The pulse of the European Union with the Managua regime has increased several degrees with the announcement, this Thursday, that the package of sanctions against high-ranking Nicaraguan leaders, including a son of the president, Daniel Ortega, and his wife and vice president, Rosario Murillo. The decision of the Council is known in the same week that this same body declared persona non grata to the Nicaraguan representative before the European institutions, Zoila Yanira Müller Goff, in response to the expulsion from Nicaragua of the European ambassador, Bettina Muscheidt, at the beginning of the month.
The Council’s decision extends until October 15, 2023 the legal framework established in October 2019, after the “deterioration of the political and social situation” in the Central American country, and which allows sanctions to be imposed – freezing of assets of those designated in European territory and prohibit EU citizens and companies from providing funds to these people— to senior officials of the Nicaraguan Government, as well as people and entities linked to it.
It is a measure, the Council specifies in a statement published in Brussels, that is taken after “the unjustified decision of the Nicaraguan regime to expel the head of the EU delegation from the country, as well as to break diplomatic ties with the Netherlands and of the reciprocal response of the EU to declare the head of the Nicaraguan mission to the EU as persona non grata”, on October 10. It does not help either, although the European institution does not refer to it in its official note, the fact that Nicaragua became the only Latin American country the day before, together with Russia, Belarus, North Korea and Syria, to vote against the United Nations resolution to condemn the “illegal referendums” carried out by Moscow to annex four Ukrainian regions, a fact that Brussels has also forcefully denounced, declaring the consultations “farces” and refusing to recognize their validity. In recent days and weeks, Europe has insistently warned Nicaragua that it is increasingly “isolating” itself internationally.
Currently, on the black list of those sanctioned for their responsibility in “serious violations of human rights or the repression of civil society and the democratic opposition in Nicaragua” there are 21 people and three entities: the Nicaraguan National Police, the Supreme Electoral Council and the Nicaraguan Institute of Telecommunications and Post Office.
In August 2021, the sanctioned list was expanded again. Among the eight new names included was that of Ortega’s wife and Vice President of the Government, Rosario Murillo, for being considered “responsible for serious violations of human rights and the repression against civil society and the democratic opposition, as well as of undermining democracy in Nicaragua.”
The couple’s son, Juan Carlos Ortega Murillo, also entered the blacklist as director of Channel 8, “one of the main propaganda television channels.” Also for his leadership in the Sandinista Movement of May 4, in which capacity, the EU pointed out last year, “has contributed to restrict freedom of expression and freedom of the media” and has “publicly threatened Nicaraguan businessmen who oppose the Ortega regime.” In this way, the EU concluded, he is also responsible for “undermining democracy and repression against civil society in Nicaragua” and, as the son of Murillo, is also “linked to people responsible for serious violations of human rights and of repression against civil society” of the Central American country.
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