Last week Nicaragua President Daniel Ortega packed off 222 political leaders, priests, students, activists and other dissidents to the United States, their release long demanded by the international community.
Shortly after, Ortega’s government voted to strip the former prisoners of Nicaragua citizenship. Analysts, legal experts and human rights groups are calling it a political ploy but also a violation of international law that they say is unprecedented — at least in the Western Hemisphere — in terms of scale and impact.
A look at what has happened:
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WHY DID NICARAGUA KICK THE DISSIDENTS OUT?
The expulsion comes amid a broader push by the Ortega government to quash political dissent dating back to 2018 anti-government street protests that were met by a violent response from Nicaraguan security forces.
Ortega has called his imprisoned opponents “traitors” and maintains they were behind the protests, which he claims were a foreign-funded plot to overthrow him. Tens of thousands of Nicaraguans have fled the government’s crackdown.
The incarceration of government opponents became a sticking point internationally, particularly with the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden, which used their detention to justify sanctions on the Central American nation.
The release of the prisoners was, in part, a tactic to “minimize the public costs of his repression,” particularly in the eyes of the international community, said Ivan Briscoe of International Crisis Group, a nonprofit research group focused on resolving conflicts around the world.
“He would prefer to revert to a steady, low-level authoritarian government in which there are no, perhaps none of the more visible forms of abuses, but continuing political control,” Briscoe said.
U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters in Washington on Monday that the release of the prisoners was considered “a constructive step,” and is something Biden officials have said would open a door to a dialogue between the two countries.
But Ortega’s Congress simultaneously voting to strip the citizenship of the expelled prisoners is drawing criticism.
“This was in no way a panacea for the many concerns we have with the Nicaraguan regime, including the repression and oppression it continues to wield against its own people,” Price said.
While Nicaragua’s Congress still needs to carry out a second vote to approve the constitutional change to formally strip those expelled of their nationality, it was unanimously approved in the initial vote. Ortega’s firm hold on power leaves any other outcome highly unlikely.
“I think the message is very clear: On my land, there will be no opposition,” said Briscoe.