Bishops stand with Ortega’s opponents in solidarity
MASAYA, Nicaragua: Nicaragua’s bishops entered the opposition bastion of Masaya on Thursday in a dramatic show of solidarity with residents they said were threatened with a ‘massacre’ at the hands of forces loyal to President Daniel Ortega.
Thousands of people poured onto Masaya’s narrow streets to welcome several prominent bishops, who led them through the city in procession behind a statue of Jesus.
The bishops — tasked last month with mediating an increasingly bloody confrontation between the opposition and government — said they had decided to go to Masaya “to avoid another massacre, give comfort and pray with our people.”
The city just south of the capital Managua — once a stronghold of Ortega’s Sandinista revolution — has become a flashpoint after two months of anti-government protests that so far have claimed the lives of 191 people.
Managua’s auxiliary bishop Silvio Baez called on the crowd not to take justice into their own hands, “not to imitate the same attitudes and criminal acts” as the government forces.
“We do not want more criminals in Nicaragua,” said Baez, a harsh critic of the government. “I want to remind you of one of God’s commandments.” “Thou shalt not kill.” “To the snipers, to Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo: Not one more death,” he said.
A onetime leftist guerrilla, Ortega led the country from 1979 to 1990 and then returned to the presidency in 2007, now serving his third consecutive term.
Murillo, Ortega’s wife and vicepresident, has said her husband “is committed to curbing this wave of terrorism, hate crimes, kidnappings, threats and intimidation.” But residents are desperate. Wrapped in a flag, 40-year-old housewife Yanet Lopez said she could no longer tolerate the proOrtega repression.
“We want a free country. Daniel should go, we do not want more dictatorship. We are people, not ‘criminals’, as he says,” he told AFP. — AFP