WorthyNews: Nicaragua: Government Crackdown On Civilians “Tantamount To Crimes Against Humanity,” UN Experts Say

[WorthyNewsBot]

by Karen Faulkner, Worthy News Correspondent

(Worthy News) – The government of Nicaragua has been engaged in human rights abuses against civilians that are “tantamount to crimes against humanity,” a panel of UN-backed human rights experts warned on Thursday. Commissioned by the Human Rights Council, the experts made their findings during an investigation into President Daniel Ortega’s violent crackdown on political dissidents, the Associated Press reports.

Ongoing for years, Ortega’s intolerance for dissent has intensified, driving huge numbers of Nicaraguans to flee the country: recent figures show more than 180,000 visa-less Nicaraguans trekked to the US border seeking asylum in 2022, around 60 times more than two years prior. Tens of thousands have sought refuge in Costa Rica as well.

According to the UN-backed panel, Ortega has further extended his suppression of the Nicaraguan people to include university students, Indigenous and Black Nicaraguans, and members of the Catholic Church, AP reports. Children, too, have been targeted for having relatives who spoke against the government. The government’s actions are aimed at “incapacitating any kind of opposition in the long term,” the experts said.

“Serious systematic human rights violations, tantamount to crimes against humanity, continue to be perpetrated by the Nicaraguan government for political reasons,” the panel of experts reported.

The Ortega government has suppressed “all forms of opposition, whether real or perceived, both domestically and abroad,” Jan Simon, the panel’s leader, said in a statement. “The government has ensured that it remains in an increasingly solid bubble to perpetuate itself in power and annihilate anyone attempting to break that bubble.”

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[NConly]

The UN has no experts

[farouk]

9 minutes ago, NConly said:

The UN has no experts

@NConly Also, watch the peace and freedom loving opposition put the boot into the Sandinistas if ever they are ousted. And watch the media sing to a different tune if the current peace and freedom loving opposition impose their own restrictions. (And watch 40-year old news photos of Jerry Fallwell leading fundraisers for the nice Contras. Bob Woodward in his 'Veil: the Secret Wars of the CIA' shows just how nasty the "nice" Contras were.)

[farouk]

Nicaragua has been intervened in by the US ever since the California gold rush, when Wall Street - before the days of the telegraph and the railroad wanted to have up to date news of events in California, and the sea route via Nicaragua was the quickest means of communication.

Today, Wall Street (aka Council on Foreign Relations aka CIA) has interests which will likely take precedence over the views of impoverished Nicaraguans, whichever politicians they may in theory support.

As someone on the Senate Intelligence Committee said 40 years ago, If another country mined US harbors the way the US mined Nicaraguan harbors when Casey was DCI, there would be quite some fuss.

cc @NConly

Edited March 6 by farouk

[NConly]

I know very little of Nicaragua.

[farouk]

Just now, NConly said:

I know very little of Nicaragua.

@NConly 2c...............

Long before the coming of communism in Latin America, a century ago Sandino in Nicaragua and his followers were basically a nationalist reaction against US intervention.

Now long after the collapse of communism, this is still what the Sandinistas are about. (Maybe similarly Cuba; originally Castro was supposed to be cleaning the place up after Meyer Lansky and his associates.)

(Even in the Cold War, in Latin America it wasn't all about the US giving protection from communism. In 1973, Donald Kendall of Pepsi paid for the coup in Chile, less because of moral qualms about trading with Marxists but more because he was close to President Richard Nixon. It was indeed Richard Nixon as Vice President in the 50s who when visiting the USSR brokered a deal between Pepsi and his Soviet hosts: moral qualms about trading with Marxists, indeed...!)

So Latin Americans don't necessarily buy that the Cold War was all about the US protecting them from communism rather than about the commercial interests of US corporations influencing US foreign policy. (Where one exactly draws the line, depends on which Latin American that one might ask...)