NSCAG campaigns to defend Nicaragua's sovereignty and right to self-determination
NSCAG News |
on: Monday, 23 September 2019
On 19 July, hundreds of thousands of Nicaraguans joined in celebrations of the 40th anniversary of the Sandinista Revolution. The spirit of the event reflected the strength of unity that has characterised the Sandinista National Liberation Front, FSLN, following the failure of the US-inspired attempted coup of 2018. President Daniel Ortega, Vice president Rosario Murillo and the vice presidents of Cuba and Venezuela all stressed the critical importance of peace, not just in the sense of an absence of war but that of also building a society based on social and economic justice and the eradication of poverty.
It is against this background that the US administration, aided and abetted by corporate media and by opposition groups operating outside the country, is now piling on the pressure in a further attempt to oust Nicaragua’s democratically elected government and bring about regime change.
Over the past four years, opposition organisations in Nicaragua have received some US$35m in funding from US AID and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). This has supposedly been for ‘training on governance, private enterprise, human rights and democracy’. In effect such funding has been targeted and used to pay for an internal and external opposition to the Sandinista Government. The NED have even been described by a supporter as “laying the groundwork for insurrection” against Nicaragua’s elected government; opposition NGOs and so-called ‘student’ leaders have made frequent visits to Washington to seek help to oust the Government.
On 20 December last year, Donald Trump signed the NICA Act into law. The Act imposes a raft of sanctions on Nicaragua, thereby threatening a whole range of government social infrastructure programmes which have led to a 50% reduction in poverty levels and a marked improvement in the lives of the poorest and most vulnerable in society. The NICA Act marks an even more belligerent phase of years of US aggression against Nicaragua, which it has always regarded as ‘the threat of a good example’ because of its commitment to the implementation of progressive policies. The NICA Act has little to do with US concern for human rights, democracy and the rule of law in Nicaragua and everything to do with escalating the Trump administration regime-change agenda and the desire of the US to assert its dominance over the whole Central America region.
Trade unions, cooperatives and th wider social economy are the ones who will bear the brunt of US sanctions. In 2018, Nicaragua suffered an attempted coup, inspired by the US. Although the coup failed, it has had a devastating impact on Nicaragua's economy, with at least 120,000 jobs lost.
In the face of escalating US aggression, we are stepping up our campaigning activities in defence of Nicaragua’s sovereignty and democracy and the right of Nicaraguan people to determine their own future without foreign interference. The vast majority of Nicaraguan people want peace and have no desire to return to the dark days of neo-liberalism which saw mass privatisations and the decimation of the public sector. The slogan we used in the 80s, when Ronald Reagan launched a vicious war against Nicaragua was 'Nicaragua Must Survive'. Sadly, in the face of yet another US onslaught against the country, this slogan still rings true today.
