The presidents of the Foreign Affairs committees of the US Congress asked, this Friday (17), El Salvador, Costa Rica, Guatemala and Honduras to prevent BCIE loans from “perpetuating the consolidation of the dictatorship” in Nicaragua.
The Central American Bank for Economic Integration – founded by these countries and Nicaragua – has approved nearly $3.5 billion in funding for initiatives “to be implemented under the auspices of the regime” of President Daniel Ortega and his wife and vice-president. president, Rosario Murillo, said Democratic Senator Bob Menendez and Republican Congressman Michael McCaul.
In an attempt to prevent this, US lawmakers sent letters to the presidents of Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras asking them to take advantage of “their leadership” as founding members of the BCIE “to ensure that the bank’s loans do not perpetuate the consolidation of the dictatorship of Nicaragua”.
Funding from this multilateral bank “provides a lifeline for the Ortega-Murillo regime at a time of growing global condemnation of human rights violations in Nicaragua,” the letters read.
They call on the presidents to increase “the transparency and scrutiny of loans” from the BCIE to Nicaragua until Ortega and Murillo “are willing to enter into negotiations that restore democratic governance, respect for human rights and a free and fair calendar”.
If Ortega and Murillo “are not willing to allow a political opening, it will be imperative that your government use your voice and vote to suspend the financing of your criminal regime”, they add in the letters.
American legislators encourage the presidents to apply “policies similar” to those imposed by Washington to the BCIE.
The United States has taken steps “to increase scrutiny and reduce funding of multilateral institutions that directly benefit the Ortega-Murillo regime,” but continues to fund “the basic humanitarian needs of the Nicaraguan people,” they say.
Menendez and McCaul cited “the regime’s attacks on Nicaraguan democracy and its increasing repression of dissidents,” such as the deprivation of citizenship of more than 300 Nicaraguans and the 26-year prison sentence of Bishop Rolando Álvarez.
In the communiqué, the congressmen cite a report by a group of UN experts, which accuses the government of Nicaragua of committing systematic violations of human rights that constitute “crimes against humanity”.
They also mention a comment by Pope Francis in an interview with the Argentine digital media Infobae. The Pope speaks of the “imbalance of those who lead” Nicaragua and says that it is as if he wanted to “establish the communist dictatorship of 1917 or the Hitler dictatorship of 1935”.
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