[News] Open Letter to Amnesty International by a Former Amnesty International Prisoner of Conscience

[Anti-Imperialist News]

https://www.alainet.org/en/articulo/193467


  Open Letter to Amnesty International by a Former Amnesty International
  Prisoner of Conscience

Camilo E. Mejia <https://www.alainet.org/en/autores/camilo-e-mejia>
13/06/2018
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Through this letter I express my unequivocal condemnation of Amnesty 
International with regards to the destabilizing role it has played in 
Nicaragua, my country of birth.

I open this letter quoting Donatella Rovera 
<http://www.phap.org/speaker-profiles/1156>, who at the time this quote 
was made had been one of Amnesty International’s field investigators for 
more than 20 years:

“Conflict situations create highly politicized and polarized 
environments (…). Players and interested parties go to extraordinary 
lengths to manipulate or manufacture “evidence” for both internal and 
external consumption. A recent, though by no means the only, example is 
provided by the Syrian conflict in what is often referred to as the 
“YouTube war,” with a myriad techniques employed to manipulate video 
footage of incidents which occurred at other times in other places – 
including in other countries – and present them as “proof” of atrocities 
committed by one or the other parties to the conflict in Syria.”

Ms. Rovera’s remarks, made in 2014, properly describe the situation of 
Nicaragua today, where even the preamble of the crisis was manipulated 
to generate rejection of the Nicaraguan government. Amnesty 
International’s maliciously titled report, /Shoot to Kill: Nicaragua’s 
Strategy to Repress Protest, /could be dismantled point by point, but 
doing so requires precious time that the Nicaraguan people don’t have, 
therefore I will concentrate on two main points:

  *

    The report completely lacks neutrality and;

  *

    Amnesty International’s role is contributing to the chaos in which
    the nation finds itself.

The operating narrative, agreed-upon by the local opposition and the 
corporate western media, is as follows: That president Ortega sought to 
cut 5 percent from retirees’ monthly retirement checks, and that he was 
going to increase contributions, made by employees and employers, into 
the social security system. The reforms sparked protests, the response 
to which was a government-ordered genocide of peaceful protestors, more 
than 60, mostly students. A day or two after that, the Nicaraguan 
government would wait until nightfall to send its police force out in 
order to decimate the Nicaraguan population, night after night, city by 
city, in the process destroying its own public buildings and killing its 
own police force, to then culminate its murderous rampage with a 
Mothers’ Day massacre, and so on.

While the above narrative is not uniformly expressed by all 
anti-government actors, the unifying elements are that the government is 
committing genocide, and that the president and vice-president must go.

Amnesty International’s assertions are mostly based on either testimony 
by anti-government witnesses and victims, or the uncorroborated and 
highly manipulated information emitted by U.S.-financed anti-government 
media outlets, and non-profit organizations, collectively known as 
“civil society.”

The three main media organizations cited by the report: Confidencial, 
100% Noticias, and La Prensa, are sworn enemies of the Ortega 
government; most of these opposition news media organizations, along 
with some, if not all, of the main non-profits cited by the report, are 
funded by the United States, through organizations like the National 
Democratic Institute (NDI) and the National Endowment for Democracy 
(NED), which has been characterized by retired U.S. Congressman, Ron 
Paul, as:

"… an organization that uses US tax money to actually subvert democracy, 
by showering funding on favored political parties or movements overseas. 
It underwrites color-coded ‘people’s revolutions’ overseas that look 
more like pages out of Lenin’s writings on stealing power than genuine 
indigenous democratic movements."

Amnesty’s report heavily relies on /100% Noticias/, an anti-government 
news outlet that has aired manipulated and inflammatory material to 
generate hatred against the Nicaraguan government, including footage of 
/peaceful /protesters, unaware of the fact that the protesters were 
carrying pistols, rifles, and were shooting at police officers during 
incidents reported by the network as acts of police repression of 
opposition marches. On Mothers’ Day, 100% Noticias reported the 
purported shooting of unarmed protesters by police shooters, including 
an incident in which a young man’s brains were spilling out of his 
skull. The network followed the report with a photograph that Ms. Rovera 
would refer to as an incident “…which occurred at other times in other 
places.” The picture included in the report was quickly met on social 
media by links to past online articles depicting the same image.

