The government of US President Joe Biden announced this Wednesday a round of sanctions against “the repression” of Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, whom it accuses of manipulating the gold sector and making money from migration.
Nicaragua is under US sanctions for the repression of the 2018 protests against Ortega, in power since 2007 and successively re-elected in elections questioned by the international community.
Washington considers his re-election in 2021 fraudulent and accuses him of a wave of arrests against opponents, many of whom are still in prison or were forced into exile and were stripped of their nationality.
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The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) targeted the Russian Interior Ministry Training Center in Managua (RTC) to be “a key actor in the repression” of civil society and “in the unjust detention and imprisonment of people ”. for expressing dissent or peacefully exercising their human rights and fundamental freedoms,” the Treasury Department states.
“Nicaragua is one of Russia’s main partners in Central America, as demonstrated by a series of high-level visits to Managua,” says Washington.
– “Help” the “oppressive cycle” –
Russia created a training center in Managua to provide specialized courses for the Nicaraguan National Police (PNN) and law enforcement forces of other Latin American countries, he insists.
This center “helps maintain the cycle of violent oppression in Nicaragua” because the PNN “is a state repressive apparatus that carries out extrajudicial executions, uses live ammunition against peaceful protests and even participates in death squads,” the US government accuses. .
It also sanctions the Compañía Minera Internacional (COMINTSA) and Capital Mining Investment Nicaragua (Capital Mining), two gold companies affiliated with the government “that generate income” for the Ortega regime and his wife and vice president Rosario Murillo, it added in a statement.
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As a result of the sanctions, all assets and interests in assets of the sanctioned company that are in the United States or that are in the power or control of Americans are blocked.
At the same time, the State Department has issued more than 250 visa restrictions to Nicaraguan officials, adding to the more than 1,000 announced in recent years.
– “Very cynical” –
Finally, the government publishes an advisory to alert the transportation industry about how human traffickers facilitate illegal migration to the United States and remind them of “the key measures they must take to avoid” being complicit.
The government is “very cynical” about selling visas “that require people to leave within 96 hours,” explained a US official who requested anonymity in a telephone press conference.
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“It is an aggressive regime that benefits (…) and facilitates the illicit trafficking of migrants,” he added, specifying that the measure is not intended for tourism.
The relationship between the United States and Nicaragua has been especially strained since the 2021 Nicaraguan elections, which were held with the president’s rivals imprisoned or in exile.
Since then, Managua has carried out an offensive against thousands of NGOs and the academic world, in addition to intensifying the persecution of the Catholic Church.
