Crimes against humanity including assassinations, imprisonment and torture, opposition population repressed by the military and paramilitary, coup narrative invented to justify repression, new anti-democratic laws to increase totalitarian control, judicial, legislative, and electoral systems without independence and at the service of the Executive, fraudulent elections, attacks and closure of independent media, confrontation with the Church, more than 10 percent of the population pushed into exile.
Sound familiar? Which country are we referring to? People who keep up to date with the news will believe that we are describing what has been happening in Venezuela since July 28. However, that is the day-to-day life in Nicaragua since April 2018, and since then the violations and outrages have worsened and reached levels only seen under the worst dictatorships in the world. In six years, Nicaragua equaled the levels of authoritarianism and repression of North Korea, Myanmar, Afghanistan, Somalia, and South Sudan.
As a result of the electoral fraud of July 28, Venezuela is now under the spotlight of the international community and the most important global media, which daily recounts the atrocities committed by Nicolás Maduro and his accomplices. Because of the repudiatory nature of the actions, the testimonies of the victims and the images of the repression are received with astonishment and disbelief.
However, what is happening now in Venezuela is version 2.0 of what happened in Nicaragua. It is not an original script, but an adaptation of the Nicaraguan reality to the Venezuelan one. However, there are only a few media outlets and analysts who connect both crises and make it clear that the Nicaraguan dictatorship, and also the Cuban dictatorship, are behind everything that is taking place in Venezuela.
Why is it important to understand the relationship between the two crises? Because the one in Nicaragua did not have the necessary echo in the international community. Since 2018 there have been constant pronouncements and denunciations in political and human rights spaces. In addition, some countries led by the United States and the European Union, have imposed individual sanctions that, because they were not strong enough, have not caused the desired results. Therefore, the price that the Ortega Murillo regime has paid for destroying democracy and the future of Nicaraguans, to enthrone itself in power, is insignificant.
The international community bet on a kid glove diplomacy. It treated Nicaragua as if it were one of the countries playing on the court of democracy, and refused to admit that from the beginning of the crisis, the Ortega Murillo family was entrenched in the camp of those who do not respect human rights and democracy. Throughout the six years, the Ortega Murillo dictatorship has resisted the constant calls for dialogue made by the international community. It took six years for the member countries of the Organization of American States (OAS) to pass a consensus resolution on the Nicaraguan crisis. At what cost?
The United Nations Group of Human Rights Experts on Nicaragua (GHREN) has shown the violations committed by the Ortega Murillo dictatorship and demonstrated that they commit crimes against humanity. In addition, it made a series of recommendations to the international community that fell on deaf ears, as did those issued by the parliaments of the European Union, the British, the United States, and the International Commission on Religious Freedom, among other organizations.
Unfortunately, and because of the above, an unfortunate precedent was established that is now being reproduced against the Venezuelan people, with the risk of being transferred to other countries in the region.
Once again, the international community has in its hands the possibility to act to avoid greater costs. Now the peoples of Venezuela and Nicaragua are paying an enormous cost with loss of human lives, jails full of people fighting for democracy, more than eight million Venezuelans and almost one million Nicaraguans in exile, without freedom, justice, rule of law and without a future.
With Nicaragua, time has shown that the lack of action led to the worsening of the crisis. The same mistake should not be made with Venezuela. Because not only Venezuelan democracy is at stake, but also Latin American democracy and even the security of the United States.
In the Nicaraguan Democratic Concertation (CDN), we believe that now is the time for the international community to support the Venezuelan opposition to prevent electoral fraud from taking place and to rescue freedom, not only in Venezuela but also in Nicaragua and Cuba afterward.
The Contagion of the Ortega Model
The outright fraud that Nicolás Maduro is pushing forward with support from top military officials constitutes a true coup d’etat against the will of the people. It has led political analysts and the international media to compare it with the practices of the Ortega Murillo regime. Thomas Shannon, a prestigious American diplomat and expert on the region, expressed that one way forward for Maduro is to radicalize his regime to follow the Nicaraguan model. Enrique Marques, former director of Venezuela’s National Electoral Council (CSE), fears that Maduro instead of listening to Lula Da Silva, Manuel Lopez Obrador, and Gustavo Petro will follow the advice from Ortega.
This prediction has led us to consider the differences, until now, between the Chavista-Madurista model and Ortega’s. As well as the reasons that would explain the sympathy for the Orteguista dictatorial model which makes it replicable in Latin America.
Up until July 28th, Venezuela was considered a hybrid regime that moved from an imperfect democracy towards an authoritarian regime. On the other hand, Nicaragua has a consolidated totalitarian regime without political pluralism or agreeable electoral conditions. Furthermore, the effects of the trade, economic, and financial sanctions on Venezuela gave them an incentive to negotiate some degree of openness. For lack of these incentives, the Ortega-Murillo lack the interest to grant any democratic concessions.
Both regimes secured full control of all powers of the State and public institutions. They applied a security model developed by the Cubans, in which public institutions and party organizations ensure social control and are always ready to repress. They possess elements of a market economy with tolerance for some traditional businessmen, but under crony capitalism, rooted in corruption and abuse of power.
Nicaragua, to a greater degree than Venezuela, closed all spaces of participation. It canceled all opposition parties, banished and denationalized its leaders and territorial cadres, closed private sector organizations, restricted religious freedoms, dismantled Church institutions, and incarcerated and expelled bishops and pastors both Evangelic and Catholic. It closed private universities, independent media, and media outlets of the Churches, eliminated the legal status of more than five thousand Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), and confiscated their assets.
In short, a scorched-earth campaign against everything that is not under its control or that may challenge its absolute rule over society, a process to which Venezuela is heading to become, just like Nicaragua, an outlaw state, characterized by non-compliance with laws and international conventions, and by ignoring the decisions of organizations whose purpose is to preserve the world order.
There is a similarity between the repressive and persecution policies of both regimes that commit crimes against humanity. Venezuela’s Operation “Tun Tun” is similar to the “Vamos con Todo” that the Ortega Murillo family carried out against thousands of Nicaraguans who exercised their right to protest, political, social, and business leaders, who were captured without warrants, subjected to torture, and sentenced without due process. The narrative of an alleged coup d’état is also similar, which only exists as a justification for the repression by Ortega and Maduro, who are the ones who staged a coup against the will of the people.
Venezuela and Nicaragua are part of the totalitarian international headed by Russia, China, and Cuba. Among them, they exchange information on best practices and the most appropriate legislation for social control and the elimination of dissidence. Nicaragua is currently demonstrating that it is the most advanced, which is why it exports its successful repressive and anti-democratic methods.
The Nicaraguan Democratic Concertation (CDN) considers that the Ortega Murillo family bases its hegemony on force, coercion, the annulment of all critical thinking and the capacity to articulate a position different from the official one. Its ideology is to preserve power and inherit it. The sustainability of its model, based on the failure of the current international order to guarantee respect for human rights, democracy, universal justice, and the principles of international law, is the main incentive to reproduce it. Therefore, the international community must reinvent itself to face the new challenges to peace, democratic security, and the values of humanity.