Renewed tension between the EU and Nicaragua, which refuses the ambassador from Brussels

April 18, 2023

Six months after the expulsion of the European Union ambassador to Nicaragua, relations between Brussels and the government of President Daniel Ortega experienced renewed tension on Tuesday with the refusal of Managua to receive a new ambassador in reaction to a statement from Brussels deemed “insolent”.

“Faced with the permanent harassment against the right of our people to national sovereignty, we do not receive” Fernando Ponz, ambassador of “an enslaving power”, declared the Nicaraguan Minister of Foreign Affairs Denis Moncada, denouncing “the interference, impertinence and insolence” of the EU.

A few hours earlier, the European Union had denounced the “systematic repression” of opponents in Nicaragua since the spring 2018 demonstrations which demanded the resignation of President Ortega and were bloodily repressed.

On September 28, 2022, the Nicaraguan government expelled EU Ambassador Bettina Muscheidt. As a measure of reciprocity, the European Union had declared persona non grata Zoila Muller Goff, the representative of Nicaragua to the European institutions.

Amnesty International on Tuesday denounced in a report the “new methods” of human rights violations used by the Nicaraguan government, five years after the spring 2018 protests.

“The Nicaraguan government’s policy of repression to contain dissenting voices and all forms of criticism continues to harden,” the organization says in a report titled “A Cry for Justice: Five Years of Oppression and Resistance in Nicaragua.” .

Amnesty denounces “the excessive use of force by the police”, “thousands of arbitrary arrests”, but also cases of “torture, enforced disappearances, extra-judicial executions”.

Hundreds of opponents have been jailed as part of the crackdown following protests against Daniel Ortega, who has been in power since 2007 and has since been consistently reelected in disputed polls.

The 2018 unrest and its crackdown resulted in more than 350 deaths, according to the UN.

Arrests of opponents have continued since, and on February 9 authorities released 222 political detainees from prison and deported them after seizing all their property and stripping them of their nationality.

In the days that followed, 94 other opponents, who had fled into exile, were also deprived of their nationality.

President Ortega’s government has called for a march in Managua on Wednesday to mark a “Day of Peace” on the fifth anniversary of the 2018 protests, which authorities say were a coup attempt instigated by Washington.