Although it will not send an official delegation, members of the Blue and White National Unity will attend several forums at the event that will take place in Los Angeles next week
The Nicaraguan opposition calls for the release of political prisoners and an end to the repression of Daniel Ortega’s dictatorship (EFE/Lenin Nolly)
The Nicaraguan opposition announced this Thursday that it will make an appearance at the Summit of the Americas, to be held next week in Los Angeles, United States, and to which dictator Daniel Daniel Ortega.
“Several members of the Blue and White National Unity will be there, but also from other organizations, from the diaspora and exiles. It is not an official delegation, but there will be people participating in various forums”, a spokesperson for the Blue and White National Unity told the EFE agency.
White House officials confirmed last week that the regimes in Nicaragua and Venezuela are not invited to the summit because the United States does not consider them to be democratic systems, while Washington has not yet clarified whether it will finally invite Cuba, although it is presumed that it will not either. .
Last May,The Joe Biden administration reported that it was “evaluating options on how to better incorporate the voices of the Cuban, Venezuelan and Nicaraguan peoples” into the continental meeting.
The opposition Unidad Nacional indicated in a statement that at the Summit of the Americas “this year there will be no government representation from Nicaragua, but the representation of the Nicaraguan people will be present, including several members of the Blue and White National Unity.”
The organization’s spokesman stated that the Nicaraguan opposition will be present in working groups of civil society, youth, businessmen, among others, that are part of the Summit of the Americas.
Dozens of Nicaraguans protest to demand freedom for political prisoners (EFE/Bienvenido Velasco)
The National Unity, which does not have legal personality, announced that it will attend the Summit with two messages: the release of “political prisoners”, estimated at at least 181, and “the cessation of the repression that has left hundreds of murdered and disappeared since 2018, causing the exile of hundreds of thousands of citizens.”
Nicaragua has been in a sociopolitical crisis for four years which, according to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), has left at least 355 dead, of which Ortega recognizes 200, and has led more than 100,000 Nicaraguans into exile, as well as the closure of media outlets and the cancellation of hundreds of NGOs.
The crisis in Nicaragua was accentuated in the November 2021 elections, when Ortega was re-elected for a fifth term, fourth consecutive and second along with his wife, Rosario Murillo, as vice president, with his main contenders in prison.
“The drama in Nicaragua has reached proportions never seen before in national or continental history, and requires the due attention and action of the community of American countries,” highlighted the Unit National in the declaration.
The dictator Daniel Ortega was not invited to the Summit of the Americas in the US
The Summit of the Americas brings together all the countries of the continent but the exclusions have created controversy, since some countries in the region have warned that they will not participate if the dictators of Nicaragua (Daniel Ortega), Cuba (Miguel Díaz -Canel) and Venezuela (Nicolás Maduro).
Presidents such as the Mexican Andrés Manuel López Obrador or the Bolivian Luis Arce< /b> They announced that, in such a case, they would not attend either.
From then on, the Biden government began a series of diplomatic efforts to obtain the greatest possible assistance. The conversations of the special envoy Christopher Dodd managed to add Jair Bolsonaro (Brazil), Alberto Fernández (Argentina) and Gabriel Boric (Chile) to the meeting. However, the leaders of Mexico and Bolivia are still reluctant to say present.
This Wednesday, the person in charge of Latin America in the National Security Council , Juan Gonzalez, and the Undersecretary of State for the region, Brian Nichols, did not want to close any doors and said in a telephone press conference that, although “the host has the power to draw up the guest list” , the US government was “listening to the views of other leaders and partners in the region” and taking “final considerations” before announcing the final decision.
(With information from EFE)