(Panam Post) One of the latest victims of the repression of the Ortega regime, was a child just over a year old. Renowned Cuban journalist and writer Carlos Alberto Montaner opined: “The murder of a 14-month-old baby was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Either Daniel Ortega and his wife accept early elections in March, and they take their millions and go elsewhere, or they will be overthrown, or they may face a similar fate to the Ceausescus in Romania.”
Montaner’s reference to the dictatorial communist regime of the late 1980s in Southeastern Europe is a very sensible comparison, which includes a warning, to boot: after his overthrow, Ceausescu found himself tried by a military court. They accused him of genocide, subversion of society by the state, destruction of the economy, and embezzlement. Being found guilty, they executed him and his wife, Elena Ceausescu, the Rosario Murillo of Romania.
Whether or not the Ortegas face a similar fate as the European communist dictators, depends, as Carlos Alberto Montaner notes, on them. However, there seems to be no indication on their part that they wish to avoid a dramatic and lethal conclusion.
Faced with massive and courageous opposition, with hundreds of thousands of young people in the streets, standing up to the rampant authoritarianism in the nation, Daniel Ortega has responded implacably and cruelly. His actions should be a clear reminder to anyone who doubted in the late 1980s that he was still a Communist; as his government destroyed the country in a scorched-earth campaign to convert it into a replica of Fidel Castro’s Cuba.
The peaceful demonstrations of recent months in Nicaragua were met with state security forces unconcerned about shedding blood. The rampant violence on the part of the government quickly conjures up images of the other great murderer of the region: the Venezuelan Nicolás Maduro.
The massacres and the murderous expeditions of the so-called “death squads” and other paramilitary bodies of the Sandinista regime are countless. The crimes, atrocious. Arson, entire families attacked, and dignified and honorable cities and bastions of values, laid siege to, and destroyed.
The crimes cry out for justice: the burning of two children, numerous murders by snipers, tortures and arrests. “Before this horrific scene unfolding, my mind and my heart immediately thought about and contemplated the historical context, and I asked myself: how many children have died in recent days? How many children have been slaughtered in the past few weeks? How many children have been killed during the past two months?” asked the Nicaraguan Bishop, Rolando Álvarez, on June 24.
The answer, according to El Nuevo Diario: at least 12 children have been killed during this terrible political crisis in Nicaragua. They are deaths attributable to the police and to the paramilitary forces of Sandinismo. They are called “combined forces” because they act together.
These children join the more than 210 murdered, according to the latest estimates. And to these unfortunate deaths, we must add, also, the one-year-old and two-month-old baby murdered by the police in a neighborhood of Managua. An execution that should serve as a breaking point.
It is naive to suggest that the Ortega regime could still have democratic pretensions. It has murdered, in an unprecedented way, the political dissidence. From there to hijacking democracy, the road is short.
Ortega has formalized and officialized his role as a Latin American tyrant, and there is no denying that. He now pertains to the class of those who love blood and power. Those who prefer to go about destroying lives, even the lives of children, rather than give up their dictatorial arrogance. Fortunately, Ortega’s true nature is becoming abundantly clear for all to see.
Daniel Ortega reveals who he really is. He is guaranteeing a place for himself in the darkest chapters of Latin America’s modern history; as a dangerous and lethal dictator. He will be forever remembered as “the butcher” of Nicaragua. A well-deserved epithet that he can now share with “the butcher” of Venezuela.
Source: Panam Post
Article originally appeared on Today Nicaragua and is republished here with permission.
