Every poll in Nicaragua has shown that the interoceanic canal has majority popular support, writes John Perry , and Helen Yuill says the canal raises a wider question faced by all developing countries

Your article (Nicaragua canal critics ‘face wave of persecution’, 4 August) begins by calling the protests against Nicaragua’s interoceanic canal “a mix of anger, fear and defiance not witnessed since the civil war between the Sandinista government and US-backed Contra rebels”. That war cost 30,000 lives, but no one has died in the canal protests.

The protesters have organised more than 90 marches, involving thousands of people. Yes, some of the marches have been stopped, arrests have been made and unknown people have attacked some of those taking part. Amnesty International calls this “a campaign of harassment and persecution”. Would they apply the same standards to the police action to stop protests against fracking in the UK? Polls in Britain show that fracking protesters have public opinion on their side. In Nicaragua, every poll has shown that the interoceanic canal has majority popular support, and the protesters are in a minority, even in many of the areas through which the canal will pass.

Of course a mega-project such as the canal should be scrutinised for its potential social, economic and environmental effects. But please don’t make facile comparisons between the protests and a recent war that had such a devastating affect on a small country.

John Perry

Masaya, Nicaragua

• The issue of Nicaragua’s proposed interoceanic canal is far more complex than Amnesty International’s report and your article suggest.

Nicaragua has suffered a long, turbulent history of intervention, war, and an imposed economic model that has left it with a weak, dependent economy and high levels of entrenched poverty. According to World Bank figures, poverty fell from 40.5% in 2009 to 29.6% in 2014. However, Nicaragua remains the second most impoverished country in the Americas after Haiti.

The Nicaraguan government and trade unions argue, with the support of the majority of the population, that the proposed canal would stimulate economic growth, generate employment, reduce poverty and enable the country to address rampant deforestation.

Since 2013 extensive feasibility and impact studies have been carried out on the social, environmental and technical aspects of the project. But the critical economic feasibility study remains outstanding, indicating a high level of uncertainty over whether the canal will be built.

Nicaragua’s canal raises a wider question faced by all developing countries in the context of development options available to them that would address poverty, inequality and climate change while protecting the environment.

Nicaraguan minister Dr Paul Oquist, in an Oxford Union debate on 6 May 2016, highlighted the responsibility of developed countries to address “the root cause of our crisis: the endless, limitless, mindless accumulation and concentration of capital on a planet with limited resources”.

Helen Yuill

London

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