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By Marco Navarro-Genie

Last week marked the 100th day of massive civic protests in the small Central American country of Nicaragua. Canadians should be alarmed by the rapid erosion of human rights in that country.

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Since mid-April, human rights organizations reported that nearly 300 opponents of the government of Daniel Ortega have been killed by police and paramilitary gangs. The police and the gangs have been working jointly, co-ordinated by the party in power, the Sandinista Front for National Liberation. Several thousand citizens have been wounded or brutally beaten, and more than 2,000 people (800 of them in a single day) have been kidnapped, arbitrarily detained or unlawfully imprisoned (close to 200 remain disappeared). A crude network of torturers has sprung up around the country.

Photo by Marvin Recinos/AFP/Getty Images

Canada has no strategic interests in Nicaragua, but it did provide some diplomatic support to the Cuban-trained and financed 1979 Sandinista Revolution and its president Daniel Ortega. An internationally supervised election forced Ortega out of power in 1990, bringing an end to 11 years of war and the economic chaos driven by failed predictably socialist market reforms. The country managed to rebuild precariously liberal institutions while Ortega positioned himself for a return to power. He carefully negotiated “electoral reforms” that would eventually bring him back into power 18 years later. Such is the measure of the man’s patience and ability to play the long game.