With the possible extradition of a Venezuelan diplomat to the United States on bogus charges, an emergency human-rights delegation organized by the International Campaign to Free Alex Saab was quickly dispatched to Cabo Verde, where he is imprisoned. This island archipelago nation off the west coast of Africa is one of the smallest, poorest and geographically isolated countries in the world.
The international human-rights delegation did not gain Alex Saab’s freedom. Officials denied them a visit with him. But breakthroughs were made in raising the visibility of the case, which involves enormous political, legal and moral issues with long-term political consequences.
The case involves the abduction of a diplomat by the world’s sole superpower locked in an unequal struggle to destroy the formerly prosperous, oil-rich country of Venezuela. The attack on Venezuela is not motivated on the U.S. part by the imperfections in Venezuelan society, but on Venezuela’s past successes in fighting poverty, promoting regional integration, and acting like a sovereign nation. Otherwise, the United States would be lavishing aid on Venezuela, instead of on the apartheid state of Israel, the nacro-state of Colombia and the absolute monarchy of Saudi Arabia.
The kidnapping of Alex Saab is a dramatic and far-reaching effort to enforce the illegal U.S.-decreed policy of economic sanctions. The United States is attempting to impose its will on a country by deliberately attacking the civilian population. Illegal sanctions are a conscious policy of imposing economic havoc to “make the economy scream.”
Saab, a Venezuelan diplomat abducted by the U.S. government a year ago, has been held under torturous conditions. The United States denying diplomatic immunity violates international law.
International Campaign to Free Alex Saab
The powerful corporate media, by omission, can render a news item invisible. The Saab case is virtually unknown in the United States, even among progressive political journalists, left organizations and solidarity activists. Washington’s demand for the extradition of Alex Saab is being covered more extensively in African and Latin American publications. In Venezuela, as expected, the case is well known.
Among some who are aware of the case, an inordinate concentration on the Saab, the individual, obscures the larger issues of national sovereignty and human rights.
Gathering information on what was involved was no easy task. The U.S. charge of “money laundering” by a private businessman in a country wracked by extreme shortages hardly created sympathy for Saab’s case. It was only as the actual facts emerged that a support plan evolved for the international solidarity campaign.
That Saab has withstood a year-long arrest, torture and months of solitary confinement rather than comply with U.S. demands to cooperate indicates he is not just a businessman willing to sell to the highest bidder.
The four-person human-rights delegation in Cabo Verde knocked on government doors, conducted interviews and spoke with the media. The local activist movement and a strong legal team supported them. The delegation was led by a Cabo Verde citizen, Bishop Filipe Teixeira, OFSCJ, a religious leader who lives in the Boston area and leads a congregation of Cabo Verdeans. Teixeira has a history of participating in social justice campaigns. Tweets, Facebook links and news reports have helped penetrate the wall of silence.
After collecting thousands of signatures, an international petition is being forwarded to the president and prime minister of Cabo Verde as well as to U.S. President Joe Biden. Several webinars to raise awareness were held, including one with Saab’s lawyers speaking from Cabo Verde and Nigeria.
— FreedomForAlexSaab (@FreedomAlexSaab) June 7, 2021
Role of Solidarity Activists
Solidarity and people’s movements working together can become a powerful material force, breaking through silence, fear and repression. The focus for international solidarity work in this period is to defend movements and even countries under relentless U.S. imperialist attack and destabilization. This is done without placing unrealistic expectations or creating unrealistic images of how wonderful the internal situation in the targeted country is. Solidarity is not a pass for interference, second guessing, criticism or for euphoric idealism.
It is essential to focus full attention on the source of the problem—U.S. imperialism—and not get lost in the weeds of criticizing the victim. U.S. sabotage, imposed shortages, mercenary attacks and fueling national antagonism are intended to create and intensify internal divisions. Shortages are intended to increase corruption, side deals, privilege and resentment. The targeted country may be wrongly blamed for the crisis created by U.S. actions.
Simply put, many progressive goals are thwarted under conditions of illegal sanctions, because that is the purpose of sanctions. The victimized country is obligated to defend itself in the face of destabilization and constant sabotage.
