At least two dead in Nicaragua’s day of anti-Ortega marches
MANAGUA: At least two demonstrators were killed and 11 others wounded in Nicaragua Saturday, a rights group said, as thousands of demonstrators marched against President Daniel Ortega across the Central American country.
Dubbed the Flowers March, the protests honored the youth killed in the more than two months of anti-Ortega unrest met with repression by government forces that has left at least 220 people dead.
A 23-year-old street vendor was shot in the head when some of the marchers strayed off the scheduled route, according to rights groups.
“This is something incredibly difficult,” said Luis Ortiz, the man’s elderly father, who fought alongside the president decades ago when Ortega was a Sandinista rebel commander.
“I never imagined that my son would die in the hands of someone with whom I fought so hard. I gave my sweat and my blood... I am an injured vet, too.
“I am still a Sandinista,” he added, “but not with Daniel,” referring to the president.
At the beginning of the march armed men also fired on a protesters’ barricade at the National Autonomous University of Nicaragua (UNAN), where the Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights (CENIDH) said one man behind student-erected barricades was killed.
“I’m here because I want to see my Nicaragua free, it hurts that children like me have died, but we must continue fighting to get this dictator out,” a 15-year-old student wearing a ski mask told AFP.
In one hand, he was waving a Nicaraguan flag, and in the other, he held a mortar launcher. In other cities including Leon, Masaya and Granada marches were also organized by the Civic Alliance for Justice and Democracy.
The demonstrations were the first of their kind since May 30, when a huge Mother’s Day march turned bloody after progovernment forces attacked and left 18 people dead.
The protesters demand the resignation of Ortega, a 72-yearold former leftist guerrilla who came to power with the popular uprising that defeated the dictator Anastasio Somoza in 1979, and retook the presidency in 2007 after a vote.