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| Central American University - UCA |
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Number 392 | Marzo 2014 |
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Nicaragua
NICARAGUA BRIEFS
Envío team
WASHINGTON ON
NICARAGUA’S HUMAN RIGHTSThe 2013 US State Department report on the world’s human rights situation, released in February, contained an extensive section on Nicaragua. The following are extracts from the introduction: “Nicaragua is a multi-party constitutional republic, but in recent years political power has become concentrated in a single party, with an increasingly authoritarian executive exercising significant control over the legislative, judicial and electoral branches. In November 2011 the Supreme Electoral Council (CSE) announced the re-election of President Daniel Ortega Saavedra of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) in elections that international and domestic observers characterized as seriously flawed…. Authorities generally maintained effective control over the security forces. In several instances elements of the security forces committed human rights abuses or acted independently of government control.
“The principal human rights abuses were restrictions on citizens’ right to vote, including significantly biased policies to promote single-party dominance; widespread corruption, including in the police, CSE, Supreme Court of Justice (CSJ) and other government organs; and societal violence, particularly against women and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) persons…. The government rarely took steps to prosecute officials who committed abuses, whether in the security services or elsewhere in government. Impunity remained a widespread problem.”
INTEROCEANIC CANALIn February, the prestigious weekly scientific journal Nature, published in the UK, carried an article in its comments section on Nicaragua’s proposed interoceanic canal written by molecular biologist Jorge Huete-Pérez, president of Nicaragua’s Academy of Sciences, and Axel Meyer, a German evolutionary biologist who has been studying Nicaragua’s valuable crater lakes since 1984. The authors warn of the “tragic devastation” the canal construction would cause to Nicaragua’s aquatic resources and biodiversity. In June of last year, President Ortega granted Chinese businessman Wang Jing a concession to build a canal capable of carrying modern tankers and container ships across Nicaragua, through Lake Nicaragua, and turned that concession into law committing Nicaragua to the project and the concession holder even before feasibility studies had been begun. Wang Jing’s company, HKND Group, says it has hired a firm called Environmental Resources Management to do the assessment, but NPR News in the US reported that neither the firm’s Washington nor Houston offices returned NPR’s phone calls. Huete says the plan seems so crazy he’s having trouble persuading global conservation groups to take it seriously, adding that “this might be part of the problem.” Both scientists called for “swift and decisive international action” to evaluate the gravity of the project and announced that “The Nicaraguan Academy of Sciences is coordinating efforts with the InterAmerican Network of Academies of Sciences to do an independent impact assessment” of the megaproject.
MARCO DESSI SENTENCED In mid-February, the Supreme Tribunal of Justice in Parma, Italy, definitively confirmed its sentencing to six years in prison of former Italian priest Marco Dessi, accused in his home country of having sexually abused six youths in Chinandega, Nicaragua, in the late eighties and early nineties. The Italian associations “Rock no War” and Solidando,” which had originally helped the Betania social project Dessi was implementing in Chinandega during the 30 years he worked in Nicaragua, helped the young men file their accusation in Italy in 2006. Dessi was originally sentenced to 16 years in prison in 2007, but he later collaborated with justice to get the sentence reduced to 12 years. In this latest and final appeal, the sentence was lowered to 6 years. Marco Scarpati, the Nicaraguan plaintiffs’ defense attorney, is president of the International organization ECPAT (End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes). From the moment the accusation was made, the Vatican distanced itself from Dessi and initiated its own investigation and canonic penal process, which concluded in early 2010 with the decision of Pope Benedict XVI to remove Dessi from the priesthood, reducing him to lay status.
MINING CONCESSIONSAt the end of January Nicaragua’s Humboldt Center presented a report indicating that 2,900 square kilometers more of our territory were given over in mining concessions between 2011 and 2013. The area currently granted to foreign mining companies totals 13.4% of the country’s territory. At the beginning of March a mixed mission of Nicaraguan business elite, government officials and representatives of the mining companies operating in the country participated in an international mining convention in Toronto, Canada, to “sell” the country to new investors. Gold ore was Nicaragua’s main export product (US$435.8 million) last year. Inaugurating the convention, Inter-American Development Bank President José Luis Moreno said he was optimistic: “Few know that Latin America has the most important reserves of a great many minerals.” He was reported as saying.It has 40% of the world’s copper, 30% of its silver and 65% of its lithium.
AUTONOMOUS GOVERNMENT
ELECTIONS ON THE CARIBBEAN COASTIn the sixth elections since the Autonomy Statute was passed in 1987, voting took place on Sunday, March 2, to select 45 regional councilors in each of the two autonomous regions of the Caribbean Coast, which account for nearly half of Nicaragua’s surface area and concentrate significant natural wealth. Those regional councilors then elect from among their number the regional coordinator who will govern their respective region. The Supreme Electoral Council adjudicated to the FSLN an absolute majority in the Regional Councils of both regions. The FSLN previously allied with the indigenous regional party Yatama to obtain that majority, at least in the North Atlantic Autonomous Region, and jointly governed it. The FSLN and Yatama are so weak in the largely Liberal South Atlantic Autonomous Region that the Constitutionalist Liberal Party (PLC) and other Liberal splinter parties have always outdistanced this alliance. The progressive disintegration of the opposition parties in recent years has eroded that majority in both regions, but never enough to give the FSLN even a plurality much less an outright majority in either region. Yatama leader Brooklyn Rivera, who has had periodic fallings-out with the FSLN, refused to accept the new election results. “That resounding victory [the FSLN] says it received this time was obtained with a resounding fraud,” he charged. Liberals from both the PLC and the Independent Liberal Party (PLI) also denounced the results after having charged, both during the campaign and on election day, further cases of the irregularities and “cunning” to which the Supreme Electoral Council has accustomed the country.
P.S. The constitutional reforms imposed by President Ortega and his majority in the National Assembly, published on February 10 in La Gaceta Diario Oficial, determine that what Nicaraguans have traditionally—and geographically incorrectly—called the “Atlantic Coast will henceforth be known as the “Caribbean Coast.”
“NEITHER-NOR” YOUTHS According to an International Labor Organization report, 250,000 Nicaraguan youths between 15 and 24 years old, 19.5% of the total in that age group, are neither studying nor working. Of the other Central American countries, the situation is even worse in El Salvador (21%), Guatemala (25.1%) and Honduras (27.5%), and slightly better in Costa Rica (17.4%). With respect to “not working,” the study reports that 67.2% said they work in their home, 23.9% recently lost their job and only 2.7% are looking for work.
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a monthly magazine of analysis on Central America