Democracy Movement protests Nicaragua’s military attack on Cubans

TODAY NICARAGUA via Local10.com, MIAMI -Members of the Democracy Movement held a rally Tuesday across from the Nicaraguan consulate, demanding to know why Nicaragua used its military to attack and drive back a group of Cuban migrants trying to enter the country from Costa Rica.

“We don’t know yet (why the Cubans were stopped),” Democracy Movement leader Ramon Raul Sanchez told Local 10 News. “Nicaragua knows that these Cubans go through there every day, and suddenly, they took this approach of sending the Army against civilians — unarmed civilians — so we don’t know.”

Costa Rica has welcomed Cuban migrants on their way to the U.S. There has been a tsunami of them fleeing Cuba out of fear that the Cuban Adjustment Act will be repealed, and thus the legal authority to enter the U.S. and stay.
The most common route that the Cubans are taking to get to the U.S. via Central or South America is to fly to Guyana or Ecuador, where they don’t need visas. From there, they move north on the arduous, costly and often dangerous journey to the U.S.

But Nicaragua has suddenly cracked down on Cubans arriving at the border, refusing to let them pass. Nicaragua’s government is socialist, and President Daniel Ortega is friendly with the Castro-run Cuban regime.

“If he lets the Cuban (people) pass through Nicaragua, he will be sanctioned by Castro,” Nicaraguan-American Ernesto Locayo told Local 10. “That’s the name of the game.”

The Cuban land exodus is enormous. More than 27,000 Cubans have entered the U.S. through Mexico in the last year, and more than 9,000 Cubans have arrived at Miami International Airport without visas. So far this year, 773 Cubans have been intercepted at sea and repatriated.