Re: Nicaragua
Posted: Thu Oct 28, 2021 2:11 pm
NicaNotes: Letter to UNHRC about Political Exploitation of Indigenous Communities in Nicaragua
October 28, 2021
This letter, signed by solidarity, human rights, religious, labor and other organizations, has been sent to the UN Human Rights Council and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. It denounces the misrepresentation and exploitation of disputes over land in Nicaragua’s autonomous Indigenous territories for political purposes by local and international organizations which claim to represent the interests of Indigenous peoples.
Police inspect the site of a violent incident in an artisanal goldmine run by Indigenous people in Bosawás, Nicaragua
To: The United Nations Human Rights Council and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights
Copy to:
CEJIL (the Center for Justice and International Law)
Center for Civil and Political Rights (CCPR)
Front Line Defenders (FLD)
Global Witness (GW)
Iniciativa Mesoamericana de Mujeres Defensoras de Derechos Humanos (IM-Defensoras)
International Fellowship of Reconciliation (IFOR)
International Service for Human Rights (ISHR)
International Institute on Race, Equality, and Human Rights (IIREHR)
International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs (IWGIA)
Peace Brigades International (PBI)
Red Internacional de Derechos Humanos (RIDH)
Red Internacional de Derechos Humanos – Europa (RIDH-E)
Unidad de Protección a Defensoras y Defensores de Derechos Humanos – Guatemala (UDEFEGUA)
Women’s Link Worldwide (WLW)
World Organization Against Torture (OMCT)
FROM: Undersigned solidarity, human rights, religious, labor and other organizations
Political exploitation of Indigenous communities in the Bosawás region
Nicaragua is a country with some 40,000 Indigenous families who benefit from the region’s most ambitious system of decentralized Indigenous government. Three hundred Indigenous communities legally own approximately one third of Nicaragua’s national territory. Within four years of returning to government in January 2007, President Daniel Ortega’s Sandinista administration had granted Nicaragua’s Indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples title to 15 territories covering more than two million hectares.
The largest tropical rainforest reserve in Central America, Bosawás, includes seven territories belonging to Mayangna and Miskitu Indigenous groups. Under autonomous government, Indigenous peoples participate actively in decisions relating to the protection of this environment. Land in these territories is held communally and cannot be sold, only leased.
However, there is a long history of mestizo settlers (called colonos) moving into the territories, a process which accelerated under neoliberal governments in power from 1990 until 2007. From January 2007, the new government worked to mitigate the continuing adverse effects while also consolidating the region’s autonomous administration. In fact, most mestizo settlers are accepted by the Indigenous and Afro-descendant communities and live alongside them.
Despite that generally stable context, some mestizo settlers occupy land illegally. Most disputes over land are resolved peacefully, but there is a history of occasionally violent conflict, with some 37 Indigenous deaths in the six years to 2020 reported by international organizations, who invariably omit other deaths of mestizo people resulting from attacks by Indigenous groups. Guillermo Rodriguez of the Center for Justice and International Law has admitted that “It’s a really complex situation. In some places, 90% of the current inhabitants are colonos.”
Regrettably, local and international NGOs ignore such complexities. They also fail to abide by basic reporting norms, making little effort to corroborate information they receive from local sources, seldom comparing reported incidents with other versions of events and rarely seeking genuinely independent verification. While other countries have bona fide representative organizations (e.g. in Honduras, COPINH’s defense of Lenca communities and OFRANEH’s reporting on attacks against Garifuna people), in Nicaragua elected Indigenous leaders reject the incompetence and biased reporting by local foreign-financed NGOs, finding them to be neither representative nor impartial.
The UN system and other international institutions seem almost invariably to accept the reports of international NGOs as if they were presented by impartial interlocutors, which, in the case of Nicaragua, categorically they are not. In doing so, such organizations fail the majority of Indigenous and Afro-descendant people in Nicaragua by misrepresenting the problems they face and by propagating falsehoods about the causes of any violence. They disregard the views and experience of Indigenous community leaders themselves, who are given no voice in these debates (as, for example, when the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights holds hearings without inviting local elected Indigenous leaders, such as the one on March 18 2021).
