Bianca wages war on tyrant of torture in her homeland
BIANCA JAGGER has called for an end to the oppressive political regime in Nicaragua which has led to dozens of deaths and thousands of people marching on the streets in protest.
The human rights defender and former actress, who was born in the Central American nation, said she ‘grieved for the dead’, many of whom were only teenagers, and called for President Daniel Ortega to ‘go, now’.
Speaking ahead of an address to the Oxford Union on Tuesday, Miss Jagger, 73, who was married to Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger, said: ‘For decades, Ortega was a revered figure in the country thanks to his role as one of the political leaders of the Sandinista revolution that overthrew the murderous dictator Anastasio Somoza and vowed to bring democracy and a fairer, more equal society to Nicaragua.
‘ Though I didn’t always agree with the Sandinistas, I supported the revolution, speaking out in Washington against American military intervention. Now I must speak out again: President Ortega has become t he new Somoza, enriching himself at the expense of his country’s poor, silencing political opposition, doing sweetheart
tax deals with the wealthiest and most corrupt people in the country and, like Somoza, using the army and the police to crush dissent.’
About 50,000 people died during the 1960s revolution in the country and in the war against the American-backed Contras that followed. But the recent bloodshed was, Miss Jagger said, ‘a betrayal of everything they died for’.
The l atest unrest began l ast month after Ortega approved cuts to pensions and social security,
sparking the biggest challenge to his authority since he took office in 2007. Human rights groups estimate there have been at least 49 deaths during clashes with police, and a further 650 injured.
Although Ortega has since rolled back on his plans, fresh protests took place in the capital, Managua, last week. Now serving his third term in government after scrapping the limit on presidential terms, Ortega has ‘banished all serious political opposition’ and gained control of television stations while he and his family have ‘amassed a fortune’, she said.
Miss Jagger, who runs the Bianca Jagger Human Rights Foundation, said the Oxford address will be streamed online to students in Nicaragua, who have been lead
ing the protests. ‘ Shockingly, it is the students– Nicaragua’ s future– who have borne the brunt of t he vio - lence,’ she said.
‘And students who make up most of the disfigured corpses in Nicaragua’ s mortuaries. Some were shot, some were burned, others were tortured by the police, reportedly by having their eyes gouged out.’
Miss Jagger, born Bianca PerezMora Macias, left Nicaragua during the 1960s to study in Europe because of ‘Somoza’s similarly violent suppression of young people’.
She said she had had ‘a deep sense of foreboding about the situation in Nicaragua for some time’.
‘Students have borne the brunt of the violence’