Nicaragua Update 8
Wednesday, May 16th, 2018 Daniel Ortega and his wife Rosario Murillo were greeted by shouts of "assassins, murderers" by large crowds as they arrived at the Seminary of Our Lady of Fatima, where the talks were being held.
In his opening remarks. Daniel Ortega did not acknowledge the deaths in Nicaragua. In his opening remarks he said:
"They (protesters/students) have assaulted businesses, they have assaulted humble people who make an enormous effort as entrepreneurs. Should the police tolerate such acts? Should the police be locked in the barracks and let the country become a chaos? That each person applies the Law as he wants, or as he thinks, that is filled with revenge, hatred, bathed in blood Nicaragua, "said Ortega.
"Four brothers of the national police that have family that have children, that have a wife, that have mothers, were seriously injured from these attacks that were launched," said the president.
"In Masaya there was one unfortunately dead, a Sandinista comrade, the blood of brothers in Nicaragua must not continue to run and the police have orders not to shoot and here I want to thank the Episcopal Conference, its most revered eminence, Cardinal Leopoldo Brenes, all the bishops for the extraordinary effort they have made to set up this dialogue and to thank and recognize the heroic effort of priests who have gone to seek to calm this violence, have even been attacked.”
The president seemed to be more interested in the economic impact on Nicaragua, than in the demand for justice and the democratization of the country.
"Today 130 thousand workers are paralyzed. The 130,000 workers are being sent to unemployment and we all have the responsibility to save the peace," Ortega said.
Lester Alemán, representative of the University Movement April 19 spoke next:
"This is a speech that for 12 years we have heard, President. We know the history, We do not want to repeat it again. You know what the people are. Where the power lies, in the people. We are here and we have agreed to be at this table, with all due respect, to demand right now to order the immediate cessation of the attacks, which are being committed in our country, repression and attacks by paramilitary forces, their troops, government mobs. You know the pain we have lived in 28 days. You can fall asleep all calm. We have not slept peacefully. We are being persecuted. We are students and this is why I am talking and why I miss your word because we have buried the dead, we have people missing. We have been kidnapped. This is not a dialogue table. It is a table to negotiate his departure and he knows it very well because the people have requested it. Here is this whole sector calling on you as the supreme head of the police to order an immediate ceasefire. Monsignor Álvarez has asked it and many priests continue to ask for it. Who can we ask, there is another person to whom I can ask to get him to order that cessation, because if it were in my hands, I tell him that on April 18 he would not have allowed it. In a month you have disrupted the country, Somoza has cost this country many years. You know it very well. We know the history, but you in less than a month have done things that we never imagined and that many are disappointed by that. Ideals have not been fulfilled. Those four letters (FSLN) that swore to this country to be free and today we remain as slaves. Today we remain subdued. Today we remain marginalized. Today we are being massacred. How many mothers are crying for their children? Vice President, you are a mother. She knows pain very well. Talking at 12:00 noon every day will not silence us. The people are in the streets. We are at this table demanding that the repression cease. Know this surrender before all these people.
They can laugh. They can do the faces they want, but we ask you to order the ceasefire right now. Liberate our political prisoners. We can not talk to a murderer because what has been committed in this country is a genocide.
Then Vice President Rosario Murillo spoke:
"Boys, girls, we want to confirm that we have come here in good faith, and we have come here with respect to all of you and we believe in this table of national dialogue. As a mother I want to say, that the road to Nicaragua is not war, it is peace and respect for mothers and women."
After two hours, the presidential couple got up and left the talks without giving the order to the National Police and mobs of the Sandinista youth to stop attacks on protesters.
The presidential advisor, at the end of the talks said:
"Although the president denied the suffering of the people, in Nicaragua there are more than 68 mothers who are crying because of the suffering of their children. There was a mother (Rosario Murillo) who in 1972 wrote a poem called "Christmas Song". That mother had lost one of her children and this is the same feeling of all mothers who suffer today to see their children killed.
CHRISTMAS SONG
I walk today
with the pain of childbirth in each step
with the belly breaking
and the pieces of mother
flying over empty spaces
I walk moaning
squeezing the bars in my hands
clenching teeth
biting my tongue
I'm dressed in mud
I'm covered with stones and time
I have a face of astonishment and hair of fire
I carry the pain of childbirth at every step
I feel the child that springs from the blood
I feel the skin hanging
I have the veins in a single knot
There is a son spilled in the night.
Wednesday afternoon, as he left the talks, the Chancellor of the Republic, Denis Moncada, informed the media that the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (CIDH), will be arriving tomorrow to the country and will be here until May 20th.
"They come tomorrow probably. They come from the 17th to the 20th to do the job they have decided on. There are 11 people in the delegation."
Nicaragua Update 9 will cover the various responses to the National Dialogue.
thank you so much cecicastor! God save Nicaragua.
We shall see what happens today at the next National Dialogue...
yes Ma'am.