At each step, keeping the focus on the crime of U.S. actions provides a grounding for progressive solidarity. This is true not only in defending attempts at revolutionary change, such as in Cuba or Venezuela. We also raised the U.S. role in Cabo Verde, a country that clearly didn’t decide on its own to pull Saab from his flight or order him detained. Cabo Verde’s isolation and strategic position simply made that country a convenient location for the long arm of U.S. extraterritorial judicial overreach.
This case must be used in the global challenge against arrogant U.S. lawlessness.
This article was originally published by the International Action Center and edited by Toward Freedom. A previous article by Roger Harris delved into the impact of sanctions.
Sara Flounders of International Action Center and Roger D. Harris of Task Force on the Americas were in Cabo Verde June 3-10 on the emergency human-rights delegation organized by the International Campaign to Free Alex Saab. The case can be followed on Twitter.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez (center) waves to supporters during a rally held on April 14, 2007, outside the Miraflores Palace in Caracas. It was held here to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the return of democracy after a short-lived coup against Chavez was thwarted in 2002 / credit: Bolivar News Agency/Xinhua Press/Corbis
Editor’s Note: The following represents the writer’s opinion and was first published in Black Agenda Report.
From April 11 to 13, the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela hosted the “International Summit Against Fascism ” in Caracas. Two hundred journalists and activists from five continents attended the summit, where the 20th anniversary of the short-lived coup d’état against Hugo Chávez was commemorated, in the context of the importance of media in movements and as a milestone in the continued fight against the global consolidation of right-wing political forces and rising fascism.
The three-day event featured panel discussions about the right-wing forces the people of Venezuela defeated in 2002 compared to the fascist elements operating in countries across the Global South, and now in Ukraine, as well as the relevant emergence of fascism in the United States that emanates from both political parties to support dictators and police states.
Popular communication and the role of media were extensively discussed, as the complicity of the Venezuelan media was recalled in several panel discussions. The coordination of all major Venezuelan media outlets to disseminate the lie that former President Hugo Chávez had relinquished his presidency in 2002 was not only recounted as part of the timeline of events of the overturned coup but also compared to the present consolidation of US media and those of its allies regarding the proxy war in Ukraine. The willingness of media CEOs and news anchors to lie to the people of Venezuela in 2002 seemed to be an omen for what was described as the media dictatorship that is spinning an equally false narrative about Ukraine right now.
The Venezuelan media was not the sole topic in the examination of the 2002 coup attempt. The United States government’s support of the violent and undemocratic right-wing in the country was also a common theme raised by many presenters. The role of members of the US foreign policy team such as then Secretary of State Colin Powell and CIA Director George Tenet whose demonization of Chávez in hearings before Congress set the stage for US intervention in Venezuela. Chávez – who had been president for just two years at the time of the coup – had committed two unforgivable offenses:
He held meetings with the leaders of the sworn enemies of the US: Cuba, Iran, and Libya, and
He criticized the U.S. response to 9/11 in Afghanistan
Kidnapped by the fascist plotters in the government and facilitated by the media, Chávez was secreted away and held captive for two days while the Venezuelan people were told that there was a new president in town. But if that were the end of the story, there would have been no need for this conference.
While the play-by-play of the coup revealed details that most Americans had surely never heard before – such as how all the media outlets declared there was a new government in place on the morning, but played nothing but cartoons on every station for the rest of the day while the coup government was hastily being legitimized. The most fascinating and important aspects of this important historical event was the role of communication among the people in returning Chávez to power and restoring the constitutional democracy that the people shaped under him.
During the panel on Popular Resistance and Response, Yesenia Fuentes , president of the Association of Victims of April 11, recounted how she – a poor single mother – heard from neighbors that the media had lied, that Chávez had not resigned and was still president. Having not been particularly political before Chávez, Fuentes said she joined her neighbors and countrymen who took to the streets marching toward Miraflores – the presidential palace – to demand the whereabouts of the president they elected in a landslide just two years earlier.
