One killed as violence rages in Nicaragua
Demonstrations demanding President Ortega’s removal have raged since April 18
Masaya, a city battling at the front lines of Nicaragua’s heated antigovernment protests, once again became the scene of fierce street combat on Saturday, with at least one man dying of a bullet wound to the heart, the head of a top rights group in the country said.
Firearm bursts rang out in the city home to 100,000 people, where riots that started midday were growing increasingly violent as masked demonstrators wielding homemade mortars and slingshots struggled to fend off armed security forces.
Alvaro Leiva, head of the Nicaraguan Association for the Protection of Human Rights (ANPDH), said at least one 60-year-old man had died after a bullet struck his heart. ■
Leiva said the gunman was a sniper — implying a member of Ortega’s security forces or government-backed vigilantes.
The mortal wound comes hours after the Nicaraguan Centre for Human Rights (CENIDH) had raised to 137 the death toll in the Central American country, where demonstrations demanding President Daniel Ortega’s ouster have raged since April 18.
At least two people had died in violent protests overnight, the CENIDH said, one in the northern city of Jinotega and another in Managua.
Leiva said the situation was growing increasingly grave “because we are talking about crossfire, not tear gas or rubber bullets.”
“The situation in this moment in Nicaragua is a crisis,” he said. “We are asking the world to pay attention to Masaya.”
At ‘war’
The crackdown that began as relatively minor demonstrations against pension cuts in April mushroomed into mass protests against Ortega, who first came to power in 1979 as the head of a communist junta following the overthrow of dictator Anastasio Somoza.
Ortega slipped out of power in 1990 but retook the presidency in 2006.
Now in his third consecutive term, he is to remain as the country’s leader until 2022. A key demand of protesters is to expedite that election.
The country’s influential Catholic bishops met on Thursday with Ortega to discuss a plan to reboot talks to quell the crisis.