blog

Nicaragua Defeats The Not-So-Soft Coup

Tortilla Con Sal 

July 17, 2018

***A timeline of the attempted destabilization of Nicaragua follows this article.***

A massive rally on July 19th celebrated of the coup’s defeat and a categorical vindication of President Daniel Ortega’s Sandinista government’s efforts for peace in Nicaragua.

Nicaraguans celebrate 39th Anniversary of the 1979 Nicaraguan Revolution in Managua, July 2018.
Source Redvolution.

“Nicaragua’s president calls Catholic Church ‘allies of coup mongers’. Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega arrives at the Juan Pablo II plaza to celebrate the 39th anniversary of the Sandinista revolution, in Managua, Nicaragua, Thursday, July 19, 2018. (Credit: Alfredo Zuniga/AP.)” [Source: Crux]

Video with aerial views of the July 19th celebration in Managua.

July 17, 2018:

On July 19, hundreds of thousands of people from across Nicaragua will converge on the capital Managua to celebrate the 39th anniversary of their historic 1979 defeat of the Somoza dictatorship. The event takes place as the authorities continue to liberate communities blockaded by roadblocks operated by armed opposition activists whose not-so-soft coup attempt against the Sandinista government, begun on April 18, has failed. Ever since April 21, when President Daniel Ortega called for a process of National Dialogue to peacefully resolve opposition demands, Nicaragua’s political opposition and their allies have worked to sabotage talks for a negotiated solution. They have regularly staged extremely violent provocations falsely seeking to portray the government as being wholly responsible for the crisis and demanding President Ortega’s resignation.

Early in July, the opposition reneged on an agreement to dismantle the roadblocks their armed supporters have used since late April to try to destroy the country’s economy and intimidate the general population. On July 9, the government declared it would no longer permit the opposition to abuse the population’s basic rights to peace and security, stating: “Faced with the daily suffering imposed on Nicaragua’s families, who since April 18 have suffered violence from terrorists who have murdered, tortured and kidnapped hundreds of citizens, the same terrorists that have burned and destroyed hundreds of families’ homes, public buildings, small- and medium-sized businesses, such that the state is bound to act in accordance with the law to guarantee the right of its citizens to live in peace, with security and respect for the human rights enshrined in our political constitution, in the charters of international organizations and in human rights conventions.”

July 20, 2018 interview With Human Rights Lawyer Dan Kovalik in Nicaragua:

 

Opposition Violence

Subsequently, Nicaragua’s national police have worked with local communities around the country to clear the opposition roadblocks. In Jinotepe, they set free hundreds of trucks and their drivers held hostage by opposition gangs for over a month. In many places, it has been possible to negotiate agreements to remove the roadblocks peacefully. Elsewhere, the process has involved violence and casualties provoked by very well-armed activists and associated paid criminals resisting the authorities’ efforts to restore freedom of movement. On July 13 in Managua, two opposition activists were killed during the clearance of blockades in and around the National Autonomous University.

Elsewhere, on July 12, opposition activists from roadblocks operated by Francisca Ramirez and Medardo Mairena’s anti-Canal movement infiltrated an opposition peace march in the town of Morrito, on the eastern shore of Lake Nicaragua, on the highway to the Rio San Juan. They attacked a police post and the local municipal office, murdering four police officers and a primary school teacher, wounding four municipal workers and kidnapping nine police officers. Subsequently, that evening the police officers were set free, six of them with injuries.

Tortured & Murdered

In Masaya, opposition activists tortured, murdered and burned police officer Gabriel Vado Ruiz and would have done the same to another police officer, Rodrigo Barrios Flores, had he not escaped from his captors after enduring two days of torture and abuse. Although the extreme violence of the armed opposition activists has been responsible directly and indirectly for almost all the loss of life and injuries during the crisis, international news media and human rights organizations continue to falsely blame the government for virtually all the deaths and people injured. Amnesty International and fellow coup apologists such as Bianca Jagger and SOS Nicaragua, along with their allies in corporate media such as the Guardian, Telegraph, Washington Post, New York Times, Al Jazeera, CNN,  BBC, all cover up very serious human rights violations by the opposition activists during the failed attempted coup against Nicaragua’s legitimate government.