At both local and international level, NGOs exploit the occasional violent incidents in Nicaragua’s autonomous Caribbean Coast regions, using them in effect as ideological propaganda against Nicaragua’s socialist government. Here are four recent examples (for details, see links in text and sources at the end of this letter):
An incident in Kiwakumbai on August 23 of this year led to nine deaths and two women being raped. The Oakland Institute, together with Nicaraguan NGOs CALPI, CEJUDHCAN and Fundación del Río claimed that “settlers massacred at least 11 members of the Indigenous Miskitu and Mayangna peoples living in the Bosawás Biosphere Reserve.” In fact there were no settlers involved: the victims, who were Mayangna, Miskitu and other people operating an artisanal goldmine, were attacked by a group composed mainly of other Indigenous people in a dispute over profits from the mine. This was an intracommunal conflict.
On February 16, 2020, according to CEJUDHCAN, a young girl in the Miskitu community of Santa Clara was shot in the face in a settler attack, an allegation repeated by the Oakland Institute. The girl’s injury was actually due to a domestic firearm accident, as community leaders later confirmed. Settler attacks giving cause for concern have indeed occurred in Santa Clara and nearby Wisconsin, but as a result of illicit land sales by other local Miskitu community leaders to mestizo families.
On January 29, 2020, 12 houses in the Mayangna community of Alal were burnt down by colonos and two people injured. The Oakland Institute’s report Nicaragua’s Failed Revolution wrongly claimed that there were four deaths. This was repeated in a statement by the UN Human Rights Commissioner on February 7. In fact, the violence was a revenge attack by colonos to whom some Mayangna people from Alal had illegally sold land. The attack targeted the houses only of those people involved in the sale, apparently because they wanted to illicitly resell the same land to other buyers.
More widely, in 2020 the Oakland Institute and CEJUDHCAN launched a completely spurious and baseless campaign to portray Nicaraguan beef exports as “conflict beef” coming from disputed Indigenous territories, ignoring the protective mechanisms which the government has put in place and which meet stringent international norms.
Recently, the United Nations Human Rights Council received a letter signed by many of the organizations listed above, falsely accusing the Nicaraguan government of “negligence… and impunity in the face of the recurrent attacks against Indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples in the North Caribbean Coast Autonomous Region with the aim of widespread land-grab.” The letter repeats the incorrect version of the incident in Kiwakumbai on August 23 and is based on a statement by Amaru Ruiz of the NGO Fundación del Río, who has himself now been charged by Nicaragua’s authorities with deliberately publishing false information and provoking communal hatred.
Several of the organizations have condemned the Nicaraguan government in the most extreme terms, accusing it of “ethnocide” and labelling Nicaragua “the most dangerous country” for environmental defenders.” One body warns sensationally of the “complete disappearance” of Indigenous peoples, when the overall population of the Miskitu and Mayangna peoples alone number some 180,000 and 30,000 respectively.
The letter’s completely distorted picture ignores the interlinked problems of the remoteness of the areas, the extreme difficulty in policing them and the culpability of some members of Indigenous communities involved in illicit land sales. In the worst neocolonial style, these NGOs idealize all Indigenous people as environmental and human rights defenders when, naturally, this is not always the case. They dismiss the Nicaraguan government’s continuing efforts to resolve land disputes, omit the role of autonomous regional, territorial and communal governments and ignore far-reaching improvements brought by the government to the social and economic wellbeing of Indigenous peoples.
We therefore call on the United Nations Human Rights Council to reject the accusations in the letter from the 16 organizations. We also call on the international NGOs concerned, to act in good faith when reporting on Nicaragua in the future. At the very least, we urge them to abide by basic reporting norms so as to investigate and corroborate far more thoroughly claims about the situation of Indigenous peoples of the kind made by the Oakland Institute and by Nicaraguan NGOs CALPI, CEJUDHCAN and Fundación del Río. We demand that all these organizations desist from making exaggerated, misinformed and categorically false criticisms of Nicaragua’s treatment of its Indigenous peoples.
