funded by the National Democratic Institute, which is part of the NED (see here). The General Secretary of the MCJ is David Jose Nicaragua Lopez. He also works for the NDI in Nicaragua.

Another of those on tour has worked for the IEEPP, an organisation which has received $200,000 from the NED. Nicaragua Lopez also has links with the IEEPP. Even as we were preparing for the El Sueno festival at the end of last week the head of the IEEPP, Felix Maradriaga, was lobbying USAID to increase support for the Nicaraguan opposition. It responded with a further $1.5 million in funding (see here ). This is in addition to the $4.2 million that the NED has pumped into Nicaragua over the past three years.

All the speakers in the ‘caravans’ touring the US and Europe are entitled to give their viewpoint. But anyone turning up to the meetings should at least expect to know their background. Anyone with a bit of knowledge of organisations in Nicaragua and 15 minutes of time to google can get access to the above information. But of course, the organisers depend on the audience not being able to do this, and being swept away by the so-called ‘inheritors of Sandinismo’.

Camilo Mejia and Amnesty International

Sometimes life is surprising. Back in the seventies Carlos Mejia Godoy, perhaps Nicaragua’s most famous singer (along with his brother), were ardent Sandinistas. Many of their songs portrayed the struggles of the guerillas, and celebrated the lives of ordinary Nicaraguans. But in the 1990s Carlos broke with the FSLN, and has been a vocal critic ever since.

But there is another life-story here. Again back in the seventies, Carlos had a relationship with a Costa Rican woman, Maritza Castillo. When their relationship ended Maritza headed north, landing in the US, taking her two sons with her. Her life was complicated, including multiple moves, eventually arriving back in the US. Her youngest, Camilo, worked hard in school, whilst also holding down a job. He joined the US Army, with its promise of paying his college tuition fees. Eventually in 2003, Camilo Mejia was sent to Iraq. After his first tour of duty he refused to go back, spoke out against the war, was arrested and jailed. He was adopted by Amnesty International as a Prisoner of Conscience.

Amnesty has been scathing about the Nicaraguan government, both before and during the present crisis and violence. It lays the blame for all the bloodshed at the door of Daniel Ortega, despite the police, municipal workers and government supporters on the roll of the dead.

Camilo has reason to respect Amnesty International, having seen their work close up. This is what he has written this week about Amnesty and Nicaragua.

Open Letter to Amnesty International

by a Former Amnesty International Prisoner of Conscience

Through this letter I express my unequivocal condemnation of Amnesty International with regards to the destabilizing role it has played in Nicaragua, my country of birth.

I open this letter quoting Donatella Rovera, who at the time this quote was made had been one of Amnesty International’s field investigators for more than 20 years:

“Conflict situations create highly politicized and polarized environments (…). Players and interested parties go to extraordinary lengths to manipulate or manufacture “evidence” for both internal and external consumption. A recent, though by no means the only, example is provided by the Syrian conflict in what is often referred to as the “YouTube war,” with a myriad techniques employed to manipulate video footage of incidents which occurred at other times in other places – including in other countries – and present them as “proof” of atrocities committed by one or the other parties to the conflict in Syria.”

Ms. Rovera’s remarks, made in 2014, properly describe the situation of Nicaragua today, where even the preamble of the crisis was manipulated to generate rejection of the Nicaraguan government. Amnesty International’s maliciously titled report, Shoot to Kill: Nicaragua’s Strategy to Repress Protest, could be dismantled point by point, but doing so requires precious time that the Nicaraguan people don’t have, therefore I will concentrate on two main points:

• The report completely lacks neutrality and;
• Amnesty International’s role is contributing to the chaos in which the nation finds itself.

The operating narrative, agreed-upon by the local opposition and the corporate western media, is as follows: That president Ortega sought to cut 5 percent from retirees’ monthly retirement checks, and that he was going to increase contributions, made by employees and employers, into the social security system. The reforms sparked protests, the response to which was a government-ordered genocide of peaceful protestors, more than 60, mostly students. A day or two after that, the Nicaraguan government would wait until nightfall to send its police force out in order to decimate the Nicaraguan population, night after night, city by city, in the process destroying its own public buildings and killing its own police force, to then culminate its murderous rampage with a Mothers’ Day massacre, and so on.

While the above narrative is not uniformly expressed by all anti-government actors, the unifying elements are that the government is committing genocide, and that the president and vice-president must go.

Amnesty International’s assertions are mostly based on either testimony by anti-government witnesses and victims, or the uncorroborated and highly manipulated information emitted by U.S.-financed anti-government media outlets, and non-profit organizations, collectively known as “civil society.”

