Nicaragua trumpets ‘ideological affinity’ with Beijing and seizes Taipei’s former embassy and diplomatic offices
China has opened an embassy in Nicaragua for the first time since 1990, less than a month after the central American country cut ties with Taiwan.
The Nicaraguan foreign minister, Denis Moncada, said there was an “ideological affinity” between the two countries and thanked China for donating 1m doses of the Sinopharm coronavirus vaccine.
Continue reading...Central American country becomes latest to switch allegiances to Beijing, amid escalating tensions
Nicaragua has switched diplomatic allegiance to China, leaving Taiwan with just 14 governments around the world that formally recognise it as a country.
The announcement by the Central American country’s foreign ministry also recognised Beijing’s claim over Taiwan as a Chinese province, a dispute that is at the heart of escalating tensions in the region.
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Continue reading...Authoritarian leader who has been in power since 2007 on course to secure another five-year term
Nicaragua’s authoritarian leaders, Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo, appeared to have secured another five years in power in an election that the US president, Joe Biden, condemned as an undemocratic “pantomime”.
In the early hours of Monday, Nicaragua’s supreme electoral council said Ortega, a one-time revolutionary who has governed continuously since 2007, had received 75% of votes, with about half of the 1.3m ballots counted.
Continue reading...Former Sandinista rebel leader, who has governed since 2007, seeks unprecedented fourth term
Nicaragua’s authoritarian leaders, Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo, are poised to extend their rule over the crisis-hit Central America country with an election that opponents and much of the international community have denounced as a charade.
Ortega, the Sandinista rebel who led Nicaragua during the 1980s and has governed continuously since 2007, will seek an unprecedented fourth consecutive term in Sunday’s contest, which follows a ruthless six-month political crackdown on rivals.
Continue reading...Deadly side-effect of heat stress is threat to rising numbers of workers in hot climates, doctors warn
Chronic kidney disease linked to heat stress could become a major health epidemic for millions of workers around the world as global temperatures increase over the coming decades, doctors have warned.
More research into the links between heat and CKDu – chronic kidney disease of uncertain cause – is urgently needed to assess the potential scale of the problem, they have said.
Continue reading...Global heating is having a deadly impact on Nicaragua’s sugar cane workers, who toil in temperatures of up to 45C
At the Sacuanjoche clinic in Chinandega, the largest city in Nicaragua’s sugar cane-growing region, nephrologist Nelson Garcia does the rounds of his patients. Many are suffering from chronic kidney disease (CKD); most fell ill while working long hours under the beating sun in the nearby sugar cane fields, and now have damaged and failing kidneys.
“People arrive with a host of symptoms here; some are really nauseous, or vomiting, or have severe diarrhoea,” Garcia says, adding that although unsure exactly how many people he has treated for heat stress and related kidney diseases this year, he knows it is a lot. “Others are physically weakened, tired, or have nasty muscular cramps, while others complain about having no appetite or libido – there really are so many symptoms.”
Continue reading...A roundup of the struggle for human rights and freedoms, from Kenya to France
Continue reading...A roundup of the struggle for human rights and freedoms, from Myanmar to Germany
Continue reading...The country’s greatest living writer feels ‘surprised, bewildered and assaulted’ after the president issued a warrant for his arrest and seized copies of his new novel about the 2018 uprising
Sergio Ramírez, Nicaragua’s best-known living writer, hero of the Sandinista revolution, and former vice-president of the volcanic Central American nation, has lived through both tougher times and duller publicity tours.
Even so, the past few days have been – as he puts it, with a degree of understatement – “an odd experience”.
Continue reading...Campaigners fear ban emboldens anti-choice governments as more aggressive opposition, better organised and funded, spreads from US
The new anti-abortion law in Texas is a “terrifying” reminder of the fragility of hard-won rights, pro-choice activists have said, as they warn of a “more aggressive, much better organised [and] better funded” global opposition movement.
Pro-choice campaigners have seen several victories in recent years, including in Ireland, Argentina and, most recently, Mexico, where the supreme court ruled last week that criminalising abortion was unconstitutional. Another is hoped for later this month when the tiny enclave of San Marino, landlocked within Italy, holds a highly charged referendum.
Continue reading...Ex-foreign minister among those arrested as Ortega detains political rivals as well as a columnist and ‘election geek’
It has been a fortnight since Georgiana Aguirre-Sacasa last heard from her elderly father: a terse WhatsApp message in which Nicaragua’s former foreign minister said border guards had stopped him leaving the country and seized his passport, and that he was on his way home.