Signed by the following organizations:
ÃBACOenRed
Alliance for Global Justice
Australia Solidarity with Latin America
Black Alliance for Peace
Casa Baltimore Limay
Casa del Agua
Chicago ALBA Solidarity
Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox
Communist Party of Ireland
Community Organizing Center
Friends of Latin America
Friends Of The Congo
Friendship Office of the Americas
Genesee Valley Citizens for Peace
Give Ye Them to Eat
Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space
International Action Center
Marxist Think Tank
Nicaragua Solidarity Campaign
Nicaragua Solidarity Campaign Action Group
Nicaragua Solidarity Ireland
Ode to Earth/Echoes of Silence
Orinoco Tribune
Pan-African Roots
PCOA: Anti-imperialist Working Class Platform (Ireland)
Popular Resistance
REDH: The Network in Defence of Humanity (Irish Chapter)
Rights Action
Sustainable Orphanages for Haitian Youth
Task Force on the Americas
Venezuela Ireland Network
Veterans For Peace Linus Pauling Chapter 132
Victor Jara Siempre Canta
Women Against Military Madness
– – – – – – – – – –
Sources:
The Kiwakumbai, Santa Clara and Alal incidents and the “conflict beef” issue are described in these articles:
Nicaragua’s Rainforest and Indigenous Peoples: a Story of Falsehood, Lies and US-based Political Campaigns
Progressive Media Promoted a False Story of ‘Conflict Beef’ From Nicaragua
Recorded interviews with Indigenous and other community representatives are presented in:
Nicaragua’s Indigenous Peoples: the Reality and the Neocolonial Lies (author Stephen Sefton)
Details of a site visit to Kiwakumbai, including interviews with the Mayor of Bonanza and a report by the Nicaraguan police:
Site visit to Kiwakumbai, Cerro Pukna, Bosawás (video by Stephen Sefton)
Report by Nicaraguan police
Interview with the mayor of Bonanza (by Stephen Sefton and Jimmy Altamirano)
Video report of site visit with the mayor of Bonanza to Kiwakumbai, Cerro Pukna, Bosawás (by Stephen Sefton and Jimmy Altamirano)
A summary of Indigenous leaders’ views and the background to these issues is given in:
Nicaragua’s Caribbean Coast Indigenous Leaders Speak Out (author Rick Sterling)
https://taskforceamericas.org/pbs-and-o ... nicaragua/
https://afgj.org/nicanotes-10-28-2021
************************************
Ten Things for US to Understand About Latin America
October 27, 2021
By Laura Wells – Oct 21, 2021
The United States — the land and people — will be a lot better off when the idea of US supremacy is dropped. Toward that end, and toward the goal of a better world, here are ten things for US to understand about Latin America. This piece has a special focus on Nicaragua, a country whose sovereignty needs respect, especially during this election season, from US critics both Right and Left.
1. Threat of a good example. That is the main reason countries get on the “bad lists” of the US, not oil since not all maligned countries even have oil. The reason is that the countries do not “have the interest of the United States at heart,” as CIA director George Tenet said during the US-backed 2002 coup against Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez. The bad lists include Trump’s “Troika of Tyranny” — Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela — and the 30-plus countries around the globe suffering from the deadly effects of US sanctions. The US justifies sanctions by saying that they are based on matters people care about deeply, such as human rights abuses and trafficking, and that they are less damaging than war. Meanwhile, sanctions are lethal, and the United Nations charter clearly prohibits “unilateral coercive measures” taken by one country against another.
2. Sovereignty YES, Sanctions NO. Latin American countries are sovereign nations. They are not a “backyard” requiring US protection or interference. They have many leaders, in government and not in government, who are very intelligent with in-depth knowledge of history. They are not, as the US government and media call them, dictators, regimes, strong-men, or tyrants. To repeat, they are sovereign nations capable of choosing their own leaders. Certainly anyone familiar with US elections can believe it is possible to find improved, more easily verified electoral systems outside the US, for example, Venezuela’s system, which is computerized and has paper ballots that allow for audits.
3. Constitutions get updated. Most Latin American nations are among the more than 90 countries in the world with proportional representation. PR is the key to having multiple parties, which allow voters to actually affect their governments because they can vote for the candidates most aligned with their values, not just against the worst candidates. It is said that it’s virtually impossible to eliminate from the US constitution even the based-on-slavery Electoral College, which installed two recent presidents who lost the popular vote, both Bush and Trump.
4. Term limits are not a solution. Term limits are not the great electoral reform many people believe them to be. Nicaragua and some other “bad list” Latin American governments have dispensed with them. When Venezuela held a vote to remove term limits, there were loud cries that “Hugo Chavez wants to be dictator for life!” but significantly, those accusers did not point out that Venezuela joined other nations without term limits, like the U.K., Germany, Italy, Japan, and most Scandinavian nations. When facing term limits, elected officials tend to be less focused on their current duties and more focused on positioning themselves and their campaign contributors for their next move. Terms limits came in after FDR and stopped voters from being able to re-elect presidents they still wanted. More effective electoral reforms are proportional representation, free and fair media coverage, and open debates.