It is important that Fuentes survived being shot in the face by Venezuelan soldiers ordered to open fire on the people. But what might be more important in a purely political sense is that Fuentes and tens of thousands of Venezuelans took to the streets in defiance of the intense media propaganda, in defense of deadly fascist violence, to demand that the constitution the people helped shape after the landslide election of Hugo Chávez be restored. Yes, the people wanted their president back, but they were fighting for the democracy they shaped even more.
And this was the context in which the people appealed to the military to join them in demanding the release of President Chávez two days after he was kidnapped. Media images from the people flooding the streets, pressing against the gates of Miraflores, the Presidential palace, with signs demanding to know, “Dondé está Chávez? Que hablas! – Where is Chavez? What do you say?”
These details and others about how popular resistance among the people overturned the first-ever media-led US-backed fascist coup in 2002 were shared during the panel, which also connected that history with the need to commit to and expand popular communication today.
The challenges facing popular communication were raised in panels involving current Venezuelan journalists who talked about World War 2.0: Digital Political Communication In Globalization. They focused on the power of social media and independent media in the struggle against global fascism and its rapid consolidation. The coup in 2002 was an example of how media consolidation was used to subvert the will of the people then, and how media consolidation does the same thing today.
To accentuate that point, Ukrainian journalist Liubov Alexandriana Korsakov presented details about the 8-year civil war that has been raging in the Donbas region. She spoke of media silence on that war, including complicity in crafting a false narrative about the Russian military action in Ukraine. At the end of her presentation, she held up a flag of the Donbas militia, emblazoned with the letter Z – and urged continued support and journalistic attention on the fight against fascists in the Kiev army who were armed and legitimized by the US. A flag and a letter, incidentally, that have been banned in Kiev by the so-called democratic government of Volodymyr Zelensky.
Attending Militia Day celebrations was a disconcerting experience since in the US citizens’ relationship with the police and military is not an amicable one, even though many of them come from the working class and poor masses. However, the legacy of April 11-13 as well as the Bolivarian Revolution reshaped the relationship between the people and the military. Carlos Ron, Venezuela’s Vice Minister of North America, shared the story of how the famous letter from President Chávez was delivered to the people. A young soldier heard from the media that Chávez had resigned. Tasked with guarding the kidnapped president, the soldier asked Chávez if it was true, if he had really resigned. Chávez answered that he had not and he never would do such a thing. The soldier convinced Chávez to write a letter, sign it, and put it in a nearby trashcan because no one would look for anything there. He would retrieve the letter and get it to whomever Chávez told him to. Letter in hand, the soldier delivered it to the former Attorney General, but then went on to tell his fellow servicemen that the news about Chávez resigning was a lie, and he had proof.
Meanwhile, the Attorney General took the letter to the media and uttered one sentence, “President Chávez has not renounced,” and that was enough to send the people into the streets to defend their constitution and demand the return of Chávez. But on the way, they were met by soldiers and pleaded with them to adhere to the constitution they also participated in shaping, and many did.
Therefore, Militia Day does not present the contradictions of the military being agents of the state who are against the people as they operate in the US. Despite whatever internal struggles and contradictions they experience, the military largely supported and continues to support the Bolivarian Revolution that they were key in restoring on April 13.
President Nicolas Maduro commemorated April 11 with a press conference to honor the people’s popular resistance to the coup, with the attendees of the summit as his special guests. President Maduro sat behind a remarkably simple long desk with a portrait of Simon Bolivar and the Venezuelan flags adorning the podium as he recounted the deep history of April 11-13, complete with showing relevant newsreels and providing several well-timed and sharply pointed jabs at the coup-plotters and their backers in the US. But even as he recounted the steps leading up to the coup and how it was overturned by popular resistance and communication, he took the opportunity to not just focus on Venezuela’s struggle, but to offer solidarity to Chilean victims of fascist police violence in the city of Renato, and offered the same assistance to Colombians suffering the same fate.
The current struggles in Venezuela against ongoing U.S. repression are not disconnected from Hugo Chavez; he is not in the past, but he is very present in the consciousness of the people he focused on the most – the Indigenous, Afro-Venezuelans, peasants in the mountains, and the poor in the barrios in the hills above Caracas and those throughout the country.
