San José (EFE).- Police, state workers, and government supporters rallied Tuesday with caravans of vehicles and motorcycles led by President Daniel Ortega and his wife Co-president Rosario Murillo, on the seventh anniversary of the anti-government demonstrations that broke out in April 2018, harshly repressed by the Nicaragua regime.
Cristhian Jiménez, commissioner of the Ministry of the Interior, said that they (Ministry of Interior), the National Police, the Sandinista Youth «and the Nicaraguan people are always with the Sandinista National Liberation Front in celebrating these seven years of defeat of the enemies of peace.»
«They couldn’t do it, and they won’t be able to,» General Commissioner Fernando Borge told the official media, referring to the April 2018 protests when thousands of Nicaraguans took to the streets to protest because of the controversial social security reforms, which turned into a demand for the resignation of President Daniel Ortega after a violent response.
«They will not return to sow terror, death, and destruction, because the people who know how to build are here, building and defending peace for the future of our Nicaragua,» the police chief said amid the first celebration of what the government has called «Victorious April.»
«This month has a special symbolic significance as seven years after the failed coup attempt in 2018, the government and its people present it as a demonstration that the enemy has been successfully defeated,» said Nicaraguan television Channel 8, headed by Juan Carlos Ortega Murillo, one of the sons of Ortega and Murillo.
The 2018 protests left at least 355 dead, according to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, however, Nicaraguan organizations put a figure of 684, while Ortega acknowledged there were «over 300» and claimed it was an attempted coup.
The IACHR and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights have held the Nicaraguan government responsible for «murders, extrajudicial executions, acts of torture and arbitrary detentions committed against the country’s mostly young population.»
The United Nations Group of Experts on Human Rights in Nicaragua, which has issued three reports accusing the Sandinista government of committing crimes against humanity against part of the population for political reasons, has urged third countries to take the Nicaraguan state to the International Court of Justice for the crimes of «statelessness, torture or extrajudicial executions.»
Nicaragua has been experiencing a political and social crisis since April 2018, aggravated by the controversial general elections on Nov. 7, 2021, in which Ortega was reelected for a fifth term (fourth consecutive).
Ortega then expelled his main rivals from the country and deprived of their nationality and political rights, accusing them of being «coup plotters» and «traitors to the homeland.» EFE
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