Your Occasional News Update, from Nicaragua (Jan 24, 2019)

January 24, 2019

Nicaragua

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Protest, by Adam Baker, 2008 (https://flic.kr/p/4UxZbs)

I usually write all my news updates on Facebook, but this one is long and contains a Twitter thread, so it definitely warrants the blog treatment.
COSEP DENIED PERMIT; HOSTS PRESS CONFERENCE.
 
Cosep Nicaragua, AmCham Nicaragua, and FUNIDES sat down with members of the press this morning, to offer a post-mortem after being denied permission to march in Managua today. Jose Adan Aguerri, president of COSEP read a prepared statement, in which he summarized the role of the three organizations played in the National Dialogue. “We were invited by the Episcopal Conference”, said Aguerri, rejecting the OrMu Police’s characterization of COSEP, AMCHAM, and FUNIDES as participants in the “failed coup”
 
 
According to the statement, the denial has no legal basis and is unconstitutional. Furthermore, it is a gross misinterpretation of Law 849. In COSEP’s interpretation, the law does not “explicitly” forbid organizing a march, because this march is not “political proselytism”.
 
Big business in Nicaragua… you have a point, but the law that was used as part of the rationale to deny your permit was unconstitutional since it was passed in 2013, and NOT ONE OF YOU even tried to file an appeal before the court, on the grounds of unconstitutionality.
 
The most interesting part of the statement was when Aguerri “demanded” that the police back the accusations levied against the three organizations:
 
“The national police, without any legal basis, rejected out request using political arguments that go against the principles of professionalism and legality that guide police action. They accuse us of participating in a series of absurd activities that we reject energetically. We demand that those baseless accusations be retracted immediately”
 
Don’t hold your breath, Mr. Aguerri. OrMu police does whatever they want, and in this case, private industry is very much to blame. Unlike CENIDH and other organizations that never stopped advocating for human rights, and were punished for it, COSEP and the others enjoyed a privileged relationship with the dictatorship for over a decade. Time to pay the piper, gentlemen.
 
RECONCILIATION LAW IS FAIT ACCOMPLI
 
In other news that should not be news to ANYONE, the OrMu assembly just approved Rosario Murillo’s Reconciliation Law (if you need a refresher, I wrote about it here and here). The Sandinista majority had all the necessary votes to pass the bill, though the Liberal Party, the Conservatives, and the Yatama indigenous party opposed it. On this subject, La Prensa quoted Liberal Assemblyman Maximino Rodriguez, who characterized the law as “the imposition model of political indoctrination in schools, and forcing Nicaraguans to dialogue with the police, even though they have assassinated the people”.
 
Even before the law passed, OrMu got busy setting the wheels in motion. Indeed, the law established a permanent campaign to promote “family values and harmony”, using, among other tools, a “pamphlet” (cartilla) on the subject. Yesterday, Rosario Murillo announced that the dictatorship was distributing thousands of these pamphlets in all the schools, nationwide.
COSTA RICA RESPONDS TO OrMu.
 
OrMu sent Costa Rica a protest note, a diplomatic form of communication that one government sends to another when it feels wronged. OrMu feels wronged, specifically by of the violent death of several police officers in San Carlos, Rio San Juan.
 
OrMu’s note states that the people responsible for the attack came from Costa Rica, where they have been hiding in “security houses” in Alajuela, “where people who lead criminal organizations are gathered”. As proof, OrMu cites reporting by Frances Robles, in the New York Times, and reporting in Costa Rican Media.
 
Frances Robles immediately and categorically objected to the mischaracterization of her reporting, as OrMu had attributed to her several pieces of information that were not in her article AT ALL.
Ouch…
Costa Rica was not going to let blatant mischaracterization go unchallenged either. The Ticos issued their own note. They chastised OrMu for lying about the facts in the New York Times article, for trying to provoke “an artificial conflict with Costa Rica,” and for characterizing Nicaraguans as “criminals:”
 
“In regards to the qualifier “criminals”, that the Nicaraguan government uses to describe Nicaraguans who have sought refuge in Costa Rica — and there are tens of thousands — and given that Nicaragua has found it useful to cite articles in “The New York Times”, Costa Rica considers that it is relevant to call attention to an article in the same news paper, published on January 12, and titled Nicaraguan Supreme Court Justice Slams His Former Ally, President Ortega.

The article indicates that former Nicaraguan justice Rafael Enrique Solis Cerda, “wrote a scathing three-page resignation letter, […] that said there was never any attempted coup or outside intervention, “but rather an irrational use of force.” He wrote that there political tribunals had been carried out, involving a “a great number of detainees with a series of absurd accusations of crimes they never committed,” […]For Costa Rica, any use of the qualifier “criminal” made by the Government of Nicaragua to describe Nicaraguans who are currently in or out of their country, simply on the basis of their political opposition [to the government] lacks credibility, and just so that it is clear, the Government of Costa Rica reiterates its emphatic rejection of any suggestion that criminal actions are being carried out from Costa Rican territory into Nicaraguan Territory”

Harsh.
I’ll let Frances Robles have the final word on this one, since it’s mostly her reporting that was cited back and forth

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