5. Nicaragua’s healthcare system is free. A major hospital has a huge sign telling people, “All services are free. If anyone tries to present you with a bill, report it.” That certainly constitutes a “threat of a good example.” When a poor country like Nicaragua can provide healthcare to its residents, then there is no excuse for the US, the wealthiest nation the planet has ever known, to have the worst healthcare system — in terms of cost, access, and results — of the 30 wealthy, industrialized (OECD) countries. People question statistics with good reason, but it is clear Nicaragua, Cuba, and Venezuela have dealt with the COVID pandemic better than the US. The Nicaraguan government had plans in place as early as January 2020 to prevent the spread of COVID, but did not impose quarantines. Most Nicaraguans could not have worked from home on their computers. Quarantines would have been an economic death knell to the majority of the population that work in very small businesses including farms and the informal economy of open air stands selling everything from food to furniture.
6. Food sovereignty is key to Nicaragua’s resilience. Nicaragua produces about 90% of its food, primarily on the small farms of the campesinos. This represents a beneficial change from the mono-cropping agribusiness model that took over so much land in Latin America, and from the abandonment of farming that happened in oil-rich Venezuela in the 1900s. The ability of Nicaraguans to feed themselves locally helps them survive despite the pressures of US sanctions, the COVID pandemic, and yet another 2020 disaster: two hurricanes, category 4 Eta and then category 5 Iota, two weeks apart in November 2020.
7. Devastating hurricanes — climate crisis is real. Wawa Bar is a small community in Nicaragua that was hit by both hurricanes. It is in a semi-autonomous region on the Caribbean Coast that has afro-descendant and indigenous populations. The devastation was heart-breaking — huge trees that had survived decades of hurricanes were uprooted, 700 head of cattle were killed; crops were ruined, and the soil had become too salty from the flooding to replant — but not one person died, everyone was evacuated in time, and all community members are moving back. Food was provided and within weeks the Nicaraguan government restored electricity and sent roofing supplies so everyone again had a roof over their head. Among the first buildings the community restored was the school. The hurricanes had destroyed their textbooks, bilingual in both Spanish and the indigenous Miskito language, but education will continue for their children. How can the US continue illegal sanctions in the face of such devastation? Sanctions, in the process of trying to effect “regime change,” greatly hurt ordinary people. Sovereign nations have the right to choose their own presidents, governments and economic systems.
8. Nicaragua has the fifth highest gender equality in the world. It is not surprising the first four countries are Iceland, Norway, Finland, and Sweden, but how many people would guess Nicaragua to be fifth? The reason is that they have a mandate to have 50/50 in their legislatures, and if, for example, a president or mayor is male, then the vice-president or vice-mayor will be female. Or vice versa.
9. Daniel Ortega is in for the long haul. President of Nicaragua Daniel Ortega is a controversial figure particularly outside of Nicaragua, where media and official stories are not countered by people’s direct experience. Ortega was president in the 1980s when the Sandinista revolution ended the 45-year dictatorship of the Somoza family. The Sandinistas lost the 1990 elections, as the opposition promised peace from contra violence if elected. However, support for the Sandinistas remained strong in the popular neighborhoods and much of the countryside, so in 2006, Daniel Ortega was elected president again with 38% of the popular vote, re-elected in 2011 with 62% of the vote, in 2016 with 72.5% of the vote, and has the same level of popular support leading up to the elections in November 2021. Nicaraguans approve of their healthcare system, literacy programs, free higher education, expanded and improved roads and electricity — and they remember how those gains were reversed during the 1990s when the Sandinistas were out of power, and services including water were privatized. The large rural population likes land reform, which enables them to work their own small farms. They have hope for a good life for their families. That is why Nicaraguans re-elect Daniel Ortega, and why Nicaraguans are not joining the caravans migrating to the US the way many other Central Americans are trying to do.
10. Power of a good example. It’s an American tradition to end with hope and this piece follows that tradition. There is hope for improvement in the US and the world, although it’s unclear whether the US will change significantly through a people’s revolution or a capitalist collapse. Even though, unfortunately, US media from FOX to PBS line up with the military-industrial-complex, people can still learn how the US affects the world, through compelling writings by authors such as Smedley D. Butler, Noam and his daughter Aviva Chomsky, John Perkins, and Naomi Klein.
