U.S., others can — and should — punish one of hemisphere’s worst dictators — Nicaragua’s Ortega | Opinion

Nicaraguan dictator Daniel Ortega has been lucky in recent weeks: The U.S. pullout from Afghanistan, the earthquake in Haiti and the street protests in Cuba have diverted international attention from his massive human-rights abuses.

On top of that, on Aug. 23, his regime announced that it has received a $343.5 million financial-assistance package from the International Monetary Fund. That and other loans from regional organizations will help Nicaragua increase its foreign reserves to a historic record of more than $3.6 billion, the government said.

But it’s time for the world to pay renewed attention to Nicaragua. What’s happening there is dreadful. In relation to its population, Nicaragua is probably be the worst human-rights offender in the hemisphere.

According to Human Rights Watch, more than 300 Nicaraguans were killed and 2,000 injured by police and paramilitary goons in anti-government protests in 2018.

That’s a huge number for a small country of only 6 million people. It’s more than twice the number of people who died in Venezuela, a country of 32 million — in the 2017 protests.

And while Venezuela’s dictator Nicolas Maduro has allowed a few opposition leaders to remain out of prison — to maintain a facade of political openness — Nicaragua’s Ortega, in recent months, has outlawed all major opposition parties and imprisoned the country’s seven leading presidential contenders on trumped-up “treason to the fatherland” or money-laundering charges.

The last opposition candidate to remain out of jail, businessman Oscar Sobolvarro — an accidental candidate who was appointed by his party after its other potential nominees were jailed — was banned by the regime last month.

“The whole opposition has been beheaded, and there’s nobody left to challenge the regime,” prominent opposition journalist Carlos Fernando Chamorro told me from his exile in Costa Rica. “We’ve never seen anything like this, not even at the height of the Sandinista Revolution in the 1980s.”

Chamorro’s sister Cristiana Chamorro, who was leading in the polls for the Nov. 7 elections, is under house arrest. Their brother Pedro Chamorro was recently arrested and sent to jail shortly before he was scheduled to be appointed as a replacement candidate.

Now, Ortega will run for re-election without any true opponent. There are a handful of regime-picked candidates who will pose as opposition candidates, but none of them is a true government foe, Chamorro told me. Ortega is expected to proclaim himself the winner in hopes that — like in the 2016 elections — the world will tolerate his power grab.

That should not be the case, however. President Biden has increased personal financial and travel sanctions against Ortega regime officials, but much more needs to be done.

First, the Organization of American States should suspend Nicaragua under the Inter-American Democratic Charter, opposition sources say. That would have a big impact, because it’s a small country that depends heavily on international aid.

Second, the IMF should stop giving money to the Ortega dictatorship. The recent disbursal, under the IMF’s special drawing-rights package to help countries fight the pandemic-caused recession, goes directly to Nicaragua’s Central Bank. That means that the Ortega regime can use it for whatever it wants.

The IMF can deny such disbursements to countries that are gross human-rights violators when a majority of its member countries decide not to recognize a country’s government, sources close to the financial institution told me. The IMF has recently denied such funds to Afghanistan after the Taliban took power and had earlier done so with Venezuela’s dictatorship. Why did Nicaragua get a pass?

Third, the United States and other countries could put sanctioned Nicaraguan officials in the so-called No Fly List, a U.S. Treasury Department database of suspected terrorists who are not allowed to board flights flying to or over the country. Other countries could do the same.

Any of these punishments would help force Ortega to restore democratic freedoms once he fraudulently re-elects himself in November, opposition sources tell me. They are right: It’s up to all democracies to put an end to this Nicaraguan tyrant’s run of good luck.

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