The struggle to make visible in Latin America the isolation in which the more than 180 political prisoners tortured in the regime’s prisons live, does not end with the armed deployment ordered by the Government of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo last Friday at the Peñas Blancas border post, they told the program This week which is broadcast today at 8:00 PM: in CONFIDENCIAL, an Argentine parliamentarian and a left-wing activist, who are members of the International Commission for the Life and Liberty of Political Prisoners in Nicaragua.
In fact, “the enormous military deployment, the closing of borders… the regime’s concern for initiatives like ours… proved us right,” analyzed Argentine activist Mariano Rosa, political coordinator of the Commission,
“We as a Commission, did not finish our task yesterday. Actually, we could say that we are starting it,” he added, explaining that they have a commitment with the families, with the exile organizations with which they are going to discuss how to continue, based on their “democratic political orientation from the left. We are going to continue thinking of new initiatives, surely of greater scope”, he promised.
The objective is to broaden the call to other international organizations, figures from the political, intellectual, and cultural fields, etc., who spoke out to give their support to the Commission once it was formed, moved by the certainty that “there is no dictatorship that lasts a hundred years ”.
“We come from a country -in his case, Argentina- that has a long tradition of fighting for memory, truth and justice. We are going to spread everything we find in a report, in a rapporteurship, and we are going to be meeting with family members and groups in the coming days because our commitment to the cause of real democracy and freedom in Nicaragua is just beginning” he promised.
Ortega has no arguments… for a long time
The police rejection of the regime, to a civil initiative of political content such as the one carried out by the group of ten parliamentarians and activists from six Latin American countries, did not take anyone by surprise, as explained by the union delegate and elected legislator, Pablo Almeida, also of Argentine nationality.
“Honestly, we did not have expectations, because we know what the dictatorial regime of Ortega and Murillo is capable of, but we felt obliged to make an attempt together with the Nicaraguan community that is in exile, to make visible the situation in which there are the prisoners in Nicaragua. That it was a refusal of the kind that was directed towards progressive left-wing forces is a more blatant demonstration that the regime no longer has arguments,” he asserted.
Almeida rejected the mere suggestion that the rhetoric of being ‘agents of imperialism’, or of being paid by the United States, be used against them, because “with international organizations you can say that they are financed by this or that, but from us.” can’t say that. Neither from us, nor from anyone in the delegation who have traveled from different parts of Latin America.”
The legislator is a parliamentarian of the Unity Left Front, in his capacity as a member of the Socialist Left, who traveled to Costa Rica, along with three other Argentine parliamentarians from different parties that make up that Front, (and another eight from four other countries), rejecting “all the abuses against the peoples of Latin America, who governs who governs.”
Their work aims to denounce harassment in Chile, Colombia or Ecuador, “so no one can say that we have a personal grudge against the Ortega Murillo regime, but it is clear, and it was demonstrated on Friday, that if you do not let anyone enter to seeing the situation of detained people, it is because human rights are being violated in Nicaragua,” he said.
Democratic left against repression
Identifying themselves as ‘on the left’ does not prevent them from seeing -and denouncing- the mistakes made by regimes that claim to be ‘on the left’, as the dictatorships that usurp power in Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua tend to call themselves.
In the specific case of our country, Rosa, union leader and coordinator of the Commission, stated emphatically that “what is in Nicaragua has nothing to do with the left, or socialism.”
He believes that in its political facet, the dictatorship uses “bloody methods… with a lot of Stalinist ‘gymnastics'”, by persecuting, spying, and trying to break the morale and resistance capacity of political prisoners, who are, for the most part, under 40 years old.
“There is a special cruelty with historical emblems of Sandinismo that have distanced themselves from that political force. Therefore, I think that we also make a message clear: that there is another left that is democratic, and that therefore repudiates the persecution for what is believed, ”he valued.
The coordinator of the Commission knows that neither the Cuban nor the Venezuelan governments are going to condemn the existence of prisoners of conscience in Nicaragua, and that instead they choose to endorse that policy because “in this way they also cover up their own contradictions and the repressive policy they have towards their own critical sectors”.
The fear of the Ortega regime
Almeida noted the great similarities between Cuba and Nicaragua, in its policy of repression and selective capture of opposition leadersand how these authoritarian regimes claim to act “in the name of socialism, and have nothing to do with socialism,” generating confusion among the population, but “there are sectors that are clear that this is not socialism,” he specified.
The also union leader pointed out how the regime attacks “dissident sectors of Sandinismo,” such as “Dora María Téllez, one of the commanders of the revolution of 1979, who is in jail”, in the same way that “in exile we can find a number… of human rights figures… in Nicaragua there is a cancellation of the political path: all possibility of doing politics has been canceled and to have a minimum participation”.
“The Ortega Murillo regime is so afraid that it has canceled NGOs, has expelled the nuns from the Order of Teresa of Calcutta… the paranoia of this dictatorial regime – rightly so, because there is massive popular hatred – is so great that it attacks everything”, he quoted the cancellation of the legal status of feminist organizations of the country, which he considers “the beginning of the persecution. There is no one to be saved from persecution in Nicaragua”, he warned.
The governments of Latin America
Almeida also questioned the President of the Government of his country, Alberto Fernández, for not condemning the violation of the rights of Nicaraguan citizens, to “maintain an independent status” that would allow him to be “a mediation factor”, although it was later made clear to him that “it is part of his policy of… alignment with the dictatorial authoritarian regimes… of Venezuela and Cuba,” and he also points out that he is aligned “with Yankee imperialism… and in particular with the International Monetary Fund.”
Rosa believes that the International Socialist League will have to summon governments that call themselves ‘of the left’ (such as Mexico, Bolivia, Argentina, and Honduras) to make a statement in relation to Nicaragua, especially “after what happened with the Commission on the border.” That includes the elected president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, who declared that he aspired to “an America, from Alaska to Patagonia, no political prisoners”.
“We have a huge job to do: unmask the double discourse of many governments that are progressive in the narrative, but that in the concrete facts have a lot of cowardly silence and complicity,” Rosa concluded.
