Mexican President Andrés López Obrador joined on Wednesday to Chile, Argentina and Spain by offering nationality to the more than 300 Nicaraguans declared stateless by the government of Daniel Ortega.
“All those who want to be in our country have the doors open and are well received,” López Obrador said during his usual morning press conference.
“Asylum, nationality, whatever they want,” the president specified, adding that “nationality cannot be lost by decree.”
Obrador thus joined the other three countries that also extended their invitation to Nicaraguans declared “traitors to the homeland” by the justice of that country, which ordered them to be stripped of their nationality and the expropriation of their assets.
Among the more than 300 opponents exiled in Nicaragua are journalists, activists, human rights defenders and writers, such as Sergio Ramírez, who was also vice president.
In fact, the Colombian government offered Ramírez citizenship this Wednesday, which the writer would have accepted.
“Yesterday, interpreting the solidarity of the country and the sentiment of President Gustavo Petro, I offered Colombian nationality to the Nicaraguan politician, intellectual and writer Sergio Ramírez. Excited, Ramírez accepted it gratefully. Free and democratic Colombia embraces him and welcomes him to his second homeland, ”announced Colombian Foreign Minister Álvaro Leyva.
Nicaragua has been experiencing a political crisis since 2018 when protests against Ortega arose, which he branded as an attempted coup.
Since then, the country has experienced an authoritarian drift, according to human rights organizations.
Ortega has canceled more than 3,000 NGOs and has closed dozens of media outlets, in the same way he has imprisoned opponents of his government.
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