The three main media organizations cited by the report: Confidencial, 100% Noticias, and La Prensa, are sworn enemies of the Ortega government; most of these opposition news media organizations, along with some, if not all, of the main non-profits cited by the report, are funded by the United States, through organizations like the National Democratic Institute (NDI) and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which has been characterized by retired U.S. Congressman, Ron Paul, as:

“… an organization that uses US tax money to actually subvert democracy, by showering funding on favored political parties or movements overseas. It underwrites color-coded ‘people’s revolutions’ overseas that look more like pages out of Lenin’s writings on stealing power than genuine indigenous democratic movements.”

Amnesty’s report heavily relies on 100% Noticias, an anti-government news outlet that has aired manipulated and inflammatory material to generate hatred against the Nicaraguan government, including footage of peaceful protesters, unaware of the fact that the protesters were carrying pistols, rifles, and were shooting at police officers during incidents reported by the network as acts of police repression of opposition marches. On Mothers’ Day, 100% Noticias reported the purported shooting of unarmed protesters by police shooters, including an incident in which a young man’s brains were spilling out of his skull. The network followed the report with a photograph that Ms. Rovera would refer to as an incident “…which occurred at other times in other places.” The picture included in the report was quickly met on social media by links to past online articles depicting the same image.

One of the sources (footnote #77) cited to corroborate the alleged denial of medical care at state hospitals to patients injured at opposition events –one of the main accusations repeated and reaffirmed by Amnesty International- is a press conference published by La Prensa, in which the Chief of Surgery denies claims that he had been fired, or that hospital officials had denied care to protesters at the beginning of the conflict. “I repeat,” he is heard saying, “as the chief of surgery, I repeat [the] order: to take care of, I will be clear, to take care of the entire population that comes here, without investigating anything at all.” In other words, one of Amnesty International’s own sources contradicts one of its report’s main claims.

The above-mentioned examples of manipulated and manufactured evidence, to borrow the words of Amnesty’s own investigator, are just a small sample, but they capture the essence of this modality of U.S.-sponsored regime change. The report feeds on claims from those on one side of the conflict, and relies on deeply corrupted evidence; it ultimately helps create the mirage of a genocidal state, in turn generating more antigovernment sentiment locally and abroad, and paving the way for ever more aggressive foreign intervention.

A different narrative

The original reforms to social security were not proposed by the Sandinista government, but by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and they were supported by an influential business group, known as COSEP. They included raising the retirement age from 60 to 65 and doubling the number of quotas necessary to get full social security from 750 to 1500. Among the impacted retirees, approximately 53,000, are the families of combatants who died in the armed conflict of the 1980s, from both the Sandinista army and the “Contras,” the mercenary army financed by the United States government in the 1980s, around the same time the NED was created, in part, to stop the spread of Sandinismo in Latin America.

The Nicaraguan government countered the IMF’s reforms by rejecting the cutting out of any retirees, with a proposed 5% cut to all retirement checks, an increase in all contributions to the social security system, and with fiscal reform that removed a tax-ceiling that protected Nicaragua’s biggest salaries from higher taxation. The business sector was furious, and together with nongovernmental organizations organized the first marches, using the pretext of the reforms in the same manipulative way Amnesty International’s report explains them: “… the reform increased social security contributions by both employers and employees and imposed an additional 5% contribution on pensioners.”

The continuing narrative, repeated and validated by Amnesty International, is that the protesters are peaceful and the genocidal government is irrationally bent on committing atrocities in plain sight. Meanwhile, the number of dead among Sandinista supporters and police officers continues to rise. The report states that ballistic investigations suggest that those shooting at protesters are likely trained snipers, pointing to government involvement, but fails to mention that many of the victims are Sandinistas, regular citizens, and police officers. It also does not mention that the “peaceful protesters” have burned down and destroyed more than 60 public buildings, among them many City Halls, Sandinista houses, markets, artisan shops, radio stations, and more; nor does it mention that the protesters have established “tranques,” or roadblocks, in order to debilitate the economy as a tactic to oust the government. Such “tranques” have become extremely dangerous scenes where murder, robbery, kidnapping, and the rape of at least one child have taken place; a young pregnant woman whose ambulance wasn’t let through also died on May 17^th. All of these crimes occur daily and are highly documented, but aren’t included in Amnesty International’s report.

While the organization is right to criticize the government’s belittling response to the initial protests, such response was not entirely untrue. According to the report, Vice-President Murillo said, among other things, that “…they [the protesters] had made up the reports of fatalities (…) as part of an anti-government strategy.” What Amnesty leaves out is that several of the reported dead students did turn up alive, one of them all the way in Spain, while others had not been killed at rallies, nor were they students or activists, including one who died from a scattered bullet, and another who died from a heart attack in his bed.