The Cuartel 4F and museum – the final resting place and museum for President Chávez – is located among the people in the mostly poor barrio of the Monte Piedad sector where he tried to wage his armed struggle against the fascist government of Carlos Andrés Pérez in 1992. After being pardoned from prison in 1994, Chavez started the Fifth Republic Movement which was more centrist than revolutionary, but was focused on lifting those Venezuelans who had been left out of the political process and society up and bringing them into participating in a new kind of government.
Visiting the museum at the Cuartel de 4F where his body lies in a marble-encased tomb surrounded by ceremonial guards and reflective pools of water, Chavez’s grassroots political education in the speeches he gave in those neighborhoods on flatbed trucks, speaking to people in forgotten villages in the mountains, and in the middle of the most impoverished barrios in the cities is showcased. Inspired by his desire to free all Venezuelans from poverty, inequality, oppression, and political isolation, the people voted in record numbers to put Chávez in the presidential office in 2000, and as a result one of his first acts was to immediately begin the process of including the people who voted for him in rewriting the country’s constitution. This was the beginning of the Bolivarian Revolution, and the coup in 2002 was designed to stop a true people-powered and focused state from taking shape.
Walking through the new exhibit commemorating April 11-13, the sights, sounds, and lessons of that time illuminate how Chávez’s revolution spurred the people to defend their new democracy against the most powerful fascist state in the world. The inspiration he drew upon – from his own upbringing as one of the forgotten poor in a small village to his faith in Jesus Christ as a force for social equality and liberation, his commitment to protecting the people and environment they live in – was on full display to erase any confusion about the ability for those concepts of faith and revolution to co-exist successfully. They did in Chávez and they still do in many Venezuelans who will openly weep if asked how they feel about their Comandante.
At the end of the summit, the phrase, “The people, united, will never be defeated” takes on a whole new and relevant life, and the word democracy has a legitimate meaning.
Because Venezuela continues to prove that statement to be true.
Jacqueline Luqman is a radical activist based in Washington, D.C.; as well as co-founder ofLuqman Nation, an independent Black media outlet that can be found on YouTube (here andhere) and onFacebook; co-host of Radio Sputnik’s“By Any Means Necessary;”and a Toward Freedom board member.
A group of the U.S.-based solidarity activists who traveled with the People’s Forum met with Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel on May Day, or International Workers’ Day on May 1 / credit: Estudios Revolución
Editor’s Note: The following Prensa Latina article was originally published in Granma.
HAVANA, MAY 1—The President of Cuba, Miguel Díaz-Canel, spoke here today with nearly 300 friends of the island from the United States and accompanying the fight against the blockade.
At the Palace of the Revolution, the participants spoke about their commitment to Cuba, to fight with more force against the inhuman U.S. blockade, to add more young people to this battle, about socialism and the example that the island represents.
A group that traveled with the People’s Forum and U.S. Hands Off Cuba included Amazon Labor Union President Chris Smalls (back row, second from left) / credit: Estudios Revolución
During the dialogue, U.S. activist Manolo de los Santos said that the experience of these days in Cuba has been wonderful, because they live the truth of the people, in the midst of the difficult economic times they are going through, detailed the Presidency of the Republic on Twitter.
The 2023 May Day Brigade that traveled with the U.S.-based National Network on Cuba visited Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel in the Palace of the Revolution / credit: Estudios Revolución
“We have witnessed the great strength of the Cuban people, how they resist and bring out the best of their creativity,” stressed the co-executive director of The People’s Forum.
U.S.-based participants visited Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel in the Palace of the Revolution on May 1, International Workers’ Day / credit: Estudios Revolución
Our commitment upon returning, he said, will not only be to raise our voice, but to organize a different political project in the United States, and we will always be by Cuba’s side.
Shirts worn by 2023 May Day Brigade participants, who traveled to Cuba through the U.S.-based National Network on Cuba / credit: Estudios Revolución
Since April 24, one of the largest delegations to visit the country in decades has been in the Caribbean nation, with the aim of renewing the ties of solidarity between the people of Cuba and the United States despite the aggressive foreign policy of U.S. President Joe Biden.
