Exclusive interview with Daniel Ortega's right arm: "We have reformed the coup" | foreign

– I am not leaving because it would make the situation worse in the country. The government has nothing to do with paramilitary forces. There is no problem between the government and the Catholic Church. The country is in the process of standardization.

This told Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega at American Fox News a week ago in the first interview that he gave to an 11-year-old international media.

The pre-recorded interview was broadcast while government forces killed three others in the conflict, which lasted more than three months and required 458 lives.

According to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the human, ICHR phase the most repressive. Hundreds of people arrested or abducted, opposition leaders arrested, charged with terrorism under a recently passed law.

People go underground or steal the country. Public employees, including doctors who do not agree with the government or who helped the protesters, are fired by the hundreds.

Ortega is a "pathological liar" who "tries to manipulate world public opinion," says Human Rights Watch's director in America, José Miguel Vivanco.

José Pallais of the Liberal LPC believes that Ortega wasted an important opportunity to testify in a global setting.

To complete the short and piecemeal interview with Ortega, YLE spoke with the president's right hand and private secretary, Paul Oquist, in an exclusive interview.

Long-term attack

– They try for a long time a coup d'etat, ensures Oquist without introductory sentences.

He receives at his office near the parliament: "The private secretariat of the government is at the door."

– They started with the protests against the channel, backed by MRS (Sandinist Party Crimes, red.anm.) But they did not succeed, continues the Oquist of American origin who speaks Spanish with a slight accent.

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Today, it's quiet around the canal, but peasants have again demonstrated hundreds of times because their lands may still be expropriated according to a controversial canal law.

The protests were, however, met almost every time with violence and police

– Then he tried the biscuits with fire, he did not succeed either, continues Oquist

He refers to a violent fire that broke out in the nature reserve Indio Maíz. At the beginning of April. A group of students went out in the streets to protest against the government, but he got angry at the young dunes, the government crowd

A week later, students were again in the street against a reform of the law on pensions. Even this event was attacked by the crowds. An elderly person was injured.

False Rumor and Psychological Terror

– Then they spread rumors that a student had been killed to attract more students to the trial of the coup d'etat. 39; State. They succeeded, says Oquist.

A few hours later, hundreds of young people were on the streets of the capital Managua. However, according to many accounts, there was a video clip of the injured retiree, not a dead student who drove them.

The youths were again attacked by the crowds without the police, who were also in place.

The following day, April 19, protests erupted and two students were killed. Then the whole country exploded: young and old, poor and rich went out on the streets to protest by the hundreds of thousands, the universities were occupied, the streets and roads of the whole country were barricaded.

– This was due to false news and psychological terror, the most important weapon of the putschists, strikes Oquist.

Behind the coup d'état: United States, civil society, right-wing organizations, Catholic Church and drug cartels.

Oquist believes that the United States is behind what he calls a coup attempt.

– Since the time of William Walker, the United States has opposed Nicaragua, he assures.

Walker was a mercenary who appointed himself to the president of Nicaragua in 1856.

Again, there are strong forces in the United States who want to trap the government, Oquist believes that the giant of North was also pleased with the city of Gaza, which lasted eleven years, which means stability, economic growth and the USA

– But a group based in Florida works directly against Nicaragua, considers Oquist and mentions the Republican Ted Cruz , which belongs to the initiators of the "Nica Act", a law by which the United States can freeze international loans in Nicaragua unless the government respect democracy and human rights up to now , the Nica law was approved by the House of Representatives.

In addition, the National Democratic Institute (NDI), a North American non-governmental organization supporting democratic institutions around the world, has supported civil society and right-wing organizations in Nicaragua.

According to the presidential advisor, drug trafficking is also involved, adding that cartoons, particularly in Mexico and the neighboring countries of Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, are Have never set foot in the country. Nicaragua

– They use anarchy to conquer territories, Oquist says, without compromising the interests of the cartels in a coup or state participation.

Oquist is clearer on the role of the Catholic Church, thus contradicting the president saying "that there are no problems between the church and the government" – well that the bishops both received death threats and were intimidated:

The bishops participate in the coup d'etat. They helped the students, they went to the barricades and we found weapons in the churches, "Oquist said.

– They can not be both actors and mediators, he continues, referring to Catholic bishops playing the role of mediators in an attempt at dialogue between the government and the opposition.

MRI organizations are unreliable

According to the local organization ANPDH, 448, including 338 civilians were killed in the conflict. According to ANDPH, like other local and international MRI organizations, the IACHR and the United Nations Human Rights Commission, government forces – police, riot police, paramilitaries and intimidations – are responsible for most murders

– For years, they have opposed the government and their reports are biased and document only the victims of the opposition, not the government.

And because international organizations rely on the documentation of local organizations, they are

Therefore, the government has asked the IACHR to support the Nicaraguan Health Commission and prosecutors. Justice must be ordered and the guilty are condemned, whatever it is, strikes Oquist.

But he can not say when investigations will show results

Banner in front of the Parliament with the slogan of the government "We want peace. "
Banner in front of Parliament:" We want peace. "
Image: Erika Brenner
Nicaragua

The State Constitution – But Opposition Continues Violence

– We must end violence, create trust, peace and reconciliation, continues Oquist, he advocates the resumption of dialogue, which began in May, but which was interrupted several times

– But it is assumed that the violence ceases, then we can talk about new elections, new referendums, whatever

In July, the government, as part of the "clean-up of operations", closed down all the barricades, roadblocks and obsolete universities across the country. visible is now the less peaceful manifestations

As Oquist says it himself:

– We captured the coup d'etat, everyone should know it

WHERE comes violence?

– From the Opposition They have paramilitary forces with military weapons and continue the violence, means the right hand of the president.