More than 50 exiled opposition organizations and within Nicaragua announced this Thursday a consumer strike to commemorate the fourth anniversary of the so-called “April massacre” of May 30, 2018, in which at least 15 young people died in an armed attack against an anti-government march.
The leaders of the initiative informed, in a telematic conference, that from now on the members of each of the organizations that are in Nicaragua will carry out progressive fuel stoppages every Wednesday starting next June, they will reduce energy consumption and non-essential products.
The objective is “to suspend the economic income that the dictatorship uses for the repression against the people, to reduce the consumption of electrical energy, since this is one of the businesses of the dictatorship,” explained the academic Ernesto Medina, a member of the groups agglutinated in the so-called “Space for dialogue and confluence of Nicaraguan actors”.
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The organizations also recommended expressing solidarity with the women who lost their children in the “May 30 massacre”, giving them a flower, and “creatively and silently strengthening the organization and internal articulation of the people in active resistance.”
FROM THE OUTSIDE
On the other hand, Nicaraguans integrated into organizations of the diaspora or in exile announced that they will insist to the international community an “effective mechanism” to get President Daniel Ortega to release the more than 180 “political prisoners”, as well as “visits face-to-face” before the partners of the Inter-American Bank for Economic Integration (CABEI) to withdraw the “funds that finance the repression.”
Additionally, Nicaraguans abroad indicated that they will try to position the concern for human rights in Nicaragua during the Summit of the Americas next June in Los Angeles, United States, so that the participating countries “recognize the illegitimacy of the Ortega-Murillo dictatorship and act accordingly.”
They also reported that they will intensify actions so that the world demands the return of “democracy in Nicaragua”, and that they will join, in each country where they live, a day of fasting and prayer, in support of Bishop Rolando Álvarez, the priest Harvy Padilla and “all the priests persecuted by the dictatorship”.
Related news: Exiles in Costa Rica will carry out a “march of memory” for the massacre of May 30
These actions are antagonistic to the recent declaration of May 30 as a national holiday for being Mother’s Day, promoted by the Ortega government and approved by the Sandinista majority in the National Assembly.
“We have nothing to celebrate, we only have mourning and pain, both in exile, it is not a national holiday, as the Ortega-Murillo dictatorship declared. We mothers are firm and we will not give up the fight until we achieve justice,” said Fátima Vivas, who in 2018 denounced that her son, who was a police officer, was allegedly executed for refusing to shoot at protesters.
According to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), at least 355 died in the 2018 anti-government protests.
In a statement called “Nicaragua will be freed from its kidnappers,” the organizations justified their actions in a “recruitment of the aggression against the believing and non-believing people, affected by the lack of access to food, unemployment and underemployment, the increase of taxes, forced migration, corruption, restlessness, insecurity and violence”.
