Nicaraguan government officials involved in the suppression of protesters are now barred from coming to the United States, the State Department announced Thursday.
“We are sending a clear message that human rights abusers and those who undermine democracy are not welcome in the United States,” State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said Thursday. “We emphasize the action we are announcing today is specific to certain officials and not directed at the Nicaraguan people.”
Nicaragua has been consumed by protests against President Daniel Ortega, which began in opposition to unilateral pension cuts and were met with violence. More than 100 people have been killed and 1,000 injured, according to reports, although the government denies responsibility.
“The political violence by police and pro-government thugs against the people of Nicaragua, particularly university students, shows a blatant disregard for human rights and is unacceptable,” Nauert said.
“Affected individuals include National Police officials, municipal government officials, and a Ministry of Health official – specifically those directing or overseeing violence against others exercising their rights of peaceful assembly and freedom of expression, thereby undermining Nicaragua’s democracy,” she added. “In certain circumstances, family members of those individuals will also be subject to visa restrictions.”
The crackdown puts the Nicaraguan government in the front rank of Latin American regimes facing a democratic crisis, along with Venezuela, which is enduring a food shortage. Like the Maduro regime in Venezuela, Ortega’s government has worked to consolidate power and undermine his political opposition. His wife, Rosario Murillo, is currently the elected vice president.
There’s a more direct connection as well. “[A] previous supply of aid and cheap oil from Venezuela was cut off after that country’s economic collapse, jeopardizing some of the social programs with which the Ortega government had placated Nicaragua’s poor,” a pair of experts with the Inter-American Dialogue wrote in the Los Angeles Times.
Pompeo’s imposition of visa restrictions should win support on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers in both parties have urged a tougher line.
“We must not allow human rights abusers and corrupt officials to continue violating their rights without consequence,” Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., wrote in a June 5 letter to President Trump. “Instead, we must make it clear to the Ortega regime that the era of impunity for abuses is over, and that the United States stands with the Nicaraguan people in their fight for the rule of law and for basic freedoms.”
American support for human rights is buttressed by tangible interests in stability in the region, not least of which is that the unrest leads to refugee crises; Venezuelan requests for asylum in the United States, for instance, have skyrocketed.
“We are going through very dark days,” said Humberto Belli, a former Nicaraguan education minister, told the Wall Street Journal. “The people are out in the street demanding that Ortega leave, but he has shown an unexpected ability to kill. We see more blood every day — three, four, five people killed on a daily basis. This has no end.”
