Word: ortega
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...national radio and television broadcast last week, President Daniel Ortega Saavedra rolled out the heaviest artillery yet in his battle against political opponents of the revolutionary Sandinista government. He decreed the suspension of nearly all civil liberties in Nicaragua, including the right to strike and the rights of free expression, public assembly, freedom of movement, habeas corpus and protection from arbitrary arrest, search and seizure. His justification for that drastic crackdown: the threat of "political destabilization" posed by the "terrorist policies of the United States," as well as by the "internal pawns of imperialism." Said Ortega: "It is a fundamental...
...decree will be enforced, it had the effect of ratifying the sorts of measures the Sandinistas have been taking in recent months without the cloak of law. Their main target seems to be Nicaragua's Roman Catholic Church, led by the charismatic Miguel Cardinal Obando y Bravo. Days before Ortega's speech, Sandinista security agents had seized 10,000 copies of Iglesia, a new Catholic newsletter. Then just hours before the speech, government agents closed the magazine's office and seized its printing equipment. Apparently the publication offended the Sandinistas because it carried a letter from Cardinal Obando y Bravo...
...Managua, on the day of Ortega's speech, Sandinista police tried unsuccessfully to break up a large demonstration of workers demanding higher wages. But two days later Interior Minister Tomas Borge Martinez said the decree was intended "to defend workers, not to repress them." The government also banned a "Private Enterprise Day" in Managua sponsored by COSEP, the leading business association...
...plan to go on as before," said Erik Ramirez, president of the Social Christian Party. Echoing that feeling was Luis Rivas Leiva, secretary- general of the Social Democratic Party. Said he: "We are always evading restrictions. We have to use our imagination to evade these limits." Rivas discounts Ortega's claims that opposition activities are coordinated. Ortega may have dropped a lid on domestic unrest, but the move is not likely to help his attempts to win respect for the government abroad. This week he was to address the U.N. in Manhattan and possibly accept some invitations to speak around...
...what the House looked like the morning Daniel Ortega went to Moscow. Lying around on the benches, someone looked at a paper, and staggered to his feet...