Life can certainly be better for people in the US, with better healthcare, housing, jobs, justice, education and environment, and less student debt, incarcerations, and wasteful military spending. What is needed is to raise expectations, increase pressure on politicians — including Biden/Harris, who have not shown signs that they will reduce Trump’s ramped-up sanctions — and find ways to stop believing the lies.
https://orinocotribune.com/ten-things-f ... n-america/
October 28, 2021
This letter, signed by solidarity, human rights, religious, labor and other organizations, has been sent to the UN Human Rights Council and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. It denounces the misrepresentation and exploitation of disputes over land in Nicaragua’s autonomous Indigenous territories for political purposes by local and international organizations which claim to represent the interests of Indigenous peoples.
Police inspect the site of a violent incident in an artisanal goldmine run by Indigenous people in Bosawás, Nicaragua
To: The United Nations Human Rights Council and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights
Copy to:
CEJIL (the Center for Justice and International Law)
Center for Civil and Political Rights (CCPR)
Front Line Defenders (FLD)
Global Witness (GW)
Iniciativa Mesoamericana de Mujeres Defensoras de Derechos Humanos (IM-Defensoras)
International Fellowship of Reconciliation (IFOR)
International Service for Human Rights (ISHR)
International Institute on Race, Equality, and Human Rights (IIREHR)
International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs (IWGIA)
Peace Brigades International (PBI)
Red Internacional de Derechos Humanos (RIDH)
Red Internacional de Derechos Humanos – Europa (RIDH-E)
Unidad de Protección a Defensoras y Defensores de Derechos Humanos – Guatemala (UDEFEGUA)
Women’s Link Worldwide (WLW)
World Organization Against Torture (OMCT)
FROM: Undersigned solidarity, human rights, religious, labor and other organizations
Political exploitation of Indigenous communities in the Bosawás region
Nicaragua is a country with some 40,000 Indigenous families who benefit from the region’s most ambitious system of decentralized Indigenous government. Three hundred Indigenous communities legally own approximately one third of Nicaragua’s national territory. Within four years of returning to government in January 2007, President Daniel Ortega’s Sandinista administration had granted Nicaragua’s Indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples title to 15 territories covering more than two million hectares.
The largest tropical rainforest reserve in Central America, Bosawás, includes seven territories belonging to Mayangna and Miskitu Indigenous groups. Under autonomous government, Indigenous peoples participate actively in decisions relating to the protection of this environment. Land in these territories is held communally and cannot be sold, only leased.
However, there is a long history of mestizo settlers (called colonos) moving into the territories, a process which accelerated under neoliberal governments in power from 1990 until 2007. From January 2007, the new government worked to mitigate the continuing adverse effects while also consolidating the region’s autonomous administration. In fact, most mestizo settlers are accepted by the Indigenous and Afro-descendant communities and live alongside them.
Despite that generally stable context, some mestizo settlers occupy land illegally. Most disputes over land are resolved peacefully, but there is a history of occasionally violent conflict, with some 37 Indigenous deaths in the six years to 2020 reported by international organizations, who invariably omit other deaths of mestizo people resulting from attacks by Indigenous groups. Guillermo Rodriguez of the Center for Justice and International Law has admitted that “It’s a really complex situation. In some places, 90% of the current inhabitants are colonos.”
Regrettably, local and international NGOs ignore such complexities. They also fail to abide by basic reporting norms, making little effort to corroborate information they receive from local sources, seldom comparing reported incidents with other versions of events and rarely seeking genuinely independent verification. While other countries have bona fide representative organizations (e.g. in Honduras, COPINH’s defense of Lenca communities and OFRANEH’s reporting on attacks against Garifuna people), in Nicaragua elected Indigenous leaders reject the incompetence and biased reporting by local foreign-financed NGOs, finding them to be neither representative nor impartial.
The UN system and other international institutions seem almost invariably to accept the reports of international NGOs as if they were presented by impartial interlocutors, which, in the case of Nicaragua, categorically they are not. In doing so, such organizations fail the majority of Indigenous and Afro-descendant people in Nicaragua by misrepresenting the problems they face and by propagating falsehoods about the causes of any violence. They disregard the views and experience of Indigenous community leaders themselves, who are given no voice in these debates (as, for example, when the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights holds hearings without inviting local elected Indigenous leaders, such as the one on March 18 2021).
At both local and international level, NGOs exploit the occasional violent incidents in Nicaragua’s autonomous Caribbean Coast regions, using them in effect as ideological propaganda against Nicaragua’s socialist government. Here are four recent examples (for details, see links in text and sources at the end of this letter):
An incident in Kiwakumbai on August 23 of this year led to nine deaths and two women being raped. The Oakland Institute, together with Nicaraguan NGOs CALPI, CEJUDHCAN and Fundación del Río claimed that “settlers massacred at least 11 members of the Indigenous Miskitu and Mayangna peoples living in the Bosawás Biosphere Reserve.” In fact there were no settlers involved: the victims, who were Mayangna, Miskitu and other people operating an artisanal goldmine, were attacked by a group composed mainly of other Indigenous people in a dispute over profits from the mine. This was an intracommunal conflict.