“What????” she replied from her home in Denver, Colorado. “Why????” No answer came.
By then Aguirre-Sacasa believes Nicaraguan police officials on motorcycles had intercepted her father’s vehicle on the highway as he headed back to the capital, Managua. After searching it, they placed the 76-year-old retired diplomat in a pickup truck and spirited him away to an unknown destination.
“We are in this nightmare,” his daughter said this week as she desperately sought news of her father. “Right now, I just need proof of life.”
Francisco Aguirre-Sacasa is the oldest target of a brazen political crackdown being waged by the government of Daniel Ortega ahead of the Central American country’s next presidential election on 7 November. Police have arrested at least 32 people since late May, including important opposition figures who were challenging the revolutionary hero-turned-autocrat as he seeks a a fourth consecutive term.
Related: Nicaragua rounds up president’s critics in sweeping pre-election crackdown
Continue reading...Crackdown continues as vice-presidential hopeful Berenice Quezada accused of ‘terrorism’ for criticising lack of freedom
Nicaraguan authorities have detained a candidate in the November presidential elections, her party has said, as the government of President Daniel Ortega shows no sign of ending a sweeping crackdown against the opposition.
For months Ortega’s government has been detaining political adversaries, including presidential hopefuls, ahead of an election in which the former Marxist guerrilla and cold war antagonist of Washington will be running for a fourth consecutive term.
Continue reading...As scorching temperatures spread, the search for ways to protect against heat stress is becoming ever more urgent
William Martínez, who as a child worked on a sugarcane plantation in rural Nicaragua, learned the hard way what many in the US and Canada are now realising: that rising temperatures are costing lives and livelihoods.
Martínez, along with fellow villagers in La Isla, found himself getting sicker as he worked long, gruelling days in the fields under the beating Nicaraguan sun two decades ago. Workers at the nearby mill, which supplies molasses to alcohol companies, began to suffer kidney failure, and would be forced out of the workforce and into expensive and time-consuming dialysis. His father and uncles, addled with the same affliction, had died when Martínez was a boy, forcing him to join the workforce.
Continue reading...Daniel Ortega’s continuing crackdown targets farmer activists, student leader and potential presidential rival
Nicaraguan police have arrested a half dozen more opposition figures, including the sixth presidential hopeful to have been detained in a crackdown that started last month.
Among those arrested on Monday was Lesther Alemán, a former student leader who returned to Nicaragua after exile but stayed in safe houses. Those detained also included the presidential contender Medardo Mairena and Max Jerez, another student leader.
Continue reading...A roundup of the coverage on struggles for human rights and freedoms, from Chile to Cambodia
Continue reading...Nicaragua’s most prominent journalist has fled the country for a second time after police raided his house during a widening crackdown on opposition figures by the country’s Sandinista rulers.
Carlos Fernando Chamorro, the editor of the Confidencial website and a member of one of the country’s most influential political families, said on Tuesday he had left the Central American country to “safeguard his freedom”.
Continue reading...Arrests of opposition figures, including revered former guerrillas, represent ‘last gamble of a dictator’s family’
Nicaragua’s Sandinista rulers have launched an unprecedented crackdown on the country’s opposition, arresting a string of prominent critics of President Daniel Ortega and his wife, Vice-President Rosario Murillo, in an apparent attempt to crush any serious challenge in November’s elections.
Six opposition figures were arrested at the weekend, including revered former guerrillas who fought alongside Ortega during the campaign to topple the dictator Anastasio Somoza and went on to serve in the first Sandinista government.
Continue reading...Data shows increased danger for those on the frontline in the pandemic, with misinformation, scarce vaccines and fragile health systems blamed
Hundreds of healthcare workers treating Covid patients around the world have experienced verbal, physical, and sometimes life-threatening attacks during the pandemic, prompting calls for immediate action from human rights campaigners.
Covid-related attacks on healthcare workers are expected to rise as new variants cause havoc in countries such as India and rollouts of vaccination programmes belatedly get under way in some countries, according to the UN special rapporteur on the right to health.
Continue reading...Investigation of Cristiana Chamorro seen as an attempt to stop her from challenging country’s autocratic leader in November elections
Police in Nicaragua have stormed into the house of a prominent opposition leader, one day after formally filing money laundering charges against her in what was seen as an attempt to stop an electoral challenge to the autocratic leader Daniel Ortega.
Cristiana Chamorro, 67, was detained at her home south of the capital Managua on Wednesday, 15 minutes before she was scheduled to give a virtual news conference to reporters.
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