The Return of Sandinista Oppression

Timothy Birdnow

Here is a six month old article about the tyranny being imposed by Daniel Ortega and the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. Since retaking power they have systematically turned Nicaragua into a police state, and nobody seemed to notice.

And of course the American Left has simply ignored them despite going after their own sacred cows (like a very strict pro-life policy there.)

Ortega has ruled Nicaragua since 2007. George W. Bush let that happen.

So, Communists are now in Cuba, in Venezuela, and in Nicaragua, and they are coming in many other places in this hemisphere. Strangely there is little concern.

From the article:

The assault on human rights accelerated, the New York Times reports, when "a wave of arrests of politicians and civil society leaders on unsubstantiated charges of subversion ... left the long-ruling president, Daniel Ortega, running practically unopposed in November’s general elections.” Ortega’s blacklist included many former Sandinista supporters, including one of his Ambassadors to the United States, Arturo Cruz Jr., and Cristiana Chamorro, daughter of former president Violeta Chamorro.

When demonstrations erupted in the revolutionary town of Masaya (the center of the Sandinistas’ war against the Somoza regime in the 1970s), it looked for a moment as if Ortega would be forced from power, and that a new democratic government might be allowed, finally, to emerge. Ortega responded by shuttering a major independent TV station and arresting its news director, closing down the independent Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights (CENIDH) and confiscating its computers, and expelling foreign NGOs from the country.

Vilma Núñez, the CENIDH president and a former Sandinista, told a reporter from the Timesthat Nicaragua is even more repressive today than it was under the Somozas. Protests became so large that when rubber bullets proved to be ineffective, Ortega ordered his troops and police to respond with grenade launchers and assault rifles. In the past few weeks, with national elections scheduled for November 7th, Daniel Ortega and his wife, Vice-President Rosario Murillo, have taken unprecedented steps to ensure that they result in a comfortable win for the regime.

Ortega and many of his Latin American counterparts continue to blame Nicaragua’s troubles on "American imperialism,” but the non-sectarian American Left has demurred. Earlier this year, American writer and activist Margaret Randall joined 500 other former pro-Sandinista activistswho signed a letter accusing the Ortega-Murillo regime of betraying "the memory of tens of thousands of Nicaraguans who died for a democratic Nicaragua.” They continued: "We are well aware of—and detest—the long, shameful history of US government intervention in Nicaragua and many other countries in Latin America. However, the crimes of the US government—past and present—are not the cause of, nor do they justify or excuse, the crimes against humanity committed by the current regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo.”

In an article for the Havana Times on July 1st, Randall explained her decision to sign the open letter like this:

The Ortega-Murillo duo is so power-crazy and cruel that we—as part of a US community who once actively supported the Sandinista government—felt we had to challenge them in our open letter. There is ample documentation about the many ways in which they have usurped power, kidnapped, imprisoned and tortured anyone opposing them, and repressed protestors in general.

I have a question; why was Obama so desperate to return the Communist Manuel Zalaya in power in Honduras, but was fine with Ortega in Nicaragua?

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 12:48 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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