After having accused them of being traitors involved with an international plot to topple him, Daniel Ortega, the former revolutionary and five-term president of Nicaragua, sent 222 political prisoners to the U.S. on Feb. 9. Then Nicaragua’s Congress voted to strip those who were Nicaraguan citizens of their citizenship. On Wednesday, Appeals Court Justice Ernesto Rodríguez Mejía declared 94 more political critics of Ortega to no longer be Nicaraguans, including noted authors Sergio Ramírez and Gioconda Belli.
In a desperate attempt to cling to power, Ortega has demonstrated his willingness to violate basic human rights.
Nicaragua’s Congress will have to conduct a second vote to officially strip those it deems “traitors” of their citizenship. Many of the 94 the judge declared stateless were already living in exile but have been accused of “spreading false news” and forming “a conspiracy to undermine national integrity.” Stripping people of their citizenship as punishment is a violation of international law, but in a desperate attempt to cling to power and remain politically relevant in the Western Hemisphere, Ortega has demonstrated his willingness to violate basic human rights.
It didn’t have to be this way. As I wrote less than two years ago, Ortega “shifted away from his visions of a revolution and fell into the same trap that has haunted generations of leaders before him.” All the predictions that he would become a modern-day Central American dictator have come true. Maybe when Nicaragua was indeed the literal playground of U.S. capitalism, the world needed Ortega and the Sandinistas. But he has betrayed leftism in Latin America, and a revolution over 40 years old is clinging to survival as it destroys every semblance of democracy and freedom.
A rally Saturday in Managua that was staged to celebrate the banishment of Ortega’s critics was attended by Ortega loyalists who praised the move. “We are marching in celebration of the deportation…
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