Billionaire-backed Human Rights Watch lobbies for lethal US sanctions on leftist governments as COVID-19 crisis rages
Regime change-hungry HRW is proudly taking credit for crushing new US sanctions on Nicaragua while pushing to escalate Washington’s economic war on Venezuela. The Grayzone presents a deep dive into the “human rights” arm of US empire.
by Ben Norton
Part 4 - HRW praises Trump admin for imposing Nicaragua sanctions it lobbied for
The Trump administration has dedicated itself to the overthrow of Nicaragua’s democratically elected Sandinista government, backing a violent coup attempt in 2018, dubbing the small country a supposed “threat to national security,” and imposing several rounds of sanctions, which have crippled the economy and disproportionately impacted the poor and working class.
On March 5, the US government hit Nicaragua with a new round of sanctions, this time targeting the country’s police forces.
Numerous Human Rights Watch operatives responded by publicly lavishing praise on the Trump administration. One HRW employee who previously worked for the US government placed an op-ed in a right-wing Nicaraguan media outlet applauding the sanctions.
The Grayzone has previously reported on how HRW joined the US government and Organization of American States to vigorously lobby for the release of violent criminals who participated in the coup attempt, using lists of Washington-funded right-wing opposition groups that falsely characterized them as “political prisoners.” After the Sandinista government ceded to the international pressure campaign and agreed to an amnesty, one man who was released went on to stab his own pregnant girlfriend to death, murdering her in cold blood.
HRW has not commented on this scandal, and has shown no regret for its actions. Instead, the “rights” group doubled down on its call for more aggressive international action against Nicaragua’s elected government.
On March 17, in the middle of the deadly coronavirus pandemic, an associate in HRW’s Americas division named Megan Monteleone published an article praising the Trump administration for the new sanctions on Nicaragua’s police force.
Monteleone notes in her official bio on the HRW website: “Prior to joining Human Rights Watch, she worked as an International Affairs Specialist at the U.S. Department of Justice” — yet another example of the revolving door between Washington and this so-called non-governmental organization.
Monteleone’s op-ed was printed in the website Confidencial, a mouthpiece for Nicaragua’s right-wing opposition — which is heavily funded by the US government and closely collaborates with Washington.
Confidencial does not even feign partiality; it is aggressively partisan, routinely referring to Nicaragua’s elected government as a “regime” and a “dictatorship.”
Confidencial is owned by Carlos Fernando Chamorro, an oligarch from the Chamorro clan, the most powerful family in Nicaragua, which has produced one rightist opposition leader after another. He is the son of Nicaragua’s former President Violeta Chamorro, a conservative who took power after a decade-long US terror war and economic blockade.
Confidencial strongly supported the violent 2018 coup attempt in Nicaragua, acting as a de facto public relations vehicle for the US-backed coup-mongers as they killed and terrorized state security forces, leftist activists, Sandinista supporters, and their family members.
Human Rights Watch firmly took the side of the violent US-backed opposition in the 2018 putsch. The supposed rights organization blamed the government entirely for the violence, whitewashing and erasing the heinous crimes carried out by the Washington-allied coup-mongers.
Monteleone’s article in Confidencial was a continuation of HRW’s exercise in naked bias: She did not once mention the wave of opposition violence, while declaring, “New US sanctions offer hope for victims who are waiting for justice.”
In fact, HRW took credit for the new Trump administration sanctions. Monteleone pointed out in her article that, “In 2019, Human Rights Watch recommended sanctions against two of the three named officials.”
Monteleone even quoted the US government (her former employer) in the op-ed, treating the highly politicized accusations of the US Treasury as unquestionable fact.
“The new sanctions are a positive step, not only to hold those responsible to account, but also to help curb ongoing abuses,” the HRW associate wrote.
She concluded her op-ed in the Nicaraguan opposition mouthpiece by calling for more countries to impose more sanctions: “It is critical for governments in the region and Europe to reinforce this message and continue pressuring the Ortega government by adopting more targeted sanctions directed at top officials responsible for past and ongoing abuses.”
Confidencial translated Monteleone’s article into Spanish and published it alongside a political cartoon demonizing the Nicaraguan police force. Her op-ed was also promoted on Twitter by HRW’s right-wing Americas director José Miguel Vivanco, who works closely with conservative opposition forces in Latin America and advances their agenda on the international stage.
On March 19 — after thousands of Americans had died from the Covid-19 pandemic, and the federal US government was doing virtually nothing to help them — HRW executive director Kenneth Roth praised the Trump administration for “imposing a modicum of accountability” with its new sanctions. (This came just a week after Roth condemned the World Health Organization for supposedly being “overly sycophantic to China.”)
The only other article Megan Monteleone has listed in her bio at HRW is another anti-Sandinista screed published in Infobae, a staunchly right-wing website based in Argentina and owned by a rightist oligarch. Like the opposition media outlets in Nicaragua, Infobae describes Nicaragua’s elected government a “regime” and “dictatorship” in its reports.
Monteleone’s obsessive hatred of Nicaragua’s leftist government is apparent on her Twitter account, where almost all of her tweets are anti-Nicaragua posts. Apparently other countries in Latin America, let alone the rest of the world, are not violating human rights.
HRW colleagues joined Monteleone in praising the new Trump administration sanctions on Nicaragua, including Emma Daly, the acting deputy executive director for media at Human Rights Watch, and Jan Kooy, HRW’s deputy European media director.
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