However, abundant audiovisual and photographic material exists providing irrefutable evidence of systematic human rights violations practiced by Nicaragua’s political opposition. From the the start, on April 18, the armed opposition offensive has manipulated legitimate peaceful protest so as to give cover to a very deliberate campaign of violence and deceit, promoting a climate of fear and casting blame on the government so as to create a psychosis of hatred, polarizing Nicaraguan society. The campaign’s objective is to make impossible a negotiated solution to the crisis provoked by the political opposition. Over the weekend of July 13-15, events in Nicaragua showed how refined the techniques of psychological warfare have become.

Misrepresenting & Exaggerating

The political opposition have used social media to misrepresent and exaggerate events, create incidents that never happened and obliterate their own criminal terrorist attacks. For example, the crisis in Nicaragua began with a fake ‘student massacre’ that never took place. Now Nicaragua’s opposition have faked attacks on a church in Managua, exaggerated casualties during the clearance of opposition thugs from the national university and covered up their own deliberate murders of police in Morrito and Masaya, as well as their gratuitous attacks on peaceful Sandinista demonstrators. In the national university, the opposition gangs also set fire to a classroom module and destroyed a preschool facility on the university campus.

Right from the start of the crisis, the opposition have expertly staged phony scenes of students taking cover from gunfire and used those images to justify their own savage attacks, like those in which they burned down pro-government Nuevo Radio Ya and CARUNA, the rural cooperatives’ savings and loan institution. Photographs show opposition journalists and photographers filming opposition activists pretending to be attacked, but despite the obvious fakery, those false stories get published uncritically in international corporate and alternative media. Nicaragua provides a textbook case study bearing out the work of analysts such as Cuba’s Randy Falcon, who has emphasized how new technologies exponentially multiply the digital reproduction of longstanding conventional propaganda motifs.

Propaganda Ploys

In Nicaragua, the government has in several cases negotiated agreements to clear armed opposition roadblocks, only to find that the opposition refuse to honor the agreements. The extremist political opposition are desperate to keep up their violence so as to sabotage efforts at National Dialogue and project the false image of a repressive government without popular support. Large demonstrations across the country supporting the government’s efforts for peace show exactly the reverse is true. Majority national opinion in Nicaragua is well aware of the opposition’s propaganda ploys and false claims.

Within Nicaragua, the opposition hardly bother to conceal their invention and artifice because their false political theater is staged almost entirely to impress overseas opinion. Their sinister cynical theater aims to set the scene for the Organization of American States to change its previously moderate position on Nicaragua and give the U.S. government an institutional pretext on which to intensify sanctions against Nicaragua’s government and its people. Even so, despite probable opposition attempts to sabotage it, July 19 will be a massive celebration of the coup’s defeat and a categorical vindication of President Daniel Ortega’s Sandinista government’s efforts for peace in Nicaragua.

 

***TIMELINE OF THE ATTEMPTED DESTABILIZATION ON NICARAGUA***

September 22, 2016: Suppressing Democracy: Western Journalism and Its Acolytes

October 1, 2016: Here We Go Again: Washington’s War on Democracy in Nicaragua

January 9, 2017: Fake News in a Multipolar World

January 22, 2017: The Anti-Democratic, Anti-Intellectual West

June 4, 2017: Class War, Allegiance and Progressive Western Media

July 16, 2017: Nicaragua Highlights Failures of Globalization

July 23, 2017: Latin American Left Regroups, Shows Strength in Nicaragua

July 31, 2017: Legitimacy and False Witness According to the U.S

August 13, 2017: Amnesty International: Weaponizing Hypocrisy for the U.S., NATO

August 31, 2017: Nicaragua’s Sandinista Achievements Baffle World Bank, IMF

November 12, 2017: A Big Win for Nicaragua’s Democracy

January 3, 2018: 2018: Increasing Regional Instability

January 11, 2018: US ups the stakes against Nicaragua

January 12, 2018: US Raises the Stakes Against Nicaragua

March 11, 2018: From the End of History to the End of Truth

April 12, 2018: The Guardian Falsely Smears Nicaragua Yet Again

April 21, 2018: Nicaragua: Next in Line for Regime Change?

April 26, 2018: Nicaragua: Destabilization “Made in the USA” [Spanish] [English: Link]

April 26, 2018: Nicaragua: Report from Estelí

April 26, 2018: Nicaragua: Communiqué from the Sandinista Front [Spanish] [English: Link]

April 28, 2018: Nicaragua Regains its Balance

April 29, 2018: The Empire Turns Its Sights on Nicaragua – Again!