On February 16, 2020, according to CEJUDHCAN, a young girl in the Miskitu community of Santa Clara was shot in the face in a settler attack, an allegation repeated by the Oakland Institute. The girl’s injury was actually due to a domestic firearm accident, as community leaders later confirmed. Settler attacks giving cause for concern have indeed occurred in Santa Clara and nearby Wisconsin, but as a result of illicit land sales by other local Miskitu community leaders to mestizo families.
On January 29, 2020, 12 houses in the Mayangna community of Alal were burnt down by colonos and two people injured. The Oakland Institute’s report Nicaragua’s Failed Revolution wrongly claimed that there were four deaths. This was repeated in a statement by the UN Human Rights Commissioner on February 7. In fact, the violence was a revenge attack by colonos to whom some Mayangna people from Alal had illegally sold land. The attack targeted the houses only of those people involved in the sale, apparently because they wanted to illicitly resell the same land to other buyers.
More widely, in 2020 the Oakland Institute and CEJUDHCAN launched a completely spurious and baseless campaign to portray Nicaraguan beef exports as “conflict beef” coming from disputed Indigenous territories, ignoring the protective mechanisms which the government has put in place and which meet stringent international norms.
Recently, the United Nations Human Rights Council received a letter signed by many of the organizations listed above, falsely accusing the Nicaraguan government of “negligence… and impunity in the face of the recurrent attacks against Indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples in the North Caribbean Coast Autonomous Region with the aim of widespread land-grab.” The letter repeats the incorrect version of the incident in Kiwakumbai on August 23 and is based on a statement by Amaru Ruiz of the NGO Fundación del Río, who has himself now been charged by Nicaragua’s authorities with deliberately publishing false information and provoking communal hatred.
Several of the organizations have condemned the Nicaraguan government in the most extreme terms, accusing it of “ethnocide” and labelling Nicaragua “the most dangerous country” for environmental defenders.” One body warns sensationally of the “complete disappearance” of Indigenous peoples, when the overall population of the Miskitu and Mayangna peoples alone number some 180,000 and 30,000 respectively.
The letter’s completely distorted picture ignores the interlinked problems of the remoteness of the areas, the extreme difficulty in policing them and the culpability of some members of Indigenous communities involved in illicit land sales. In the worst neocolonial style, these NGOs idealize all Indigenous people as environmental and human rights defenders when, naturally, this is not always the case. They dismiss the Nicaraguan government’s continuing efforts to resolve land disputes, omit the role of autonomous regional, territorial and communal governments and ignore far-reaching improvements brought by the government to the social and economic wellbeing of Indigenous peoples.
We therefore call on the United Nations Human Rights Council to reject the accusations in the letter from the 16 organizations. We also call on the international NGOs concerned, to act in good faith when reporting on Nicaragua in the future. At the very least, we urge them to abide by basic reporting norms so as to investigate and corroborate far more thoroughly claims about the situation of Indigenous peoples of the kind made by the Oakland Institute and by Nicaraguan NGOs CALPI, CEJUDHCAN and Fundación del Río. We demand that all these organizations desist from making exaggerated, misinformed and categorically false criticisms of Nicaragua’s treatment of its Indigenous peoples.
