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 , 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.”
“Amnesty International’s maliciously titled report could be dismantled point by point.”
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.
“The unifying elements are that the government is committing genocide.”
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.”
[. . .]
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
(via BLACK AGENDA REPORT).