U.S. Rep. Carlos Curbelo (R-FL) this month united with other members of Congress in two bipartisan efforts to stop human rights violations in Nicaragua being orchestrated by President Daniel Ortega.
Nicaraguans have been protesting for almost 60 days against the Ortega government, demanding that the president and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, resign and that elections be held. Rep. Curbelo has worked to advance U.S. and international actions against the Ortega regime and to support the nearly 120,000 Nicaraguans who live in South Florida.
“The people of Nicaragua have taken to the streets en masse to protest Daniel Ortega’s relentless and brutal oppression for over a month now, and they are calling for help,” wrote Rep. Curbelo and members of Congress in a June 5 bipartisan, bicameral letter sent to President Donald Trump.
Among those who signed the letter were U.S. Sens. Marco Rubio (R-FL), Bill Nelson (D-FL), and Ted Cruz (R-TX), as well as U.S. Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), chairman emeritus of the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee, and the panel’s Ranking Member Eliot Engel (D-NY).
The lawmakers urged the president to hold individuals in Nicaragua responsible for human rights abuses and acts of corruption under the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act, which was signed into law in 2016. Trump issued an executive order in December 2017, “Blocking the Property of Persons Involved in Serious Human Rights Abuse or Corruption,” that found that human rights abuses outside the borders of the United States had “reached such scope and gravity that they threaten the stability of international political and economic systems.”
The Global Magnitsky Act declared such abuses an American emergency, listed numerous individuals for their crimes, and allowed for the inclusion of additional foreign persons to the list. Being named to the act’s list means such persons will have sanctions imposed on them, specifically on any U.S. properties, financial and otherwise, which will be blocked if such people are determined by the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the U.S. Secretary of State and the Attorney General, to be responsible for or complicit in, or to have directly or indirectly engaged in, serious human rights abuse, among other illegal activities, according to the text of the Global Magnitsky Act.
“We must not allow human rights abusers and corrupt officials to continue violating their rights without consequence,” the lawmakers wrote in their letter to Trump.
The members of Congress want Trump to investigate Ortega’s National Police Deputy Commissioner Francisco Diaz “to determine whether he is eligible to be sanctioned under the Global Magnitsky Act for abusing the fundamental human rights of the Nicaraguan people and for his role in the killings of dozens of peaceful protestors.”
For instance, according to their letter, 30 armed National Police officers at Ortega’s request on May 9 attacked residents in Managua and threatened media reporters covering the event. However, Diaz later issued a statement that denied eyewitness accounts of the attack, a practice he has repeated regularly in other incidents, the lawmakers wrote.
The event followed Ortega’s attempts in April to unilaterally impose reforms at the financially struggling Instituto de Seguridad Social, sparking widespread protests, the lawmakers wrote. “In response, Ortega unleashed the government’s National Police on these protestors.”
According to recent reports, as of May 28, at least 81 people have been killed, over 868 people have been injured, and more than 438 have people been detained, according to the lawmakers’ June 5 letter.
“We must make it clear to the Ortega regime that the era of impunity for abuses is over, and that the United States stands with the Nicaraguan people in their fight for the rule of law and for basic freedoms,” they wrote.
Likewise, in a June 8 letter sent to Luis Almagro Lemes, Secretary General of the Organization of American States (OAS), Reps. Curbelo and Ros-Lehtinen joined with U.S. Reps. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL) and Albio Sires (D-NJ) asking that Lemes “publicly and openly work within the OAS to help restore democratic order in Nicaragua.”
In expressing their “profound concern,” the bipartisan group requested that Lemes “openly and unequivocally condemn the Ortega regime’s human rights abuses in Nicaragua.”
Additionally, they asked Lemes to start considering whether to invoke Article 19 of the Inter-American Democratic Charter, which would denounce the country’s “repression and blatant power grabs” as “an unconstitutional interpretation of the democratic order or an unconstitutional alteration of the constitutional regime that seriously impairs the democratic order.”
“Toward democracy, truth, justice and the full exercise of human rights in Nicaragua, we urge you to demand accountability for the Ortega regime’s human rights abuses and publicly press for genuine democracy on behalf of the Nicaraguan people,” the lawmakers wrote.