Signed by the following organizations:
ÃBACOenRed
Alliance for Global Justice
Australia Solidarity with Latin America
Black Alliance for Peace
Casa Baltimore Limay
Casa del Agua
Chicago ALBA Solidarity
Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox
Communist Party of Ireland
Community Organizing Center
Friends of Latin America
Friends Of The Congo
Friendship Office of the Americas
Genesee Valley Citizens for Peace
Give Ye Them to Eat
Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space
International Action Center
Marxist Think Tank
Nicaragua Solidarity Campaign
Nicaragua Solidarity Campaign Action Group
Nicaragua Solidarity Ireland
Ode to Earth/Echoes of Silence
Orinoco Tribune
Pan-African Roots
PCOA: Anti-imperialist Working Class Platform (Ireland)
Popular Resistance
REDH: The Network in Defence of Humanity (Irish Chapter)
Rights Action
Sustainable Orphanages for Haitian Youth
Task Force on the Americas
Venezuela Ireland Network
Veterans For Peace Linus Pauling Chapter 132
Victor Jara Siempre Canta
Women Against Military Madness
– – – – – – – – – –
Sources:
The Kiwakumbai, Santa Clara and Alal incidents and the “conflict beef” issue are described in these articles:
Nicaragua’s Rainforest and Indigenous Peoples: a Story of Falsehood, Lies and US-based Political Campaigns
Progressive Media Promoted a False Story of ‘Conflict Beef’ From Nicaragua
Recorded interviews with Indigenous and other community representatives are presented in:
Nicaragua’s Indigenous Peoples: the Reality and the Neocolonial Lies (author Stephen Sefton)
Details of a site visit to Kiwakumbai, including interviews with the Mayor of Bonanza and a report by the Nicaraguan police:
Site visit to Kiwakumbai, Cerro Pukna, Bosawás (video by Stephen Sefton)
Report by Nicaraguan police
Interview with the mayor of Bonanza (by Stephen Sefton and Jimmy Altamirano)
Video report of site visit with the mayor of Bonanza to Kiwakumbai, Cerro Pukna, Bosawás (by Stephen Sefton and Jimmy Altamirano)
A summary of Indigenous leaders’ views and the background to these issues is given in:
Nicaragua’s Caribbean Coast Indigenous Leaders Speak Out (author Rick Sterling)
https://taskforceamericas.org/pbs-and-o ... nicaragua/
https://afgj.org/nicanotes-10-28-2021
************************************
Ten Things for US to Understand About Latin America
October 27, 2021
By Laura Wells – Oct 21, 2021
The United States — the land and people — will be a lot better off when the idea of US supremacy is dropped. Toward that end, and toward the goal of a better world, here are ten things for US to understand about Latin America. This piece has a special focus on Nicaragua, a country whose sovereignty needs respect, especially during this election season, from US critics both Right and Left.
1. Threat of a good example. That is the main reason countries get on the “bad lists” of the US, not oil since not all maligned countries even have oil. The reason is that the countries do not “have the interest of the United States at heart,” as CIA director George Tenet said during the US-backed 2002 coup against Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez. The bad lists include Trump’s “Troika of Tyranny” — Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela — and the 30-plus countries around the globe suffering from the deadly effects of US sanctions. The US justifies sanctions by saying that they are based on matters people care about deeply, such as human rights abuses and trafficking, and that they are less damaging than war. Meanwhile, sanctions are lethal, and the United Nations charter clearly prohibits “unilateral coercive measures” taken by one country against another.
2. Sovereignty YES, Sanctions NO. Latin American countries are sovereign nations. They are not a “backyard” requiring US protection or interference. They have many leaders, in government and not in government, who are very intelligent with in-depth knowledge of history. They are not, as the US government and media call them, dictators, regimes, strong-men, or tyrants. To repeat, they are sovereign nations capable of choosing their own leaders. Certainly anyone familiar with US elections can believe it is possible to find improved, more easily verified electoral systems outside the US, for example, Venezuela’s system, which is computerized and has paper ballots that allow for audits.
3. Constitutions get updated. Most Latin American nations are among the more than 90 countries in the world with proportional representation. PR is the key to having multiple parties, which allow voters to actually affect their governments because they can vote for the candidates most aligned with their values, not just against the worst candidates. It is said that it’s virtually impossible to eliminate from the US constitution even the based-on-slavery Electoral College, which installed two recent presidents who lost the popular vote, both Bush and Trump.
4. Term limits are not a solution. Term limits are not the great electoral reform many people believe them to be. Nicaragua and some other “bad list” Latin American governments have dispensed with them. When Venezuela held a vote to remove term limits, there were loud cries that “Hugo Chavez wants to be dictator for life!” but significantly, those accusers did not point out that Venezuela joined other nations without term limits, like the U.K., Germany, Italy, Japan, and most Scandinavian nations. When facing term limits, elected officials tend to be less focused on their current duties and more focused on positioning themselves and their campaign contributors for their next move. Terms limits came in after FDR and stopped voters from being able to re-elect presidents they still wanted. More effective electoral reforms are proportional representation, free and fair media coverage, and open debates.
