The Nicaraguan regime expelled the OAS from Managua and withdrew from the organization early on

FILE PHOTO: Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega attends a two-day meeting with representatives of the ALBA Group at the Revolutionary Palace in Havana, Cuba on December 14, 2021. Alberto Roque/Pool via REUTERS/File Photo

Daniel Ortega’s regime closed the Organization of American States (OAS) office in Managua on Sunday, prompting the departure of Nicaraguan officials to that organizationfrom which he had already announced his resignation in November 2021.

According to Nicaraguan Foreign Minister Denis Moncada, his country will immediately stop participating in the OAS and revoke the credentials of its representatives in Washington. “Consequently, this notorious body will not have any offices in our country. Their local headquarters have been closed,” he added.

Minutes after the announcement, the National Police surrounded OAS offices in Nicaragua, located on the outskirts of Managua, while their symbols were dismantled.

In a letter read through an official broadcast, Moncada said that “from this date” Nicaragua will cease to be part of “all the fraudulent mechanisms of this monstrosity, call it the Permanent Council, call it Commissions, call it Sessions.” , call it the Summit of the Americas”. “We will not be present in any instances of this diabolical instrument of misnamed OEA,” he assured.

The Nicaraguan regime’s foreign minister, Denis Moncada, in a file photo. EFE/Lenin Nolly

Dictator Ortega, a 76-year-old former guerrilla fighter who has been in power since 2007, announced Nicaragua’s withdrawal at the end of last year the OAS, which ignored his election for a fourth consecutive term, with his rivals and opponents imprisoned and accused of conspiring against him. However, according to the protocols, the departure had to take place within two years so that Nicaragua could fulfill any outstanding obligations towards the organization.

The regime lashed out at the OAS when the panel approved the Inter-American Democratic Charter application process for allegations against Ortega of human rights abuses in 2018as part of the anti-government demonstrations that claimed 355 lives, as documented by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR).

The First Lady, Rosario Murillo

On March 23, then-Nicaragua’s Permanent Representative to the OAS, Arturo McFields, surprised a meeting of the Permanent Council by calling Ortega’s leadership a “dictatorship.” and denounced the precarious conditions in which his opponents were imprisoned.

Speech by Arturo McFields at the OAS

“I don’t understand the government’s motives, but this withdrawal comes a month after I spoke to the OAS,” McFields said. speaking to AFP this Sunday. The OAS offices “were historically in our country and were part of a historical process of pacification in Nicaragua. Offices representing the peace accords in Nicaragua have been closed. The government is closing a door to peace,” he added.

As detailed by McFields, the OAS offices in Managua currently operated with a simple administrative staff.

Nicaragua has been in a political and social crisis since April 2018, aggravated after the controversial November 7 general election, in which Ortega was re-elected for a fifth term, the fourth consecutive and the second together with his wife Rosario Murillo, as Vice President, with her main rivals in prison.

On the day McFields resigned, he denounced Ortega brutality and still feared reprisals. “I speak on behalf of more than 177 political prisoners and more than 350 people who have lost their lives in my country since 2018. I am speaking on behalf of thousands of civil servants (…), those who are being forced today by the Nicaraguan regime to pretend to fill vacancies and repeat slogans because if they don’t, they lose their place of work,” he said.

And followed: ” I need to speak even when I’m scared. I have to speak up, although my future and that of my family is uncertain. since 2018, Nicaragua became the only country in Central America without printed newspapers, there is no freedom to post a simple comment on social networks. There are no human rights organizations. Not even one. All were closed, evicted or closed. There are no independent political parties, there are no credible elections, there is no separation of powers, there is separation of powers“.

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In a gruesome twist in Sandinista history, Daniel Ortega ordered the closure of the last human rights NGO in Nicaragua. Daniel Ortega’s regime banned another 25 NGOs in Nicaragua