Nicaragua’s Ortega defends violence amid US warning

Managua: Nicaragua’s veteran leader Daniel Ortega defended brutal action by his forces against anti- government protesters Monday, as the US warned he and his wife were “ultimately responsible” for deaths and rights violations. In the latest of a number of foreign media interviews the usually hermetic president has been giving since last week, Ortega told the Euronews television channel the unrest he was facing was fomented by the US. He said that armed and masked paramilitaries seen cooperating closely with his security forces against the protesters were “volunteer police”. And Ortega reaffirmed his rejection of opposition calls for early elections or his resignation. That “would open the doors to anarchy in the country,” he asserted. The interviews showed that the former left- wing guerrilla prone to anti- US rhetoric, who has ruled Nicaragua for 22 of the past 39 years, was digging in despite growing international condemnation. Three months of turmoil have killed more than 300 people, according to Nicaraguan rights groups and the UN. Ortega disputes that count as “not correct,” giving his own death toll of 195, including two dozen police officers, as well as paramilitaries, sympathisers of his ruling Sandinista party and other civilians. Although tensions have diminished somewhat in the past week and a half, following intense armed operations against protest hubs, resentment against Ortega and his wife vice- president Rosario Murillo simmers unabated. On Monday in Leon, a northwestern town that was formerly a bastion of Sandinista support before many turned against the party, demonstrations were held in front of state- run hospitals where some staff have been sacked for treating wounded protesters and expressing sympathy with their cause. Over the weekend, thousands of people marched in Managua to show support for the Catholic Church, which has been mediating unsuccessful talks between Ortega’s administration and the Opposition. The President has accused the bishops taking part of siding with the “coup- mongers” seeking to topple him. Ortega complains that foreign media coverage of the unrest falsely suggests most Nicaraguans wanted him gone. “Not all the people” are against him, he told Euronews, only “part of the population.”