Many of us today are questioning whose interests our government serves. Perhaps we have always assumed, to one degree or another, that they looked after all our interests – but we’re no longer sure that’s the case.
We might be asking why our infrastructure is crumbling, why utilities, including water, are no longer affordable or safe. Or whether greed might be the cause of the cost of living crisis. What of the future for our children? Does Israel have a moral and legal right to defend itself, as our leaders and the media constantly assert? We may be questioning if the very institutions that we once unwaveringly trusted aren’t in fact corrupt.
The mounting consensus is that there is something desperately wrong with our society and with our world – and there is.
The global capitalist system, with the hegemonic United States at its helm and the rest of the G7 in its wake (Japan, Canada, Britain, France, Italy, Germany) are the source of the rot. The very institutions that pretend to uphold ‘democracy’, ‘freedom’ and ‘liberty’ are as corrupt as the imperialist system they serve.
The United Nations (UN) and its agencies, all the west’s cornucopia of non-governmental organisations (NGOs), the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) are all institutions created and manipulated by western geopolitical interests in order to perpetuate the unjust distribution of global wealth. Far from ‘protecting human rights’, the institutions are all about the preservation of imperialist power. Politicians and media, meanwhile, present them in such a way as to manipulate opinion, your opinion, to maintain support for the imperial machinations of the global financiers whom they serve.
That is why we must question the motivations of ‘international institutions’ that infringe the rights of nations that are resisting the might of western imperialism: countries such as Venezuela, Syria, Haiti, Niger, Burkina Faso, Russia, China, the DPRK, Palestine and Nicaragua, to name a few.
Nicaragua under attack
Nicaragua is once again under attack by the imperialist camp, which is employing a variety of techniques to demonise and destroy the country’s democratically elected government merely because it has had the audacity to demand independence, sovereignty and the right to manage its affairs in accordance with the will of its people. Socialist Cuba and socialist-leaning Venezuela face ongoing and severe sanctions for the same reason, and all three are deemed unforgiveable for attempting to take a socialist path (and setting a socialist example) in the ‘backyard’ of the USA.
By crafting narratives that give a semblance of ‘objectivity’, all the while suppressing evidence that contradicts its self-serving storylines, the USA has used the UN to launch a campaign of destabilisation in Nicaragua, thereby hoping to convince the wider world that the human rights of the Nicaraguan people are being grossly violated.
Under US direction, a group of human rights ‘experts’ on Nicaragua (GHREN) was appointed to investigate alleged violations in the country in the period since April 2018. That date was chosen because it marked the start of violent protests, which quickly developed into an attempted coup d’etat. These events were undoubtedly masterminded by the CIA – one of the many destabilisation techniques for use against non-compliant countries in the imperialist toolkit.
The violence lasted for three months and left over 250 people dead, including both opponents and supporters of the government, government officials and 22 police officers.
Using a supposedly ‘independent’ and globally respected institution such as the UN to set up a ‘commission of inquiry’, legal minions under US coercion made a string of accusations concerning the alleged ‘human rights violations’ of the Sandinista government.
With these false accusations widely disseminated by western media, western populations are whipped up, coerced and brainwashed into believing that ‘something should be done’. Then when the USA and its vassals ‘do something’, we are led to believe they are acting for the benefit of the poor Nicaraguan people. In truth, the real aim of all this activity is regime change – the destruction of the country’s chosen government and its replacement by one that will be amenable to western looting and domination.
Remember Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Syria, Libya and Ukraine. This well-trodden strategy is wearing thin. People everywhere are recognising the tactics for what they are; fraudulent and corrupt methods of coercion and control by a US empire whose hypocritical, tyrannical ‘rules-based order’ is losing traction and support.
United Nations and hegemonic machinations
The GHREN has produced two reports, the first of which contained a plethora of detail regarding the allegations of human rights infringements by the government, but which failed to investigate all the cited events.
The report either omitted completely or mentioned only briefly the many extreme acts of violence by those involved in the US-backed coup attempt, which included senior members of the Catholic Church. Instead, it focused only on alleged human rights violations by government officials and, in collecting evidence, it gave preferential access to several NGOs highly critical of the Nicaraguan government.
Alfred de Zayas, the UN’s first independent expert on the promotion of a democratic and equitable international order, has commented that the GHREN was set up for the purpose of “naming and shaming” the Nicaraguan government, not for carrying out an objective investigation. He is not alone. (UN human rights council again supports US regime change plans for Nicaragua by Alfred de Zayas and John Perry, Nicanotes, 11 April 2024)
A human rights expert who was critical of the first report by the GHREN has worked with the US-based Nicaraguan Solidarity Coalition to respond to a second GHREN report. A letter criticising GHREN’s approach and conclusions was sent to the GHREN and to the president and senior officials of the UN human rights council.