One of the sources (footnote #77) cited to corroborate the alleged 
denial of medical care at state hospitals to patients injured at 
opposition events –one of the main accusations repeated and reaffirmed 
by Amnesty International- is a press conference published by /La 
Prensa/, in which the Chief of Surgery denies claims that he had been 
fired, or that hospital officials had denied care to protesters at the 
beginning of the conflict. “I repeat,” he is heard saying, “as the chief 
of surgery, I repeat [the] order: to take care of, I will be clear, to 
take care of the entire population that comes here, without 
investigating anything at all.” In other words, one of Amnesty 
International’s own sources contradicts one of its report’s main claims.

The above-mentioned examples of manipulated and manufactured evidence, 
to borrow the words of Amnesty’s own investigator, are just a small 
sample, but they capture the essence of this modality of U.S.-sponsored 
regime change. The report feeds on claims from those on one side of the 
conflict, and relies on deeply corrupted evidence; it ultimately helps 
create the mirage of a genocidal state, in turn generating more 
antigovernment sentiment locally and abroad, and paving the way for ever 
more aggressive foreign intervention.

*A different narrative*

The original reforms to social security were not proposed by the 
Sandinista government, but by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and 
they were supported by an influential business group, known as COSEP. 
They included raising the retirement age from 60 to 65 and doubling the 
number of quotas necessary to get full social security from 750 to 1500. 
Among the impacted retirees, approximately 53,000, are the families of 
combatants who died in the armed conflict of the 1980s, from both the 
Sandinista army and the “Contras,” the mercenary army financed by the 
United States government in the 1980s, around the same time the NED was 
created, in part, to stop the spread of Sandinismo in Latin America.

The Nicaraguan government countered the IMF’s reforms by rejecting the 
cutting out of any retirees, with a proposed 5% cut to all retirement 
checks, an increase in all contributions to the social security system, 
and with fiscal reform that removed a tax-ceiling that protected 
Nicaragua’s biggest salaries from higher taxation. The business sector 
was furious, and together with nongovernmental organizations organized 
the first marches, using the pretext of the reforms in the same 
manipulative way Amnesty International’s report explains them: “… the 
reform increased social security contributions by both employers and 
employees and imposed an additional 5% contribution on pensioners.”

The continuing narrative, repeated and validated by Amnesty 
International, is that the protesters are peaceful and the genocidal 
government is irrationally bent on committing atrocities in plain sight. 
Meanwhile, the number of dead among Sandinista supporters and police 
officers continues to rise. The report states that ballistic 
investigations suggest that those shooting at protesters are likely 
trained snipers, pointing to government involvement, but fails to 
mention that many of the victims are Sandinistas, regular citizens, and 
police officers. It also does not mention that the “peaceful protesters” 
have burned down and destroyed more than 60 public buildings, among them 
many City Halls, Sandinista houses, markets, artisan shops, radio 
stations, and more; nor does it mention that the protesters have 
established “tranques,” or roadblocks, in order to debilitate the 
economy as a tactic to oust the government. Such “tranques” have become 
extremely dangerous scenes where murder, robbery, kidnapping, and the 
rape of at least one child have taken place; a young pregnant woman 
whose ambulance wasn’t let through also died on May 17^th . All of these 
crimes occur daily and are highly documented, but aren’t included in 
Amnesty International’s report.

While the organization is right to criticize the government’s belittling 
response to the initial protests, such response was not entirely untrue. 
According to the report, Vice-President Murillo said, among other 
things, that “…they [the protesters] had made up the reports of 
fatalities (…) as part of an anti-government strategy.” What Amnesty 
leaves out is that several of the reported dead students did turn up 
alive, one of them all the way in Spain, while others had not been 
killed at rallies, nor were they students or activists, including one 
who died from a scattered bullet, and another who died from a heart 
attack in his bed.

Amnesty’s report also leaves out that many of the students have deserted 
the movement, alleging that there are criminals entrenched at 
universities as well as at the various “tranques,” who are only 
interested in destabilizing the nation. Those criminals have created a 
state of sustained fear among the population, imposing “taxes” on those 
who want passage, persecuting those who refuse to be detained, 
kidnapping them, beating them, torturing them, and setting their cars on 
fire. In a common practice, they undress their victims, paint their 
naked bodies in public with the blue and white of the Nicaraguan flag, 
and then set them free, prompting them to run right before shooting them 
with homemade mortar weapons. All of this information, which did not 
make the report, is available in numerous videos and other sources.

