Nan McCurdy, December 31st 2018
Last December 9th, Methodist missionary Nan NcCurdy challenged an exceptionally biased report on Nicaragua from the International Consortium of Independent Journalists. The address for responding to them is :- contact@icij.org. During the exchange, Nan McCurdy lists a series of damning videos demostrating the falsity of the ICIJ's reporting on Nicaragua.
Original Letter to ICIJ 9/12/18
Dear ICIJ
The article you have recently published on Nicaragua ("Nicaragua’s media uprising challenges President Ortega") is severely unbalanced. It quotes journalists from the local news program Confidencial which is strongly anti-government, describing the people who were expressing their anger towards the Nicaraguan bishops in Diriamba as "Ortega’s fighters" whereas they were simply residents of that city, who had suffered weeks of violent repression at the hands of the "protesters" which the article describes sympathetically.
There is nothing in the article to give the viewpoint of those ordinary people. In fact, the article simply avoids reporting that Diriamba (and adjoining Jinotepe) were places where the local population suffered very serious abuse and attacks, by the opposition gangs protected by the bishops, which explains the local peoples' outrage at the bishops' visit. They refused to come to diffuse the situation while those gangs were in charge, yet they appeared on the scene when the government retook control of the cities. Quite rightly, local people saw them as interested only in protecting the protesters, not them.
. There are plenty of video links and reports to show the violence that took place in these two cities against government supporters, the latest being the videos of the torture of local government worker Bismarck Martínez, that could have been included in the article. Martinez was disappeared June 29th. You do not contribute to the "investigative" reporting about the crisis in Nicaragua by simply publishing such totally unbalanced and subjective reports.
Yours etc.
Email from author of original article: Sasha Chavkin schavkin@icij.org
Dear Ms. McCurdy,
Thank you for your note about our story "Nicaragua's Media Uprising Challenges President Ortega" - I wrote the story.
You write in your message that the story inaccurately portrays the group that attacked the clergymen and journalists as Ortega's fighters rather than local residents. For the story, I spoke to Ricardo Salgado, the cameraman who was attacked while filming the conflict at San Sebastian church. After fleeing the church, Salgado said he was provided refuge in the home of a local man. Salgado said the man, who lived a few blocks from the church, told him he had never seen most of the people protesting outside the church before - and that they presumably had been transported into the city by the government and its supporters.
I would add that numerous reports from Nicaraguan and international media, Nicaraguan and international human rights groups, and the United Nations have identified and denounced severe human rights abuses by the Ortega government and its paramilitary supporters in the months since popular protests emerged against the social security reform plan.
Thanks very much for your feedback and for your interest in the story.
Best,
Email back to Sasha Chavkin
Dear Sasha,
Thank you for your letter.
I have followed the events in Carazo closely as it was the site of opposition violence of every kind, and a lot of really brutal violence. Priests are known to have been involved in much of this thus the explosion of people’s anger was to be expected. I am not at all surprised their anger was directed at clergy who should have been genuinely working for peace and accompanying those who were suffering, not egging the violators on and joining in the fray.
By June the “peaceful protesters” you mention didn’t exist. The criminals were using the San Sebastian church as a center of operations with the support and blessing of the priests. There are videos of young men describing the torture they endured for days, with a priest directing much of it. The day you described in your article the local population was trying to clear the evil out of their church, and that evil included the priests, the weapons and all the disturbing signs of what the church had been used for. The people were finally rising up against the opposition coup tyranny and shaking off the terrible fear they had lived with since April.
And truly, the description that the Confidencial journalist gave you of the physical violence against Baez was more than exaggerated. Please keep in mind that Confidencial is one of the major recipients of US money through USAID, NED, IRI and others and they also funnel money to other media and NGOs. They have been extremely anti-government since the Sandinistas were elected in 2006.
I’ve been thinking about what I could do to help you get a sense of what happened in Carazo. So below are various short videos of the priests participating with the opposition paid thugs, of their torture of Sandinistas and of the people on one of their many Caminatas por la Paz y La Justicia since mid-July. I will warn you that the torture videos are extremely disturbing. 90% of the first video is about Diriamba, but the last segment about Zander Bonilla being tortured in the presence of a priest and a pastor is from Leon. I know the people who collected these videos and others who dubbed some of them in English.
Video about Bismark Martinez, disappeared June 29 at a roadblock in Jinotepe, Carazo
Diriamba videos July 8th and July 9th 2018 :-
Catholic Church Participates in the Torture of Sandinistas - Nicaragua
This is an excellent compilation about torture and also about how the Priests and human rights organizations ignored the suffering of the People of Diriamba and Jinotepe until now that the roadblocks are gone.
Women Describe the Horrors they lived – Nicaragua
ANDPH Activist surreptitiously hands money to Catholic Priest
Citizens in the Diriamba Church find Firearms
100%Noticias Reporter Caught Lying on Camera
Citizens Reject Priests as Coup-Mongers
Agent Gabriel Vado Ruiz was kidnapped July 14 on his way to a family reunion in Jinotepe, Carazo [less than an hour’s drive from Masaya – and note that these are both areas where the opposition terrorists have been very active]. Vado Ruiz was taken to Monimbo and tortured until his death Sunday morning July 15. The terrorists put his body out against a roadblock and lit his body on fire. They took videos and put them on Facebook. Here is a link, but it is awful. (Telesur, July 16)
This is one of the walks for peace and justice in Jinotepe. This was in August. One woman is explaining that they are demanding justice for all the victims because the national and international human rights organizations ignore victims who are Sandinista.