Nicaragua's stolen revolution

July 19 marks the anniversary of the 1979 overthrow of the US-backed Somoza dictatorship. The democratic promise of the Sandinista revolution, which resonated throughout the region and the world, has been progressively confiscated by the autocratic rule of President Daniel Ortega, whose government has been brutally repressing popular demonstrations as it indulges in ritual celebration.

According to the latest estimates, some 300 people have fallen victim to the widening repression and murderous violence of police and para-military formations under the personal control of the President.

Since his return to power eleven years ago, Ortega's single achievement has been to institutionalize personal rule. Various attempts to broker a 'national dialogue' and a 'roadmap to democracy' will remain hollow as long as the repression continues. The killing has to stop, Ortega has to go, the results of the fraudulent election of 2016 nullified. Nicaragua needs to breathe again; its workers and citizens and its fragmented, repressed democratic forces urgently need the international solidarity and support which the IUF Latin American regional secretariat has been organizing.