May 2, 2018: Nicaragua: Parade of the Hypocrites

May 8, 2018: Nicaragua: Sunday in Masaya

May 9, 2018: Western super-revolutionaries – hopelessly wrong on Nicaragua

May 10, 2018: Is the U.S. Meddling in Nicaragua?

May 10, 2018: Western ‘Super-Revolutionaries’ Hopelessly Wrong on Nicaragua

May 12, 2018: Dialogue in Nicaragua: An Inauspicious Start

May 14, 2018: Nicaragua’s Protestors: “Peaceful Students” or Enemy Combatants?

May 17, 2018: Nicaragua and the Left: Between Pride and Ignorance

[Spanish] [English: Link]

May 17, 2018: Nicaragua: An Urgent Call for Solidarity from the ATC

May 20, 2018: Nicaragua: Extortion, Dialogue And A Longing for Peace

May 26, 2018: Nicaragua,Venezuela: One Enemy, One Fight For Democracy

May 26, 2018: “Ortega y Somoza son la misma cosa”: Foreign PSYOP Disinformation Campaign [Spanish] [English: Link]

May 31, 2018: To Keep its Stranglehold on Latin America, the US Fights Nicaragua’s Success

May 31, 2018: Rebellion or Counter-Revolution? Made in USA or Nicaragua?

June 1, 2018: Facts About What is Happening in Nicaragua and a Challenge to “Left Intellectuals” [Spanish] [English: Link]

June 6, 2018: Nicaragua: Religion, Dialogue and Non-Violence

June 7, 2018: Nicaragua: Religion, Dialogue and Non-violence

June 12, 2018: Nicaragua: Defeating the Attempted Coup

June 13, 2018: Former Prisoner of Conscience Condemns Amnesty International

June 13, 2018: Nicaragua: Imperialist Snakes in Holy Vestments

June 13, 2018: Offering to the Pachamama for Peace in Nicaragua

[Spanish] [English: Link]

June 15, 2018: The US & Nicaragua: a Case Study in Historical Amnesia & Blindness

July 16, 2018: The Counterinsurgency War: Nicaragua in the Spotlight

[Spanish] [ English: Link]

June 17, 2018: Nicaragua’s Crisis: The Latest Stage in a Permanent War

July 17, 2018: São Paulo Forum Resolution on the Situation in Nicaragua

[Spanish] [English: Link]

June 18, 2018: Venezuela Condemns Opposition Violence in Nicaragua

June 20, 2018: Nicaragua: Open Letter to Amnesty International

June 29, 2018: Nicaragua: Unraveling the US Plot

June 20, 2018: NED Boasts of ‘Laying the Groundwork for Insurrection’ in Nicaragua

June 22, 2018: Nicaragua’s Statement at the Extraordinary Session of the Permanent Council of the OAS, June 22nd 2018

June 24, 2018: Nicaragua: Breaking Out of the “Soft Coup” Psychosis

June 30, 2018: Armed Violence in Nicaragua: An Imported Product

[Spanish] [English: Link]

June 30, 2018: Enthusiastic Walks for Peace and Love in Nicaragua

July 3, 2018: Nicaragua: Violent Opposition Torture the Poor and Sandinista Supporters

July 4, 2018: Nicaragua: Legitimacy And Human Right

July 14, 2018: Nicaragua Demands OAS Condemn Resurgence of Terrorist Actions

July 15, 2018: With cynical theater Nicaragua’s opposition erase their crimes to facilitate US intervention

July 17, 2018 [PODCAST]: WHAT’S REALLY HAPPENING IN NICARAGUA; AN INTERVIEW WITH STEPHEN SEFTON

July 17, 2018: São Paulo Forum Resolution on the Situation in Nicaragua

July 19, 2018: In Nicaragua the Month of July Is Sandinista

July 20, 2018:  Lorena Martínez: ‘They want to carry out a coup d’état in Nicaragua’ [Spanish][English: Link]

July 20, 2018: USAID anuncia 1.5 millones de dólares para apoyar la democracia y derechos humanos en Nicaragua

July 21, 2018: Nicaraguan People Participate in a Walk Demanding Justice for Victims of Terrorism

July 22, 2018: In Nicaragua, is Operation “Contra 2” Failing?

July 23, 2018: El Salvador President Salvador Sanchez Rejects Intervention in Nicaragua, Pleads for Dialogue

July 23, 2018: Reality vs. mainstream news in Nicaragua

Comments are closed.