*Why Nicaragua?*

The most basic review of the history between Nicaragua and the United 
States will show a clear rivalry. Beginning in the mid-1800s, Nicaragua 
has been resisting U.S. intervention into the country’s affairs, a 
resistance that continued through the 20^th century, first with General 
August C. Sandino’s fight in the 1920s and 30s, and then with the 
Sandinistas, organized as the Sandinista National Liberation Front 
(FSLN), which overthrew the U.S.-supported, 40-year Somoza family 
dictatorship in 1979. The FSLN, despite having gained power through 
armed struggle, called for elections shortly after its triumph in 1984, 
and eventually lost to yet another U.S.-supported coalition of 
right-wing political parties in 1990. The FSLN once again managed, aided 
by pacts made with the church and the opposition, to win the election of 
2006, and has remained in power since.

In addition to Nicaragua’s close ties with Venezuela, Cuba, Russia, and 
especially China, with whom the country signed a contract to build a 
canal, the other main reason the United States is after the Sandinistas, 
is Nicaragua’s highly successful economic model, which represents an 
existential threat to the neoliberal economic order imposed by the U.S. 
and its allies.

Despite always being among the poorest nations in the American continent 
and the world, Nicaragua has managed, since Ortega returned to power in 
2007, to cut poverty by three quarters. Prior to the protests in April, 
the country’s economy sustained a steady annual economic growth of about 
5% for several years, and the country had the third fastest-growing 
economy in Latin America, and was one of the safest nations in the region.

The government’s infrastructural upgrades have facilitated trade among 
Nicaragua’s poorest citizens; they have created universal access to 
education: primary, secondary, and university; there are programs on 
land, housing, nutrition, and more; the healthcare system, while modest, 
is not only excellent, but accessible to everyone. Approximately 90% of 
the food consumed by Nicaraguans is produced in Nicaragua, and about 70% 
of jobs come from the grassroots economy –rather than from transnational 
corporations- including from small investors from the United States and 
Europe, who have moved to the country and are a driving force behind the 
tourism industry.

The audacity of success, of giving its poorest citizens a life with 
dignity, of being an example of sovereignty to wealthier, more powerful 
nations, all in direct contradiction to the neoliberal model and its 
emphasis on privatization and austerity, has once again placed Nicaragua 
in the crosshairs of U.S. intervention. Imagine the example to other 
nations -their economies already strangled by neoliberal policies- 
becoming aware of one of the poorest countries on earth being able to 
feed its people and grow its economy without throwing its poorest 
citizens under the iron boot of capitalism. The United States will never 
tolerate such a dangerous example.

*In closing*

The Nicaraguan government has deficiencies and contradictions to work 
on, like all governments, and as a Sandinista myself I would like to see 
the party transformed in various important ways, both internally and 
externally. I have refrained from writing of those deficiencies and 
contradictions, however, because the violent protests and ensuing chaos 
we have seen are not the result of the Nicaraguan government’s 
shortcomings, but rather, of its many successes; that inconvenient truth 
is the reason the United States and its allies, including Amnesty 
International, have chosen to “…create highly politicized and polarized 
environments (…). [And to] go to extraordinary lengths to manipulate or 
manufacture “evidence” for both internal and external consumption.”

At a time when even the Organization of American States, the United 
Nations, and the Vatican have called for peaceful and constitutional 
reforms as the only way out of the conflict, Amnesty International has 
continued to beseech the international community to not “abandon the 
Nicaraguan people.” Such biased stance, obscenely bloated on highly 
manipulated, distorted, and one-sided information, has made the terrible 
situation in Nicaragua even worse. The loss of Nicaraguan lives, 
including the blood of those ignored by Amnesty International, has been 
used to manufacture the “evidence” used in the organization’s report, 
which makes the organization complicit in what future foreign 
intervention might fall upon the Nicaraguan people. It is now up to the 
organization to correct that wrong, and to do so in a way that reflects 
a firm commitment first and foremost to the truth, wherever it might 
fall, and to neutrality, peace, democracy, and always, to the 
sovereignty of every nation on earth.

Sincerely,

Camilo E. Mejia,

Iraq war veteran, resister, and conscientious objector (2003-2004)

Amnesty International prisoner of conscience (June 2004)

Born in Nicaragua, citizen of the world

-- 
Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415 
863.9977 https://freedomarchives.org/
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