White House, Bipartisan Members of Congress Unite to Demand End to Nicaragua Human Rights Abuses

Last week, the U.S. government took important and much-needed steps towards signaling to Nicaragua that ongoing human rights abuses committed by President Daniel Ortega’s government will result in significant U.S. pushback.

On Tuesday, November 27, the U.S. Senate passed the Nicaragua Democracy and Human Rights Act. The bill criticizes human rights abuses committed by the Nicaraguan government, and calls on the government to engage in serious negotiations over electoral reform, the timing of elections, and other governance issues. The bill also authorizes President Trump to impose targeted economic sanctions on senior Nicaraguan government officials. These sanctions are intended to pressure those officials without causing further harm to the Nicaraguan people, and gives the president the authority to lift the sanctions if there is evidence that the Nicaraguan government is taking measures to improve the human rights situation, and participating in serious negotiations meant to end the country’s ongoing political crisis.

The bill was approved unanimously, with both Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and liberals, endorsing the measure. Senators Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Bob Menendez (D-NJ), who have taken a very hardline approach against the Ortega-Murillo government, supported the measure, but so did Senators Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), known for their outspoken progressive views, as did Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT), who helped lead the fight against contra aid in the 1980s. The bill is likely to go to the House of Representatives soon.

On the same day, the White House issued an executive order authorizing targeted economic sanctions against persons involved in serious human rights abuses, efforts to undermine democratic practices, and other abuses in Nicaragua. The Treasury Department followed up by announcing targeted economic sanctions directed at Nicaraguan Vice President Rosario Murillo and a senior advisor to the Nicaraguan government.

Taken together, the measures send a strong and bipartisan signal to the Ortega government that it will face pressure from the United States (and likely others) if it does not take steps on human rights and the electoral process.

Overall, these measures are a positive development, given the serious and continuing human rights abuses, and repression directed against opposition political leaders, activists, students, and campesino leaders in Nicaragua. The sanctions have a greater likelihood of being effective as they are targeted rather than general; they are linked to progress on very specific and clearly identifiable actions, and they can be lifted if Nicaraguan officials halt abuses and actually make progress on negotiations.

Since mass protests began in mid-April, government security forces and pro-government paramilitaries have engaged in widespread and systematic repression in Nicaragua. According to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, at least 325 people have died in the context of street protests, the vast majority of them protesters. Others have been disappeared; many others have been arrested under a repressive anti-terrorist law passed in August.

One recent chilling account demonstrates the ugly nature of repression in Nicaragua today, and the government’s role in it: on September 27, Ligia Gómez, a former activist in President Ortega’s party the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) and an official at the Nicaraguan Central Bank, testified before the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission in the U.S. House of Representatives. Gomez told the Commission (and repeated in an interview with Nicaraguan investigative news site Confidencial) that she had been ordered by party superiors to bring other Central Bank employees with her to challenge demonstrators at key intersections in Managua shortly after the protests began in April. When she refused, she was fired. She subsequently received death threats, and left the country, applying for political asylum in the United States. When her testimony became public in early November, her siblings who remained in Nicaragua received threats, and felt compelled to leave the country as well.

Gomez’s testimony illustrates the abuse of authority and repression of peaceful protest that sadly characterizes Nicaragua today. It’s these flagrant human rights violations that prompted the recent actions by the Senate and the White House to demand an end to abuse and serious negotiations with the opposition.

Some will criticize the actions taken by the Senate, as well as the White House measures, arguing that they reflect the Trump administration’s hardline approach toward governments it views as unfriendly. National Security Advisor John Bolton recently characterized Nicaragua, Cuba, and Venezuela as the “Troika of Tyranny” in a speech in Miami. The bellicose and confrontational approach articulated by Bolton towards Latin America certainly does more harm than good when it comes to human rights; it reflects the counter-productive belief that the U.S. can and should act unilaterally in the hemisphere, rather than addressing human rights and governance concerns though a multi-lateral approach that includes both engagement and pressure. But these recent actions against Nicaragua should not be understood as based in the aggressive and partisan approach of the White House. Such an analysis is wrong.

In fact, the recent U.S. government measures against Nicaragua were the work of a bipartisan coalition in Congress that includes both progressives and conservatives, and is focused on respect for human rights and serious negotiations to resolve the situation in Nicaragua peacefully and democratically. That coalition, in the Senate, began in May, when Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy, who fought repeatedly to cut U.S. support for the Nicaraguan contras throughout the 1980s, signed a bipartisan letter expressing concern about human rights abuses by Nicaraguan authorities, and urging the administration to impose targeted sanctions. In July, as the human rights situation in Nicaragua worsened, Leahy and two Democratic colleagues (Senators Tim Kaine (VA) and Ben Cardin (MD)) became initial sponsors, with Menendez and Rubio, of an early version of the Nicaragua Democracy and Human Rights Act. By late November, the legislation had won the support of every member of the U.S. Senate, in a demonstration of bipartisan concern about the human rights situation in Nicaragua.