It is made up of young people who are visiting Cuba for the first time and others with a long history of solidarity and accompaniment towards the Cuban Revolution.
Celebrations in the northern Nicaraguan city of Estelí on November 8, the day after the elections. President Daniel Ortega won re-election by more than 75 percent / credit: twitter/maria_arauz
This is the second in a series of articles on Nicaragua’s November 7 elections. The first article can be found here.
The Republic of Nicaragua announced on November 19 its intention to pull out of the Organization of American States (OAS), in the latest in a series of events that have transpired in the small country’s struggle with the United States and its allies.
Earlier in the week, U.S. President Joe Biden issued a proclamation that prevents certain Nicaraguan officials—including President Daniel Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo—from entering the United States because they allegedly prevented a “free and fair” election.
The suspension of travel comes amid an escalation of aggression against the Central American country that the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (Sandinista National Liberation Front, or FSLN for short) has governed for the past 15 years.
Aside from the travel ban, the United States slapped sanctions November 15 on Nicaraguan officials. The Organization of American States (OAS) also voted on November 12 to approve a resolution that condemned Nicaragua’s elections as not “free and fair” and called for “further action.”
“We are not concerned about the illegal measures the U.S. imposes against government officials or against Sandinistas,” said Nicaraguan Minister Advisor for Foreign Affairs Michael Campbell after Nicaragua’s National Assembly denounced the travel ban.
However, many myths continue to circulate in the corporate media about Nicaragua’s elections. This reporter was in Nicaragua to cover the elections and reported in a November 14 article on ordinary people’s opinions of the government. Toward Freedom believes it is necessary to report answers to commonly misreported beliefs.
Did the Ortega Government Ban Opposition Parties?
The following parties were registered to run in the November 7 elections:
Partido Liberal Constitucionalista (Constitutionalist Liberal Party or PLC)
Alianza FSLN (Alliance of Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional or Sandinista National Liberation Front Alliance, which is made up of nine parties)
Camino Cristiano Nicaragüense (Nicaraguan Christian Way or CCN)
Alianza Liberal Nicaragüense (Nicaraguan Liberal Alliance or ALN)
Alianza por la República (Alliance for the Republic or APRE)
Partido Liberal Independiente (Independent Liberal Party or PLI)
The Caribbean Coast has two autonomous regions. Indigenous peoples run the South Caribbean Coast Autonomous Region while Afro-descended people control the North Caribbean Coast Autonomous Region. Unlike voters in the rest of the country, people in these regions could choose a seventh party when voting for regional candidates. That party was called the Yapti Tasba Masraka Nanih Aslatakanka (YATAMA).
Parties were allowed to campaign from August 21 to November 3, but rallies were prohibited because of COVID-19 restrictions.
Why Is Daniel Ortega So Popular?
This year’s election can only be viewed in the context of the 2018 coup attempt that has the United States’ fingerprints all over it because of heavy U.S. funding to groups that carried out violence that killed more than 300 Nicaraguans, many of whom were Sandinistas. Nicaraguans say they continue to feel emotionally impacted by the events of that year. Nicaraguan farmers were devastated by the “tranques” or barricades coupmongers built on roads that blocked trade, as reported in a November 14 article. Below is a video of one college student, who recounted her experience and decried the United States’ role.
Hear from college student Daniela as she recounts her experience during the violent US backed coup attempt that rocked Nicaragua in 2018.
This is the death & destruction the US would like to see more of in Latin America, all in the name of "democracy." pic.twitter.com/gtG5HEXVm9
Government officials explained the economic impact of the 2018 coup attempt at a summit for international election companions and accredited press held the day before the elections. Nicaragua’s Central Bank President Ovidio Reyes said the country has experienced negative Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth since 2018. “Just as we were getting out of that cycle, the pandemic struck,” he said, adding two recent hurricanes on the Caribbean coast also impacted trade. However, this year, the country started to see the economy turn around. Much of that officials credit to the country’s policy of increased public health initiatives in lieu of a nationwide lockdown, which they say would have hurt the small country. “If we don’t work, we don’t eat,” said Laureano Ortega, who promotes Nicaragua to foreign investors, repeating the words of his father, President Daniel Ortega. And so came door-to-door visits to provide information, as well as a campaign involving mask wearing, handwashing and social distancing. As a result, Nicaragua has what appears to be the lowest amount of COVID-19-related deaths in the Western Hemisphere.