5. Nicaragua’s healthcare system is free. A major hospital has a huge sign telling people, “All services are free. If anyone tries to present you with a bill, report it.” That certainly constitutes a “threat of a good example.” When a poor country like Nicaragua can provide healthcare to its residents, then there is no excuse for the US, the wealthiest nation the planet has ever known, to have the worst healthcare system — in terms of cost, access, and results — of the 30 wealthy, industrialized (OECD) countries. People question statistics with good reason, but it is clear Nicaragua, Cuba, and Venezuela have dealt with the COVID pandemic better than the US. The Nicaraguan government had plans in place as early as January 2020 to prevent the spread of COVID, but did not impose quarantines. Most Nicaraguans could not have worked from home on their computers. Quarantines would have been an economic death knell to the majority of the population that work in very small businesses including farms and the informal economy of open air stands selling everything from food to furniture.
6. Food sovereignty is key to Nicaragua’s resilience. Nicaragua produces about 90% of its food, primarily on the small farms of the campesinos. This represents a beneficial change from the mono-cropping agribusiness model that took over so much land in Latin America, and from the abandonment of farming that happened in oil-rich Venezuela in the 1900s. The ability of Nicaraguans to feed themselves locally helps them survive despite the pressures of US sanctions, the COVID pandemic, and yet another 2020 disaster: two hurricanes, category 4 Eta and then category 5 Iota, two weeks apart in November 2020.
7. Devastating hurricanes — climate crisis is real. Wawa Bar is a small community in Nicaragua that was hit by both hurricanes. It is in a semi-autonomous region on the Caribbean Coast that has afro-descendant and indigenous populations. The devastation was heart-breaking — huge trees that had survived decades of hurricanes were uprooted, 700 head of cattle were killed; crops were ruined, and the soil had become too salty from the flooding to replant — but not one person died, everyone was evacuated in time, and all community members are moving back. Food was provided and within weeks the Nicaraguan government restored electricity and sent roofing supplies so everyone again had a roof over their head. Among the first buildings the community restored was the school. The hurricanes had destroyed their textbooks, bilingual in both Spanish and the indigenous Miskito language, but education will continue for their children. How can the US continue illegal sanctions in the face of such devastation? Sanctions, in the process of trying to effect “regime change,” greatly hurt ordinary people. Sovereign nations have the right to choose their own presidents, governments and economic systems.
8. Nicaragua has the fifth highest gender equality in the world. It is not surprising the first four countries are Iceland, Norway, Finland, and Sweden, but how many people would guess Nicaragua to be fifth? The reason is that they have a mandate to have 50/50 in their legislatures, and if, for example, a president or mayor is male, then the vice-president or vice-mayor will be female. Or vice versa.
9. Daniel Ortega is in for the long haul. President of Nicaragua Daniel Ortega is a controversial figure particularly outside of Nicaragua, where media and official stories are not countered by people’s direct experience. Ortega was president in the 1980s when the Sandinista revolution ended the 45-year dictatorship of the Somoza family. The Sandinistas lost the 1990 elections, as the opposition promised peace from contra violence if elected. However, support for the Sandinistas remained strong in the popular neighborhoods and much of the countryside, so in 2006, Daniel Ortega was elected president again with 38% of the popular vote, re-elected in 2011 with 62% of the vote, in 2016 with 72.5% of the vote, and has the same level of popular support leading up to the elections in November 2021. Nicaraguans approve of their healthcare system, literacy programs, free higher education, expanded and improved roads and electricity — and they remember how those gains were reversed during the 1990s when the Sandinistas were out of power, and services including water were privatized. The large rural population likes land reform, which enables them to work their own small farms. They have hope for a good life for their families. That is why Nicaraguans re-elect Daniel Ortega, and why Nicaraguans are not joining the caravans migrating to the US the way many other Central Americans are trying to do.
10. Power of a good example. It’s an American tradition to end with hope and this piece follows that tradition. There is hope for improvement in the US and the world, although it’s unclear whether the US will change significantly through a people’s revolution or a capitalist collapse. Even though, unfortunately, US media from FOX to PBS line up with the military-industrial-complex, people can still learn how the US affects the world, through compelling writings by authors such as Smedley D. Butler, Noam and his daughter Aviva Chomsky, John Perkins, and Naomi Klein.
Life can certainly be better for people in the US, with better healthcare, housing, jobs, justice, education and environment, and less student debt, incarcerations, and wasteful military spending. What is needed is to raise expectations, increase pressure on politicians — including Biden/Harris, who have not shown signs that they will reduce Trump’s ramped-up sanctions — and find ways to stop believing the lies.
https://orinocotribune.com/ten-things-f ... n-america/