Ten actions by Daniel Ortega's regime that isolated Nicaragua as North Korea from Latin America

Four years ago, when the protests began in April 2018, Daniel Ortega's regime chose Nicaragua's strategy of isolation to survive as a North Korea nestled in Latin America. For the researcher, Elvira Cuadra, Ortega's political calculation failed.

“It is a wrong political calculation because they were betting on building a new alignment of political support with Russia, China, Mexico, Bolivia, Venezuela, Cuba and some Central American countries, apart from small countries such as Ossetia, Abkhazia, etc. They also hoped to find a new axis of financial support in Russia, China and Iran, but those lifeguards were postponed considering the situation that has arisen with the Russian invasion of Ukraine”, explains the sociologist.

Ortega has kicked out diplomats who are uncomfortable to him, including the Vatican ambassador, expelled and closed the doors to national and international human rights bodies, prevent foreign journalists from entering, and often uses language full of insults against countries that question his narrative on political prisoners, the absence of democratic guarantees and repression.

At the same time, internally, since a year ago, he began to withhold passports to prevent the legal departure of opponents and their own supporters.

“I think it's a combination of arrogance and wrong political calculation,” Cuadra adds. “Arrogance for the way diplomatic representatives are mistreated, the type of speech or language they use and the way they handle relations, especially in times of tension, such as Spain, the Vatican, Argentina and Colombia, among the most recent ones.”

Here are ten of the many actions Daniel Ortega has taken over the past four years to turn Nicaragua into a Latin American North Korea:

1- Expulsion from the IACHR. On December 19, 2018, Daniel Ortega's government ordered the “immediate” expulsion of the Special Follow-up Mechanism for Nicaragua (Meseni) and the International Group of Independent Experts (GIEI), both of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), claiming that they were not meeting “their objectives.” The expulsion came a day before the GIEI presented its final report in Managua on the violent events that occurred in the country between April 18 and May 30, 2018, on which they concluded that “the State of Nicaragua has carried out conduct that according to international law should be considered crimes against humanity, particularly murder, arbitrary deprivation of liberty and the crime of persecution”.

2- Passport retention. In an unprecedented event in Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega's regime began in June last year to withhold passports for political reasons. It works like this: when the person presents his/her travel documentation, the Migration Officer notifies him/her that the passport is faulty and cannot travel. The passport is retained and has rarely been returned. This measure was initially used against opposition leaders, independent journalists and religious critics, but later included regime officials, military and political leaders who sought to leave “without permission.”

3- Rejection of foreign journalists. Last November, Daniel Ortega's regime prevented independent journalists from entering the country who wanted to cover the elections that took place that month. Only journalists politically related to the regime were allowed to enter. This practice had been carried out for years before and was in keeping with the dictatorship's intention to impose its narrative on the events taking place in Nicaragua. In June 2021, for example, the government prevented journalist Anatoly Kurmanaev, from The New York Times, from entering Nicaragua. Despite meeting all travel requirements, Kurmanaev was notified of the cancellation of his ticket to Managua by the airline he was traveling on, due to the Nicaraguan regime's ban.

4- Retreat of the ambassador in Spain. On March 10, the Nicaraguan regime withdrew its ambassador to Spain, Carlos Midence, alleging “interfering pressures and threats” against the diplomat. “This decision responds to the continuous interference pressures and threats against our ambassador, which make it impossible to carry out diplomatic work,” the Nicaraguan Ministry of Foreign Affairs explained in a letter to the Spanish Foreign Ministry. Six months before this decision, Ortega's government prevented the return to Nicaragua of Spanish Ambassador María del Mar Fernández-Palacios without explanation. The government of Spain has been critical of Ortega's authoritarian drift.

5- Expulsion of the Colombian ambassador. On February 23, the Nicaraguan regime withdrew the credentials of Colombia's ambassador, Alfredo Rangel Suárez, whom it called “offensively meddling in the country's internal affairs”, according to a note from the Nicaraguan Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The Nicaraguan government's reaction came shortly after Colombia ordered Ambassador Rangel Suarez to return to his country after Daniel Ortega claimed that Colombia is a “narco-state.” “That is a narco-state, where the crimes are impressive,” Ortega said in a police act on February 17, referring to Colombia.

6- Diplomatic insults. The Nicaraguan regime has made insult a hallmark of its diplomatic management. At different times, the governments of Canada, the United States, Mexico, Colombia, Spain and Argentina have been targeted. “The role of cultural, historical and political misery that Mexico plays today is regrettable, when we believed that that human misery and meanness, that misery, ended neoliberalism, and began a cycle of understanding and respect, with the new government of which you are a part,” said in September last year a letter of protest from the Nicaraguan Foreign Ministry to Mexico's Ambassador to Nicaragua, Gustavo Cabrera, shortly after the Mexican diplomat shared a tweet by Nicaraguan writer Sergio Ramírez Mercado, who was judicially accused by the Ortega regime of “carrying out acts that encourage and incite hatred and violence.”

7- Invitation to Iranian terrorist. The highlight of Daniel Ortega's new inauguration on January 10 was the presence as guest of honour of Iran's Vice President of Economic Affairs, Mohsen Rezai, a character accused by the Argentine justice system of organizing the terrorist attack of July 18, 1994 at the Israeli Mutual Association Argentina (AMIA), which left more than 80 dead and 300 injured. The Argentine Foreign Ministry protested the next day against the Nicaraguan government over the presence of Rezai, which “constitutes an affront to justice and to the victims of the brutal terrorist attack.” A red alert from Interpol weighs on the Iranian.

8- Expulsion of the Nuncio. On March 6 of this year, Daniel Ortega's regime ordered the Pope's representative in Nicaragua, Apostolic Nuncio Waldemar Stanislaw Sommertag, to “immediately” leave the country. Through a statement, the Vatican said it received the decision with “surprise” and “pain” while considering it “serious and unjustified”. Although the causes of the expulsion were not presented, it was unofficially said that the Nuncio's efforts for the release and humanitarian treatment of political prisoners caused it.

9- Expulsion of the thin man from the Red Cross. On March 24, it became known that the Ortega regime expelled resident delegate of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Thomas Ess, from Nicaragua. “The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) confirms that it received a letter in which the Government of Nicaragua notifies that it decided to withdraw the approval to our head of mission in Nicaragua,” explained María Cristina Rivera, Red Cross communications coordinator for Mexico and Central America. He also said that he did not know the reasons for the expulsion and that this decision took them “by surprise”.

10- Electoral collapse. Nothing has isolated Daniel Ortega's regime more than his decision to prevent electoral competition last November, with the aim of re-electing himself for a fourth consecutive term despite the lack of sympathy he has among Nicaraguans, according to the latest independent polls. Ortega totally controlled the electoral tribunal with his loyalists, eliminated the opposition parties and imprisoned seven opponents who tried to compete. After the votes without competition, more than 40 countries around the world were unaware of the results, including the United States, Canada and the European Union. On November 12, the OAS General Assembly approved, with 25 votes in favor, seven abstentions and only one vote against, that of Nicaragua, a resolution stating that the elections in Nicaragua “were not free, fair or transparent and do not have democratic legitimacy.”

KEEP READING: