From Voice of America

In barely a week’s time, Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega has cemented the authoritarian reputation of his government by shuttering the offices some of the few remaining resonant voices of dissent and expelling the international monitors documenting his government’s alleged crimes.

The heavy-handed raids on the country’s most prominent nongovernmental organizations and the seizure of the offices of the independent news outlets Confidencial and 100% Noticias left a clear message that no one, especially former Sandinista comrades, was safe from a crackdown on dissent following a wave of protests that increasingly aimed at pushing the 73-year-old president from power.

At least 325 people have been killed since protests erupted in mid-April and were violently suppressed. Some 565 people have been jailed, according to the Nicaraguan Human Rights Center, which itself was raided. Many of those held face terrorism charges that carry decades-long sentences. Thousands have fled the country in self-imposed exile.

“All Nicaraguans are vulnerable to the possibility that they fabricate charges from the laws they (the government) invented,” the founder of Confidencial, Carlos Fernando Chamorro, said in front of Managua’s courthouse. “No one is safe here. The law protects no one because in Nicaragua there is not rule of law.”

Chamorro ran the Sandinistas’ newspaper La Barricada for years and his mother, Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, was initially part of the Sandinista ruling junta when it gained power. But she later split and eventually ran for president, defeating Ortega in 1990.

Vice President Rosario Murillo, who is Ortega’s wife and who also controls the government’s communications, did not grant a request for an interview with herself or Ortega. But at an event with police last week, she made a thinly veiled reference to Chamorro and other “traitors.”

A week of cracking down

The new wave of crackdowns began a little over a week ago when Ortega loyalists in congress stripped nine organizations of their legal status, alleging they supported what the government has called a coup attempt, a reference to the protests.

Police raided the groups’ offices the night of Dec. 13, hauling off computers and reams of documents. They returned the following night to occupy their buildings.

Police toting rifles could be seen watching television inside the offices of Confidencial while its staff kept its website updated from hotel rooms, their homes and eventually a secret location where they re-established their newsroom.

“The issue is that the institutions that he’s going after are symbolic of the strength of civil society,” said Manuel Orozco, a senior associate at The Inter-American Dialogue in Washington. Ortega thought he could maintain control through the political parties, but this opposition movement has come from civil society.

When Chamorro went to police headquarters Dec. 15 to ask to see what order had allowed the seizure of his offices, he and his staff were pushed away by riot police who punched and kicked at least one of his reporters.

Riot police were present again two days later when Chamorro and his wife walked hand-in-hand to the gates of the courthouse to seek judicial relief.

“As human beings, obviously we’re afraid of being smashed by the regime, which up to now has prevailed through force and terror,” Chamorro said. Invoking his father, a journalist and national hero killed in 1978 by the Somoza dictatorship that was later overthrown by the Sandinistas, Chamorro said that each person is the master of his own fear.

“All citizens have to learn to manage fear and overcome it and show that you can’t kill ideas and ideas can’t be killed by killing journalists,” he said.

Former Sandinistas

Chamorro isn’t alone as a former Sandinista now squarely in Ortega’s sights. Many of the intellectuals and key figures who participated in early Sandinista governments have split away over the years, accusing Ortega of taking a more authoritarian path.

Vilma Nunez, the president of the Nicaraguan Human Rights Center, was a supreme court vice president under Ortega’s first Sandinista government in 1979 and dedicated much of her early career to defending Sandinistas persecuted by the Somoza regime.

Last week police forced their way into her offices and now the center, known by its Spanish initials of Cenidh, is reorganizing at a clandestine location. Cenidh has been documenting abuses by police and paramilitaries since violence began in April.

“They believe that by finishing off belligerent organizations that won’t be silent about human rights they are going to silence the voices of protest that persist,” Nunez said.

Appearance of normality

In the streets of Managua, outward appearances suggest some degree of normality. Christmas decorations are spread about the city, more restaurants and bars are staying open after dark and the city’s Eastern Market has been humming with shoppers.

But vendors say business has been running 25 to 30 percent below what it was last year, even in the run-up to Christmas.

Nicaragua’s private business umbrella organization COSEP issued a report this month saying that instead of the forecast 5 percentage-point growth in Nicaragua’s economy this year, it will finish with a 4-point contraction.

Not so visible are people living in fear.

A woman who for months has been helping to hide dozens of university students who had occupied campuses in anti-government protests continues to ferry donated food and clothing to them. But she said there’s never enough food, and some subsist on rice and ketchup.

But their emotional health is the greater concern, she said: These were students on career tracks who suddenly found themselves unable to return to the university or even walk down the street. After police and paramilitaries retook the university campuses last summer, hundreds of students have either fled the country or remain in hiding.

“They have imprisoned their future,” said the woman, who requested anonymity to protect the students in her care.

Tight security

To get to the Managua home of Carlos Tunnermann, a former university rector, the Sandinistas’ first education minister and later Ortega’s ambassador to the United States, you have to get through two police checkpoints.

Tunnermann, a member of the Civic Alliance formed to negotiate with the government last spring, lives near Ortega’s home and falls within his expanded security perimeter. The first checkpoint is easy enough, the second, however, is more challenging. After a half hour of questions, the gate finally swung aside.

Tunnermann said that the recent aggression toward the NGOs and Chamorro’s media outfit could have been a reply to the U.S. government’s economic sanctions last month against Murillo and Nestor Moncada, Ortega’s national security adviser.

Tunnermann said Ortega seemed to not grasp yet that each time he ratchets up the crackdown, the international community will increase the pressure on him.

In Tunnermann’s mind, dialogue and eventually a concession by Ortega to move up presidential elections scheduled for 2021 were the country’s best chance for peace.

But there was a major obstacle, he said: Ortega and Murillo “have invented a reality that is not the true reality. It’s a reality that is only in their minds.”