Ortega says US foreign policy based on expansionism, oppression

In an exclusive interview in RT en Español, the president of Nicaragua Daniel Ortega explains what are the forces behind the anti-government protests and tells how the investigation process of the deaths will be made safe. In addition, the president talks about the relationship between his government and businessmen, and presents his vision on the creation of an OAS working group for Nicaragua.

“History is born with the expansionism of the United States since the ancestor century, when the North American country was already trying to take over Nicaragua”, says Daniel Ortega in the interview. “And then, beginning the last century, the US Army troops arriveed occupying Nicaragua, the US Army troops arrive, appointing presidents, murdering Sandino, installing Somoza,” adds Ortega.

“No matter who governs, [in Washington] is set in an expansionist culture,” he says. What the US “they cannot forgive” is that the Sandinista National Liberation Front overthrew Somoza, whom the Americans had set to govern Nicaragua, the president said.

“When the Sandinista Revolution began in 1979, the US responded with a war that was a ‘bloodbath’, with more than 50,000 deaths during that entire period from 1979 to 1990”, underlines Ortega.

When the Sandinista Front returned to the government in 2007, “armed groups begin to form and they began to present them as patriots who are fighting for democracy, against the Sandinista dictatorship. That is to say, they described us as a dictatorship simply because we had achieved the revolutionary victory and even when we were returning via the electoral route,” says the president.

Ortega says those countries that tend to act against Washington’s will are demonized and destabilized by the White House.

“We have always wanted to have normal relations with the US but we see only aggression in return.”

Ortega also said Washington was clearly not in need of good relations with Nicaragua, as it “constantly attacks” the Nicaraguan government. He added that the US openly demanded “submission, even servility”, while trampling on those states that refuse to “bow” to their will.

Washington has long sought to put Nicaragua into its sphere of influence, even by a direct military occupation in the early 20th century, the Nicaraguan president said.

According to Ortega, the US actively pushes its “human rights agenda” through various NGOs as well as directly through its embassy in Managua in a bid to present the Latin American state as a country “lacking democracy.”

“The activities of all those ‘human rights commissions’ has long turned into a business,” Ortega said.

Regarding the different numbers of deaths reported, of the official number, 195 and the more than 400 by human rights grous, Ortega points out that, although Nicaragua “has a high safety index”, there is another indicator that could be influencing the figures.

“We should ask ourselves, […] in Nicaragua, in these 90 days, there were no common crimes?” The president asks, noting that a certain number of daily homicides persist due to assaults and other crimes not necessarily related to the protest.

Ortega, however, emphasizes that the corresponding “legal procedures” will be applied to investigate each of these cases. “The formal rules […] are working,” says the president.

The president also points out a clear role of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) behind the protest actions. As he explains, NGOs seek to organize “women, young people” according to “well-known demands”, but funds for these demands are “deviated”; although not towards liberalism, which “has its own sources of financing”, but towards other parties for its “political agenda”. “That’s why the NGOs and the Embassy of the United States are organizing seminars to – they say – strengthen democracy,” he adds.

Last month, the Organization of American States (OAS) approved a resolution that urged Managua to “support an electoral calendar,” a formula of calling for early elections instead of waiting until the end of 2021 as a way out of the current growing crisis in the country over an alleged violent crackdown on dissent.

However, Nicaraguan Foreign Minister Denis Moncada strongly lambasted the resolution and rejected the early election request.

“What is happening in Nicaragua is a coup d’état and a rupture of the constitutional order,” the top diplomat said, accusing Washington of seeking “interference” in Nicaragua.