Argentine Foreign Minister Santiago Cafiero ordered his country’s diplomatic representation before the Organization of American States (OAS) to vote in favor of a draft resolution that “strongly” condemns the escalation of repression by the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo against the priests of the Catholic ChurchNGOs, journalists and in addition to demanding the release of more than 190 political prisoners kidnapped by the dictatorship.
This draft resolution is scheduled to be discussed at a session of the OAS Permanent Council scheduled for this Friday, August 12.
The newspaper El Clarín, from Argentina, reported that that country will vote together with the group of countries that will condemn – through a special resolution – the outrages and persecutions of the Nicaraguan regime, on the instructions of Foreign Minister Cafiero.
The Government will condemn Nicaragua in the OAS for the deterioration of human rights https://t.co/sMaopQCIdx
– Clarin (@clarincom) August 11, 2022
“Already on February 18, 2022, Argentina supported a ‘declaration on the immediate release of political prisoners in Nicaragua.’ Many of these positions are also coordinated by Cafiero, the ambassador to the United States Jorge Argüello and Joe Biden’s Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken. Now, Cafiero will also search show another face after the commotion that a statement made this Wednesday of the Undersecretary for Latin American Affairs Gustavo Martínez Pandiani, who pointed out that all the CELAC countries were ‘democratic’, cites the El Clarín report.
Martínez Pandiani did not name them specifically, but this allusion was clearly understood to include the regimes of Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Cuba.
Argentina’s position makes clear the distance between the Government of Alberto Fernández and the violations of civil liberties by the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo, which has even caused diplomatic clashes between the two countries.
Argentina voted in favor of the resolution of the General Assembly of Foreign Ministers of the OAS on November 12, in which 25 countries declared that “the elections of November 7 were not free, fair or transparent and do not have democratic legitimacy,” referring to the voting process in Nicaragua. This caused both Managua and Buenos Aires to temporarily withdraw their ambassadors.
However, Argentine President Alberto Fernández was appointed to protest the exclusion of dictatorships of Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela, during the IX Summit of the Americas held in Los Angeles, in June 2022.
“The silence of the absent challenges us. So that this does not happen again, I would like to make it clear for the future that the fact of being a host country does not grant the ability to impose the right of admission”, said the Argentine president during the first plenary session of the summit, before dozens of leaders. of the region, and mainly, US President Joe Biden.
The draft of the resolution referred to on the political and human rights crisis in Nicaragua, was proposed by the representation of Antigua and Barbudawith the support of the delegations of Canada, Costa Rica, Chile, Dominican Republic, Peru, United States and Uruguay.
The document “strongly condemns the forced closure of organizations non-governmental organizations and the harassment and arbitrary restrictions on religious organizations and those who criticize their actions in Nicaragua”.
It also refers to its “insistence that the Government of Nicaragua immediately release all political prisoners and cease the harassment and intimidation of the independent press and guarantee the exercise of the right to freedom of expression.”