Why Are Nicaraguan Opposition Leaders in Jail?
In 2020, Nicaragua’s National Assembly passed Law 1055 or the “Law for the Defense of the Rights of the People to Independence, Sovereignty, and Self-Determination for Peace”. Under this law, it is a crime to seek foreign interference in the country’s internal affairs, request military intervention, organize acts of terrorism and destabilization, promote coercive economic, commercial and financial measures against the country and its institutions, or request and welcome sanctions against Nicaragua’s state apparatus and its citizens.
Nicaragua also has a law called article 90, chapter IV, that governs the financing of electoral campaigns, according to government documents.
“The financing system for parties or alliances of parties establishes that they may not receive donations from state or mixed institutions, whether national or foreign, or from private institutions, when they are foreigners or nationals while abroad. They may not receive donations from any type of foreign entity for any purpose.”
Article 91 also prohibits foreign donations to elections.
Article 92 lays out the punishment for breaking electoral finance laws. Consequences can include candidates paying a fine, being eliminated from running for elected or party positions, and being barred from serving in a public office from two to six years.
The Ortega government had offered amnesty in 2019 to opposition members who had helped organize the 2018 coup attempt. However, opposition leaders this year have faced arrest and jail time because they violated the above laws. The corporate media has used the terms “pre-candidates” and “presidential hopefuls” to describe these people.
Many countries around the world, including the United States, prohibit accepting money from foreign governments, foreign private institutions or individuals who are based abroad.
Nicaragua’s Supreme Electoral Council (CSE) governs elections and is considered the fourth branch of the country’s government. The same cannot be said in the United States, for example. The CSE is comprised of members from each of the 19 political parties that can register to run a candidate in the elections.
Weren’t Opposition Parties Barred from Participating?
After 100 percent of votes were counted, the FSLN prevailed with more than 75 percent. The second-place party, Partido Liberal Constitutionalista (PLC), received 14 percent, while other parties picked up only single-digit percentages. All opposition parties are anti-Sandinista.
#EleccionesSoberanas2021🇳🇮| Tercer Informe con 100% de Juntas escrutadas y computadas Elección: Presidente/a Vicepresidente/a🗳
— Consejo Supremo Electoral de Nicaragua 🇳🇮 (@cse_nicaragua) November 10, 2021
In the run-up to Election Day, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken denounced the “sham of an election.” In doing so, he reinforced the foundation for increased U.S. aggression on the small country, about the size of the U.S. state of Pennsylvania.
However, this reporter and close to 70 other journalists reporting on the elections found a calm and organized voting process at stations we visited across the country. Some of the protocols involved included:
Voters must display special identification created just for voting purposes to voting station workers
Voters names can be found in a computer database and on paper
One voter per station (which was usually the size of a classroom)
Handwashing, hand sanitizer and masks were provided
Ballots indicate parties along with the photos of each of the presidential candidates
Ballots are inserted into a box after voting
All ballots are counted at voting centers, not transported to another site as has been seen in the United States, which has resulted in missing ballots being found on streets and claims of fraud
Members of each political party participating in the elections were in the voting centers to monitor vote counting
How Do the Opposition Relate to the Ortega Government?
Below is a video (courtesy of Friends of Latin America) that shows two opposition-party monitors—one from the Independent Liberal Party (PLI) and the other from the Constitutional Liberal Party (PLC)—explaining that they both oppose what they deem “intolerance” among a certain section of the Nicaraguan opposition that supported the violence of the 2018 attempted coup. They also condemned U.S. sanctions, which they said would affect all Nicaraguans, regardless of political affiliation.
In the following video by Ramiro Sebastián Fúnez, a former Contra militant leader explains why she allied with the Sandinistas and the Ortega government.
Were Foreign Journalists and International Observers Allowed In Nicaragua?