Amnesty’s report also leaves out that many of the students have deserted the movement, alleging that there are criminals entrenched at universities as well as at the various “tranques,” who are only interested in destabilizing the nation. Those criminals have created a state of sustained fear among the population, imposing “taxes” on those who want passage, persecuting those who refuse to be detained, kidnapping them, beating them, torturing them, and setting their cars on fire. In a common practice, they undress their victims, paint their naked bodies in public with the blue and white of the Nicaraguan flag, and then set them free, prompting them to run right before shooting them with homemade mortar weapons. All of this information, which did not make the report, is available in numerous videos and other sources.

Why Nicaragua?

The most basic review of the history between Nicaragua and the United States will show a clear rivalry. Beginning in the mid-1800s, Nicaragua has been resisting U.S. intervention into the country’s affairs, a resistance that continued through the 20^th century, first with General August C. Sandino’s fight in the 1920s and 30s, and then with the Sandinistas, organized as the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), which overthrew the U.S.-supported, 40-year Somoza family dictatorship in 1979. The FSLN, despite having gained power through armed struggle, called for elections shortly after its triumph in 1984, and eventually lost to yet another U.S.-supported coalition of right-wing political parties in 1990. The FSLN once again managed, aided by pacts made with the church and the opposition, to win the election of 2006, and has remained in power since.

In addition to Nicaragua’s close ties with Venezuela, Cuba, Russia, and especially China, with whom the country signed a contract to build a canal, the other main reason the United States is after the Sandinistas, is Nicaragua’s highly successful economic model, which represents an existential threat to the neoliberal economic order imposed by the U.S. and its allies.

Despite always being among the poorest nations in the American continent and the world, Nicaragua has managed, since Ortega returned to power in 2007, to cut poverty by three quarters. Prior to the protests in April, the country’s economy sustained a steady annual economic growth of about 5% for several years, and the country had the third fastest-growing economy in Latin America, and was one of the safest nations in the region.

The government’s infrastructural upgrades have facilitated trade among Nicaragua’s poorest citizens; they have created universal access to education: primary, secondary, and university; there are programs on land, housing, nutrition, and more; the healthcare system, while modest, is not only excellent, but accessible to everyone. Approximately 90% of the food consumed by Nicaraguans is produced in Nicaragua, and about 70% of jobs come from the grassroots economy –rather than from transnational corporations- including from small investors from the United States and Europe, who have moved to the country and are a driving force behind the tourism industry.

The audacity of success, of giving its poorest citizens a life with dignity, of being an example of sovereignty to wealthier, more powerful nations, all in direct contradiction to the neoliberal model and its emphasis on privatization and austerity, has once again placed Nicaragua in the crosshairs of U.S. intervention. Imagine the example to other nations -their economies already strangled by neoliberal policies- becoming aware of one of the poorest countries on earth being able to feed its people and grow its economy without throwing its poorest citizens under the iron boot of capitalism. The United States will never tolerate such a dangerous example.

In closing

The Nicaraguan government has deficiencies and contradictions to work on, like all governments, and as a Sandinista myself I would like to see the party transformed in various important ways, both internally and externally. I have refrained from writing of those deficiencies and contradictions, however, because the violent protests and ensuing chaos we have seen are not the result of the Nicaraguan government’s shortcomings, but rather, of its many successes; that inconvenient truth is the reason the United States and its allies, including Amnesty International, have chosen to “…create highly politicized and polarized environments (…). [And to] go to extraordinary lengths to manipulate or manufacture “evidence” for both internal and external consumption.”

At a time when even the Organization of American States, the United Nations, and the Vatican have called for peaceful and constitutional reforms as the only way out of the conflict, Amnesty International has continued to beseech the international community to not “abandon the Nicaraguan people.” Such biased stance, obscenely bloated on highly manipulated, distorted, and one-sided information, has made the terrible situation in Nicaragua even worse. The loss of Nicaraguan lives, including the blood of those ignored by Amnesty International, has been used to manufacture the “evidence” used in the organization’s report, which makes the organization complicit in what future foreign intervention might fall upon the Nicaraguan people. It is now up to the organization to correct that wrong, and to do so in a way that reflects a firm commitment first and foremost to the truth, wherever it might fall, and to neutrality, peace, democracy, and always, to the sovereignty of every nation on earth.

Sincerely,

Camilo E. Mejia,

Iraq war veteran, resister, and conscientious objector (2003-2004)

Amnesty International prisoner of conscience (June 2004)

Born in Nicaragua, citizen of the world