Human Rights Watch criticises president after he took action against NGOs and media

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Activists and prominent members of Latin America’s left have condemned Nicaragua’s increasingly authoritarian regime under President Daniel Ortega after the former revolutionary hero stepped up his attack on political opponents by raiding some the country’s most important non-governmental organisations and media.

Since Thursday armed police have seized the headquarters of one of Nicaragua’s top independent media outlets, Confidencial, and its leading human rights group, CENIDH, in the latest phase of a crackdown designed to cement Ortega’s grip on power after months of protests.

Pro-Ortega lawmakers last week stripped nine NGOs of their legal status, with the government claiming the groups had “actively participated” in terrorist acts, hate crimes and a failed coup attempt against Ortega’s Sandinista regime.

José Miguel Vivanco, Human Rights Watch’s Americas director, said that by attacking such well-known organisations Nicaragua’s president was making clear his intention “to rule by terror and intimidation”.

He said: “This is a deliberate decision by Ortega to stay in power through brutal repression. There is no more facade of negotiation, or of a democratic regime … The policy being imposed … is zero tolerance to criticism.” Shutting down such groups was “something we haven’t even seen in Venezuela under Nicolás Maduro”.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Daniel Ortega. Photograph: Yamil Lage/AFP/Getty Images

Nicaraguan human rights defender Bianca Jagger rejected claims the targeted groups were part of a rightwing US-backed conspiracy to topple Ortega as “a complete and total fallacy”.

“He wants to eliminate any voice of dissent,” Jagger said of Nicaragua’s president, who became a flag-bearer for the global left thanks to his role in toppling the Somoza dictatorship in 1979.

“As someone who supported the revolution in the beginning I feel betrayed.”

There was censure too from prominent Latin American leftists including Colombia’s Gustavo Petro. “Daniel Ortega is not leading a democratic revolution,” tweeted the former guerrilla and mayor of Bogotá. “On the contrary, by imposing neoliberal and conservative measures on his people, he is building a tyranny.”

The United Nation’s human rights chief, former Chilean president Michelle Bachelet, urged Ortega to “immediately halt the persecution of human rights defenders, civil society organisations [and] journalists and news organisations that are critical of the government”.

The political turbulence rocking what had been considered one of Central America’s most stable countries erupted in April with the outbreak of student-led protests in Managua.

Those demonstrations swelled into a nationwide revolt after attempts to put them down with deadly force. Protesters seized control of key highways and towns including the longtime Sandinista stronghold of Masaya.

For a while the uprising looked set to dethrone Ortega, 73, whose cold war tussle with Washington made him a revolutionary icon but who is now increasingly seen as an autocrat. But a counter-attack by security forces and armed paramilitary gangs in July helped Ortega reclaim control of the streets and force thousands of dissidents into exile.

Since then, he has continued to turn up the heat on opponents, banning street protests and, most recently, targeting NGOs and media outlets who were documenting the turmoil. Journalists have been subjected to a campaign of intimidation and violence intended to snuff out coverage of the crisis, which activists blame for upwards of 325 deaths.

As this week’s crackdown unfolded, Ortega made what was reportedly his first overseas trip since the crisis began, traveling to a “Bolivarian” summit in Cuba where he met Maduro and Bolivia’s president, Evo Morales, and railed against “the tyranny of global capitalism”.

In an editorial, the opposition newspaper La Prensa slammed Ortega’s “massacre” of civil society. “Deep down what this is all about is that the dictatorship does not tolerate the existence of civil groups who nourish and strengthen democracy and denounce the abuse of power. That is why it is trying to liquidate them.”

The ratcheting up of repression has been accompanied by growing pushback from the US.

In November the US national security adviser, John Bolton, branded Nicaragua part of a Latin American “troika of terror” alongside Venezuela and Cuba. The Trump administration would “no longer appease dictators and despots near our shores”, Bolton vowed.

'We’re going to kill you': Nicaragua's brutal crackdown on press freedom Read more

Weeks later the treasury department hit Ortega’s vice-president and wife, Rosario Murillo, with sanctions it called a response to their regime’s “rampant corruption, dismantling of democratic institutions [and] serious human rights abuses”.

Jagger, the president of an eponymous human rights foundation, said she was encouraged by US efforts to hasten Ortega’s exit but said other countries needed to step up.

“This cannot be only the sanctions from the US. It needs to be sanctions for the European Union, from Canada, from Latin American countries, in order for this to work. The people of Nicaragua are totally vulnerable and at the mercy of a brutal and murderous dictator,” she said.

Some on the left also needed to abandon their illusions about Ortega, Jagger added. “This should not be an issue of left or right. This should be an issue of human rights. This should be an issue of morality.”

Carlos Fernando Chamorro, the editor of Confidencial, said his journalists would continue to cover the upheaval despite Ortega’s bid to silence them.

“We feel persecuted and threatened but our morale is intact,” said Chamorro, whose father’s 1978 assassination helped set in motion the downfall of the Somoza dictatorship.

“The people of Nicaragua have been massacred and incarcerated. The very least we can do is stay true to the principles of working for truth, justice and democracy in this country.”