WHAT THE CORPORATE-OWNED MEDIA WONT TELL YOU ABOUT THE ARRESTS IN NICARAGUA
By Peter Bolton, The Canary.
June 20, 2021 | EDUCATE!
Above Photo: Nicholas Raymond/Flickr.
Nicaragua has been under heavy fire from the corporate-owned media lately.
The government of Daniel Ortega has arrested several opposition figures in
the midst of an upcoming election. The US government and corporate media
have been expressing their outrage about what they consider to be the
growing dictatorial nature of the Ortega regime.
But there is more to the story than they let on. A deeper investigation
shows that the situation is not as clear-cut as they make out. And as is so
often the case with Latin America, it falls to independent media to add some
nuance and balance to the flagrantly right-leaning and pro-Washington
coverage of the corporate-owned press.
Predictable One-Sided Coverage From CNN, The Washington Post, And The
Guardian
On 9 June, CNN reported on a series of arrests of leading opposition figures
in Nicaragua. It claims that this forms part of a long-established pattern
within the Central American country, stating that Ortegas government has
in the past not shied away from cracking down on the opposition. The report
even repeats a former Costa Rican presidents characterization of the saga
as the night of the long knives in the tropics a reference to Adolf
Hitlers purge of political rivals within the Nazi Party in 1930s Germany.
A week later on 15 June, the Washington Post and the Guardian both reported
on further arrests made by Ortegas government. Most of the Posts article
was taken up by an anecdote about the arrest of one of these opposition
figures, Juan Sebastián Chamorro. The Guardian, meanwhile, characterized the
arrests as an unprecedented crackdown on the countrys opposition that
forms part of an apparent attempt to crush any serious challenge in
Novembers elections.
From reading these reports, one could be forgiven for thinking that
Nicaragua has descended into an authoritarian nightmare bordering on the
fascistic. But a deeper investigation shows that the situation is not nearly
as black-and-white as these outlets make it out to be.
An Opposition Thats Bankrolled By Washington
First of all, we must keep in mind that Nicaraguan opposition have a history
of being bankrolled by Washington. After all, both the right-wing opposition
and dissident Sandinistas alike have received substantial funding from
groups such as the Washington-based United States Agency for International
Development (USAID) and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). USAID is
essentially a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) front organization that has
been heavily involved in US regime change efforts around the globe. NED,
meanwhile, was formed in 1983 with the explicit purpose to do today what
was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA, according to US historian Allen
Weinstein.
Ever since Ortegas party, the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FLNS),
was brought back to power via an election in 2006, Washington has channeled
tens of millions of dollars through USAID to help opposition groups
destabilize the country and overthrow the government. One of the major
recipients of this money has been the Chamorro Foundation, which was founded
by the family of the very person whose arrest the Washington Post detailed.
Other people arrested by Ortegas government include:
Felix Maradiaga, founder of the Civil Society Leadership Institute, an NGO
that has received money from the NED
José Adan Aguerri, former president of the Superior Council for Private
Enterprise (COSEP), which has received money from USAID
Violeta Granera, a member of the political council of the Blue and White
National Unity (UNAB) movement, which journalist Ben Norton has described as
an integral part of the US- and EU-backed efforts to form an opposition
alliance
Arturo Cruz, who is believed to have received money from the US government
as part of an effort to impose sanctions on Nicaragua
Given the above, one then has to ask whether a country is obligated to
tolerate the activities of organizations or individuals that take money from
a hostile power (the US) with a long and prolific record of interfering in
elections, propping up dictatorships, and even violently overthrowing
governments that it doesnt like all over the region. Needless to say, such
behavior would hardly be accepted in the US itself given that treason is a
capital crime according to US federal law.
Presenting US Regime Change Engineers As Foreign Leaders
Corporate media outlets, however, completely leave out this reality.
Instead, they largely repeat statements from US-based supporters of regime
change as if they were representative of global opinion. CNN, for example,
claims that the arrests sparked outrage among human rights organizations
and foreign leaders. But rather than telling readers who these foreign
leaders are, they instead provide quotes from: US State Department
spokesperson Ned Price, acting assistant secretary for US Department of
States Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs Julie Chung, and the hardline
Cuban-American exile House representative María Elvira Salazar. In other
words, CNN tries to pass off US government spokespersons and a Republican
Party congress member, all of whom make no secret of wanting to overthrow
the Ortega government and replace it with something more obedient to US
interests, as representing the Global reaction to the arrests.
The human rights organizations it quotes, meanwhile, are the Bianca Jagger
Human Rights Foundation and Human Rights Watch. The latter has been
notorious for taking a pro-State Department line on Latin America and even
contains former State Department personnel on its board of directors. The
former, meanwhile, is led by an anti-government partisan who supports
imperialist sanctions on her own country. As The Canary reported in December
2018, Jagger has not only expressed support for the crippling US sanctions
already in place but even called for the European Union, Canada, and other
Latin American nations to issue their own set of sanctions as well.
Remembering The History Of US Intervention
Its important to also remember the historical context of US meddling in
Latin America, and especially in Nicaragua, which has suffered from
Washingtons regime change efforts since the early 1980s. After overthrowing
the brutal US-backed Somoza dictatorship in 1979, the Sandinistas, as they
are colloquially known, faced a violent attempt from Washington to replace
them with a pro-US government.
Washington even established a ruthless paramilitary organization called the
Contras, which waged a protracted dirty war against the Sandinista
government and civilians alike. Renowned for their ruthlessness, the Contras
committed human rights violations including murder, kidnappings, and
torture, and certainly met the US governments [own
definition](https://www.fbi.gov/stats-services/publications/terrorism-2002-2
005#:~:text=Terrorism is defined in the,or social objectives (28 C.F.R.) of
terrorists. In short, the Ortega government can hardly be blamed for
charging opposition figures who take US money with inciting foreign
intervention.
The likes of CNN, the Washington Post, and the Guardian, however, completely
gloss over both this historical context and the funding of domestic groups
that facilitate US intervention. We shouldnt be surprised at their brazenly
anti-government stance, though. The Guardian and Washington Post, in
particular, have been notorious for their one-sided coverage of Nicaragua.
The Guardians Wildly Inaccurate Coverage Of Nicaragua
During an earlier round of anti-government protests in 2018, for example,
the Guardian flagrantly misrepresented the situation by portraying the
government as the sole committer of human rights abuses. As The Canary
reported at the time, an open letter to the Guardians editors signed by
over a score of public intellectuals stated:
despite plentiful evidence of opposition violence, almost all your 17
reports since mid-April blame Daniel Ortegas government for the majority of
deaths that have occurred
The Open Letter To The Guardian On Its Wildly Inaccurate Coverage of
Nicaragua added that the publication failed to report murders of government
supporters committed by opposition supporters. These killings numbered at
least 21 and went alongside recorded cases of attacks on public buildings
and homes of government officials committed by anti-government actors.
One of the letters signatories, human rights lawyer and professor at the
University of Pittsburgh Dan Kovalik, said to The Canary:
I am convinced that the mainstream coverage of the situation there
represents the greatest misinformation campaign I have ever witnessed.
He added:
There has been no mainstream coverage I have seen about the violence
perpetrated by the extreme opposition, though that violence has been
substantial.
Clearly, mainstream outlets like CNN, the Washington Post, and the Guardian
cant be trusted to cover Nicaragua in a balanced and fair-minded way.
Because, as we can see, they consistently and flagrantly misrepresent the
situation in order to provide a smokescreen for Washington and its internal
proxies. The need for independent media to cut through the propaganda and
add some balance, therefore, becomes greater with every passing day.