Nan McCurdy, 15 de julio 2018
Letter to the Washington Post
Your report of an apparent government attack in Nicaragua (“They are Shooting at a Church,” Joshua Paltrow, 14 July) reads as if written by government opponents. Statements on numbers dead rely on figures from “human rights groups” that have always been in cahoots with the opposition and receive funding from the National Endowment for Democracy. One of them, the ANPDH – Nicaraguan Association for the Protection of Human Rights – was formed in the 1980’s by the NED to serve as an apologist for the “Contra” forces then funded by the US government.
The report features Catholic priests hiding from the gunfire. The Church has from the beginning taken the side of the powerful elite opposed to the government. There is readily available video evidence and personal testimony of the torture of Sandinistas in the presence of priests, for example, Sander Bonilla in Leon. The priests’ behavior has been so terrible that the Pope sent a new Papal Nuncio, Waldemar Stanislaw to get them in line. On July 14, Waldemar said “The [national] dialogue has to be kept alive. There are dead on one side and the other, and this should be recognized. And we should all examine our conscience”.
The protesting students and delinquents (at the beginning, in April, there were many students; since May they have been largely replaced by delinquents paid by the opposition) have successfully used “self-attacks” to generate news coverage in their favor. They’ve used this technique dozens of times. They start shooting and raising a ruckus at one of the universities they control, then send out messages saying they are being attacked by the police or by Sandinista-sympathizers. The anti-government media always arrive punctually. I personally know a number of people who have gone close and taken videos when they do this and they find it is just a show.
The worst is that they use these self-attacks to send part of their group to burn things: radio stations, government buildings, homes of Sandinista sympathizers; they then say the government is burning its own buildings.
These “media shows” often coincide with something important like reconvening of the national dialogue which the Church is supposed to convene as a neutral party. The case reported drew attention away from the extremely successful “caravan” by thousands of government supporters on Friday July 13 from Managua to Masaya. It was also no doubt staged because of the presence of the Washington Post.
One group set fire to university buildings while another group was elsewhere in the university with your journalist, saying they were being attacked. Yet another group was in a different area firing guns and mortars to make it seem like an attack was taking place. Paltrow went to a Catholic church where the priests were part of the scam, as we’ve seen many times. The videos that have been sent around social media since last Friday were staged, like they always are. They are now very good actors: but there is a video showing a girl laughing who seconds later is shown in the public video screaming, praying and crying. There is another video showing students cringing from the supposed attack behind a barricade, while the cameraman is standing alongside them but out of view, indifferent to the supposed “bullets”.
Polls show that Sandinista sympathizers make up approximately 55% of the country’s population but the Washington Post presents the opposition line as if it represents majority opinion. The reality is that most Nicaraguans are exhausted by these violent protests and now simply want peace. The opposition is determined to continue the violence and retain international support, hence the events on which you reported.