Nicaragua: cut the pensions of opponents in exile

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Liberated and exiled opponents of Nicaragua denounced on Friday that the government of Daniel Ortega had suspended the payment of their pensions, a measure also applied to exiles.

“I was eliminated from the system” of the Nicaraguan Social Security Institute (INSS), sociologist and economist Irving Larios told The Associated Press, who for criticizing Ortega was jailed from September 2021 until his death. deportation to the United States with 221 other opponents on February 9.

Larios, 63 and who received a monthly pension equivalent to almost 800 dollars, described the measure as “perversity” since around 20 exiled ex-prisoners are people over 60 years old.

In addition, the 222 were stripped of their Nicaraguan nationality by means of a judicial resolution issued after their surprise expulsion.

“This is one more example of perversity… an irrational and illegal act,” added Larios, prosecuted for “conspiracy” against the state and sentenced to 13 years in prison.

The suspension of his retirement was also confirmed by the mythical ex-guerrilla Dora María Téllez, 67, who separated three decades ago from the Sandinista Front party led by Ortega. Téllez is another of 222 opponents released from prison and sent to the United States.

“This pension is not a gift, it’s a right because we work and contribute to our social security all our lives,” Téllez told Nicaraguan digital media. “INSS will have to pay us every penny it takes from us,” he protested.

Others released with pensions already withheld include three former ministers and a former diplomat who asked not to be named for fear of government reprisals against their families in Nicaragua.

The INSS has not officially confirmed the withholding of pensions for opponents.

The suspension of pensions would also be applied to several of the 94 opponents whose nationality was stripped by the government on February 15, the day it also announced the confiscation of their assets for having considered them “traitors to the fatherland”.

Among those stripped of their citizenship and subject to expropriation are well-known writers Sergio Ramírez and Gioconda Belli.

Former Sandinista commander Mónica Baltodano, a 68-year-old former opposition congresswoman, went into exile in Costa Rica with her husband Julio López, 77, who was a senior Sandinista party official in the 1980s. Both were deprived of their pension.

“They haven’t deposited our superannuation again this month,” Baltodano confirmed to AP. “It is a brutal, arbitrary and absolutely illegal measure, because retirement is a right that protects the elderly from defencelessness, unemployment and hunger,” he said.

The right to social security and old age pensions is protected by the Nicaraguan constitution which, in one of its articles, obliges the State to provide this service “without exclusions”, since it is considered an “acquired right”. .

Consulted by the AP, lawyer Juan Carlos Arce, of the “Nicaragua Nunca Más” Human Rights Collective, called the suspension of pensions an “illegal action” because “it violates the principle of progressive economic rights and social and the principle of acquired rights”. ”.

“It leaves the elderly completely unprotected and ratifies a state policy based on punishing those who are seen as opponents,” Arce said. “The Nicaraguan regime makes it clear that it has no limits to violence against opponents,” he added.

He pointed out that the measure also violates the Social Security Law and the Protocol of San Salvador, which establishes that everyone has the right to social security.

After Nicaraguan citizenship was withdrawn from opponents, the governments of Spain, Chile, Argentina, Colombia, and Mexico offered to grant them citizenship. The novelist Ramírez, who already has Spanish nationality, has also accepted Colombian and Ecuadorian nationality, while the poet Belli has accepted Chilean nationality.

Nicaragua has been going through a serious political crisis since April 2018, when Ortega suppressed a social uprising with police and paramilitaries. The government action left 355 dead, more than 2,000 injured and at least 100,000 exiled, according to human rights organizations.