Nicaraguan Foreign Minister Denis Moncada branded this Wednesday as “illegal and arbitrary” the sanctions imposed by the international community against the administration of President Daniel Ortega, this during the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), which is being held these days in Buenos Aires.
Without emphasizing the latest measures of the United States Treasury, which sanctioned Nicaraguan gold on Monday, one of the main items of the country, Moncada said that the Central American country “has historically resisted imperial aggression.”
“The sanctions are illegal, arbitrary, unilateral and, as happens with other brother countries, they have the objective of suffocating us economically, quite the opposite of what has been discussed in this period of sessions,” said Moncada.
The US sanctions on gold in Managua are already beginning to take effect in the Central American country. The Canadian company Caliber Mining Corp., one of those with the largest investment in Nicaragua, renounced three mining concessions on Tuesday and assured that it contacted the Treasury Department to review the scope of the measures.
Meanwhile, three other mining companies with investments in Nicaragua saw their shares fall on the international stock market, the local newspaper reported. The Press.
Sanctions since 2018
The United States has been imposing sanctions on the Nicaraguan government since 2018, when violent protests began against President Daniel Ortega, which left more than 300 dead, according to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR).
The sanctions began by targeting entities and people close to Ortega, but Washington has been escalating the pressure against Managua, whom the administration of President Joe Biden accuses of “continuing to undermine democracy.”
The protests against Ortega, which he classified as an “attempted coup”, have left more than 200,000 exiles and more than 200 political prisoners, including seven people who aspired to the presidency of Nicaragua in 2021.
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