The letter cited the flawed methodology and bias of the report, and contended that important information had been excluded, demonstrating clear violations of the principles of judicial or quasi-judicial investigation. The letter was signed by ten prominent human rights experts and activists, 47 organisations and over 250 individuals in Nicaragua, the USA and Europe, many with long experience of working in and engaging with Nicaragua.
A duplicitous rules-based order
The duplicity of the USA claiming to want to support ‘Nicaragua’s journey back to being a productive democracy’ when for decades it has been actively trying to undermine Nicaraguan democracy through regime-change tactics is scandalous. The USA directly financed and helped plan the violent coup attempt of 2018 that it now says should be investigated. It also tried to undermine Nicaragua’s democratic elections in 2021, and has been imposing ever more illegal economic coercive measures (sanctions) on Nicaragua since the return to power of the Sandinista government.
Sanctions are a much-loved tactic of US imperialism where it wants to bring about regime change. The objective is to coerce a population (through economic hardships ranging from shortages of luxuries to full-on starvation) to rise up and overthrow its government. In the case of Nicaragua, the USA desperately wants the overthrow of Daniel Ortega, the socialist leader who received over 75 percent of the votes when he was elected for the fourth time in 2021.
What is particularly obscene about the US pursuing its enemies under the excuse of ‘human rights’ is that sanctions are one of the worst offenders in this regard. They are an illegal form of collective punishment imposed on the Nicaraguan people because the US ruling class does not approve of the leader they elected.
Sanctions caused Nicaragua to lose over $1.4bn in funding from the World Bank, International Development Bank and the IMF in the three years from 2018-21. In a small country, the resulting budget deficit impacts everything from infrastructure projects to child nutrition and the provision of safe drinking water to rural areas.
It might have once been assumed that responsible institutions such as the G7 purports to be would protect the human rights of ordinary people, no matter where they happened to live. Under the present monopoly capitalist – ie, imperialist – economic order, however, all these institutions have only one real priority: the continuing ability to extract maximum profits from every corner of the globe and every of area of economic activity.
This is why workers everywhere are increasingly waking up to the hypocrisy of western leaders. The audacity of accusing Nicaragua of committing crimes against humanity while the USA and allied western governments are giving every possible support to genocide in Palestine is obscene.
We are witnessing in real time on our social media feeds the evidence of the horrific crimes being committed in Gaza, and our human rights-loving politicians and media are not merely silent, they actively cheer it on. Where is the so-called ‘responsibility to protect’ (R2P) that Tony Blair and Bill Clinton infamously declared in 1999 as they prepared to launch their barbarous regime-change war against Yugoslavia – a war they (falsely) claimed was necessary to prevent the ethnic cleansing of Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian population?
Actions and context
We must question why Nicaragua is bring targeted, and why now? Once we understand the motive, we can make sense of the methods being used and understand to what extent its outcomes are legitimate.
Nicaragua is a small, developing and revolutionary country on the doorstep of the USA. Its government practices a people-centred approach to human rights. It was one of the first to call out the genocide underway in Gaza, one of the first national governments to express support for the South African application to the International Court of Justice under the genocide convention, and it is currently taking Germany to the ICJ for providing huge political, financial and military support to Israel whilst being fully aware that the military equipment supplied will be used in the commission of crimes against humanity.
The decisions and actions of Nicaragua’s government, whether in the field of healthcare, education, economic development or climate change, are underpinned by socialist, people-first principles. It provides universal and free healthcare throughout the country, universal and free education from preschool through trade school, university and professional school. Nicaragua is a pioneer in defending the rights of the indigenous and Afro-descendent peoples of the Americas, who have communal title to a third of Nicaragua’s national territory. And it is a global leader in gender equality, ranking first in the world for women in parliament, women’s educational achievement and women in cabinet positions.
Imagine all of this in the backyard of the United States, whose model of ‘freedom and democracy’ has led to half a million homeless on its own streets, debts of $59,000 for students undertaking a four-year bachelor’s degree, and a healthcare system that ranks 69th in the world, just above that of Nicaragua despite the problems caused there by sanctions. So whose human rights are being violated by their own government?
Capitalism is the reason for the endless wars, for genocides, for ever-deeper poverty, for the terrible injustices resulting from capitalist-engendered inequality and insecurity. It is likewise responsible for environmental problems and all the major ills facing society, both in the west and around the world. The economic crisis of global capitalism – imperialism – is the root cause of the perceptible deterioration of our lives and the reckless despoliation of our planet. Those who head this system are intrinsically and systemically corrupt, and the institutions they have created to present a facade of fairness and justice are just as rotten.
It is time we stopped swallowing the whitewashing PR narratives of those who sell their souls to the monopolists and instead ask ourselves: who is benefiting from the present state of affairs?
Solidarity to the government and people of Nicaragua!
