Lee Camp
spoke with human/labor rights lawyer and peace activist, Daniel
Kovalik, on the situation in Nicaragua.
Kovalik
went to Nicaragua at the end of July with Max Blumenthal to
investigate what was happening. They found a situation very different
of what we've been told in the mainstream press. That is, a situation
very common in Latin America: another attempt by the US empire to
overthrow an undesirable government.
Kovalik
explains:
First of
all, as most people know, what you hear on the news, is that students
mostly peacefully protested against the government. And then, the
government crackdown on them, and this led to a mass uprising against
the Ortega government.
The
facts are very different from this.
What did
happen, was that in mid-April the Ortega government announced very
modest changes to the social security program. And the changes were
necessary to keep the system solvent through 2019, otherwise it's
going to go bankrupt. There were some peaceful protests that came
about against those announced reforms.
But
then, what happened, very clearly, was that there were armed groups
that had been planning this coup against the government for some
time. They integrated themselves in with peaceful protesters and
really hijacked the protest there. In the last four years, they have
received four million dollars from the National Endowment for
Democracy (NED) and then about another thirty million dollars from
USAID. And in fact, a publication of the NED took credit for laying
the groundwork for the insurrection that took place in April.
So, this
was funded and planned well in advance.
These
groups took advantage of a situation where there were real protests
against the social security reforms. There were some real protests
and concerns among students about a fire that had taken place on the
Atlantic coast. And also, there were student elections happening at
the universities at this time. So, there were groups that were
planning ahead, took advantage of this, and started a violent coup
against the government.
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