U.S. slams Daniel Ortega, spouse as Nicaragua ditches hemisphere’s Organization of American States
The Biden administration sharply criticized Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega and his spouse and Vice President Rosario Murillo as Managua on Sunday formally left the pan-American Organization of American States.
The State Department stated in an announcement the leftist regime give up the OAS to keep away from additional scrutiny of the Ortega authorities’s poor document on human rights and civil liberties and its strain marketing campaign concentrating on regime critics such because the Catholic church.
The couple’s “decision to further isolate Nicaragua from the international community demonstrates their desperation to avoid any effort by the OAS or like-minded partners to hold them accountable for egregious human rights abuses,” the State Department stated Sunday.
“Their abuses include unjustly detaining, convicting, and mistreating political prisoners — including Bishop Rolando Alvarez; attacking independent journalists; and forcing hundreds of civil society organizations and educational institutions to close or hand over operations to the state.”
The assertion stated the U.S. and its OAS allies will proceed to press the Managua authorities over its human rights document regardless of the withdrawal.
Nicaragua joined the OAS in 1950, however relations with the Western Hemisphere umbrella group deteriorated sharply within the wake of broadly criticized 2018 elections that led to a surge in opposition protests adopted by a authorities crackdown on dissent.
The Ortega authorities started the two-year course of to depart the OAS shortly after critics stated new nationwide elections in November 2021 had been rigged to maintain the regime in energy. Mr. Ortega was elected to a fourth time period in energy.
Official tallies in that vote gave the ruling Sandinista alliance 76% of the vote and Mr. Ortega on the time dismissed his detractors as “Yankee imperialists.”
The final nation to depart the OAS was Venezuela, one other leftist regime whose document on democracy and human rights has been questioned by the organization.
