On April 21, 2018, Daniel Ortega broke his silence after the first 72 hours of his regime’s repression and massacre against the citizens who mobilized, first in rejection of his Social Security reforms, and then in a national cry to demand justice, freedom and democracy for the murdered and political prisoners.
During a speech of approximately one hour, on a mandatory national radio and television network, Ortega did not mention the victims of the repression and massacre carried out by the Police and paramilitary groups. Instead, he blamed the violence on “small opposition groups” that he called “gang members.”
Since then to date, throughout four years characterized by his long periods of absence while he imposes a de facto police state in Nicaragua, Ortega has given 135 speeches and seven interviews to the media or international journalists, stating –without arguments– that in Nicaragua there was a “failed coup attempt” against him.
CONFIDENTIAL analyzed the 142 public interventions by Ortega between April 21, 2018 and April 21, 2022. For this analysis, a database was created with the transcription of the speeches published in the official newspaper El 19 Digital, and it was identified in how many Of these, Ortega referred directly or indirectly to the protest, the demonstrators or –according to him– those responsible for the supposed “coup d’état”.
Also, the number of times he called the protesters “terrorists” and “coup plotters” was counted, and it was recorded how Ortega hardened his narrative about the social outbreak, thus justifying the de facto police state in its different stages, including giving the signals for the political persecution and censorship that continue and worsen four years after that social outbreak.
“The conspiracy”, according to Daniel Ortega’s speech
In his first speech, on April 21, 2018, Ortega assured that he was willing to amend the reforms without consultation on Social Security that sparked the protests and then left the first 19 of 355 dead, nearly a hundred injured and damage to businesses. and other real estate. He also announced his willingness to meet with the private sector, in an attempt to return the Superior Council of Private Enterprise (Cosep) to its fold, which broke the “consensus model” with Ortega and called for a massive march for Monday. April 23rd.
From Ortega’s perspective, those protests were “a well-crafted conspiracy” and he accused – without evidence – that those who were protesting were “people who were paid to come to attack the Police”, keeping silent about how his agents were shooting at the police. population, first with rubber bullets and tear gas, and later with firearms, including weapons for restricted use by the Army.
Days later, Ortega described the young people, university students and citizens in general as “coup plotters”, “terrorists” and “sell-outs” who attacked and killed police and Sandinistas just because they were sympathetic to his government.
In this version, which Ortega weaved at his convenience, his regime is the victim and there are no citizens assassinated with high-caliber weapons to the chest, head and neck, as demonstrated in journalistic investigations and verified by national and international human rights organizations. who collected testimonies from the victims. According to Ortega, the population was manipulated by “agents” of the United States or of the “empire,” he said in his own words.
In total, Ortega sustained these accusations in 72 of the 135 official speeches and seven interviews he has made from April 21, 2018 to April 21, 2022, when he reappeared after 28 days absent to politically gloat over the ruling of the International Court of Justice. Justice (ICJ) of The Hague in favor of Nicaragua over Colombia, and again accusing the authorities of that country of “holding power thanks to the support of drug trafficking.”
According to Ortega’s version, the United States organized and paid Nicaraguan citizens to carry out a “failed coup attempt” against him, citing alleged similar attempts against the late Hugo Chávez in Venezuela and Evo Morales in Bolivia. However, in his speeches, Ortega does not present a single piece of evidence, reducing his accusation to “Yankee interventionism” that he has been preaching since the 1980s, when he governed for the first time.
The terrorists”
Globally, the three countries with the highest rate of terrorism are Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia. Nicaragua, like the rest of Central America, does not report any incidence of terrorism, according to the Global Index 2021, of the Institute of Economy and Peace, published in March 2022. However, in the last four years, Ortega has accused the April Rebellion alleged “terrorists”, with a total of 75 mentions in his public appearances.
“We are fighting in these weeks, in all these days, once again fighting a battle for peace. On the one hand, the sowers of the tares that Christ pointed out, they are sowing the tares, sowing terrorist practices, to assassinate the Nicaraguan brothers,” Ortega said, in a speech on July 7, 2018 in an activity that his regime baptized as “walk for peace”, while the Police and paramilitaries directed the bloody “Cleaning Operation” to eliminate the roadblocks and barricades that the population had erected to protect themselves from the attacks of these groups that were first at night and then were also executed in broad daylight.
That was the first time that Ortega used the term “terrorist” to describe the protests and it is the most repeated term in the last four years, although not the only one. In his speeches, Ortega has also referred to the protesters as “coup plotters” (18 times) and “vendepatrias” (12 times). He has also called them “traitors”, “demons”, “hate-mongers”, “wimps”, “murderers” and “criminals”.
The use of the word “terrorist” was also a preamble to the legal actions that the regime undertook against citizens. Nine days after Ortega’s speech, on July 16, the National Assembly, controlled by the ruling party, approved the “Law against money laundering, the financing of terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction”, which was used to justify the arrest of 270 of the more than 800 political prisoners that year, according to defense attorneys and news reports.