This reporter, as well as 66 other journalists, were accredited as press prior to the elections. Not a single journalist on the ground reported seeing or hearing of their colleagues being banned from entering. A few election companions had trouble entering Nicaragua if they did not provide a negative COVID-19 test result on a printed document that contained both the seal from the testing facility as well as a doctor’s signature.
Meanwhile, no journalists from corporate media outlets were on the ground. Yet, outlets like the New York Times went on to claim the elections were dubious in nature. One Times reporter, Natalie Kitroeff, was met with facts from journalists on the ground while she tweeted from Mexico City that the elections were rigged.
Absurd fake news from US gov't mouthpiece NY Times: Unlike this propagandist I'm actually in Nicaragua, reporting on the elections
I went to 4 different voting stations; they were all full, with a totally calm, transparent process
Aside from 67 journalists, 165 international “accompañantes electoral,” or election companions, were allowed to participate. The journalists and election companions traveled from 27 countries. Some flew from as far away as Russia and China, while 70 election companions traveled from the United States.
Despite corporate media’s claims of being denied access to Nicaragua, this reporter only knows of one journalist who was denied access. But the Nicaraguan government wasn’t involved. Steve Sweeney, international editor at the Morning Star, a socialist newspaper in the United Kingdom, tweeted he had been detained in Mexico en route to cover the Nicaragua elections. Over three days, he was denied food and medical access as a diabetic, as he describes in the tweet below.
Coverage of my detention in Mexico where I was held in conditions some are describing as torture, having food withheld for three days.
Meanwhile, the corporate media has not raised their voices to decry the conditions under which Wikileaks Publisher Julian Assange and independent journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal have been held, both of whom the United Nations has reported are being tortured in prison.
Only one European Parliament member attended. Mick Wallace represents Ireland in the parliament and opposed the European Union cooperating with the United States to engage in a hybrid war against Nicaragua. He can be seen expressing opposition in the video below that he tweeted on November 11.
Recent statements from MEP's + #EU Officials on the #Nicaragua Elections have no basis in reality, are an affront to the people of Nicaragua + #UN Charter's principle of non-interference – Only crime is that they've pushed back against #US Imperialism to help their own people… pic.twitter.com/0mBaH796dB
A “hybrid war” is a term historian Vijay Prashad uses to describe the documented U.S. policy of wearing down a country’s defenses through “unconventional” tactics such as economic sanctions, funding proxy groups and NGOs, and distributing misinformation.
Nicaragua decided not to use the term “election observers” because of how OAS and EU election observers in the past had used their role to legitimize meddling in the country’s affairs, according to Nicaraguan Foreign Ministry representatives. Because of that history, as well as the OAS’ documented role in helping create the 2019 coup in Bolivia, Nicaragua did not allow the OAS to send election companions.
Were Nicaraguans Prevented From Voting?
Despite mainstream media claiming people were sometimes violently kept from voting, journalists on the ground in cities as diverse as Bilwi in the North Caribbean Coast Autonomous Region, Bluefields in the South Caribbean Coast Autonomous Region and in the Pacific northwestern city of Chinandega found a free, fair and transparent process in which Nicaraguans voted. Voters in Bilwi told The Convo Couch, a U.S.-based media outlet, that the government’s response after two hurricanes last year hit the Caribbean coast solidified support for the FSLN.
The Foreign’s Ministry’s Campbell told journalists 10 departments (Estelí, Chinandega, León, Rivas, Chontales, Matagalpa, Masaya, Granada, Carazo and Managua) and two autonomous regions contained 63 voting centers and 791 voting stations.
Everywhere foreign journalists and election companions visited contained a peaceful and orderly voting process. Voters expressed gratitude and pride in their country’s elections, which took a year to plan, according to government officials.
Many journalists recorded election workers supporting elderly and disabled people to vote, many times carrying them to voting stations.
Below are videos journalists on the ground developed to show how voting looked in different Nicaraguan cities.
Voting in Bilwi
Voting in Bluefields
Voting in Chinandega
Julie Varughese is editor of Toward Freedom. She spent a week traveling through Nicaragua as part of a delegation organized by the Associación de Trabajadores del Campo (Rural Workers’ Association, or the ATC for short), an independent farm workers’ organization.
