Caribbean & Central America - June 2015 (ISSN 1741-4458)

Last month international human rights organisations like the International Federation for Human-Rights expressed concern about the expulsion of two representatives of the US-based NGO, Center for Justice and International Law (Cejil), who were visiting Nicaragua at the invitation of a local human rights group, Centro Nicaragüense de Derechos Humanos (Cenidh). The expulsion of the two foreign nationals - Luis Carlos Buob, a Peruvian-Swiss lawyer and his Spanish colleague, Marta González –was linked to their efforts to denounce human rights violationS relating to the ‘Gran Canal’ project - the US$50bn build-operate contract for which the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN) government led by President Daniel Ortega awarded in 2013 to Hong Kong Nicaragua Canal Development Company (HKND).

According to a Cejil press release, Buob was refused entry to Nicaragua after initially being accused of drug trafficking, after which Nicaraguan authorities reportedly said that “Nicaragua had the sovereignty to decide who entered the country”. González was initially allowed entry but was subsequently detained after it was revealed that she was travelling with Buob. A Cenidh statement described the deportation of the two as “arbitrary and illegal” and said that both had been subject to “hostile treatment, theft, violence, and unjustified denial of entry”. The local human rights NGO said that Buob had been thrown to the floor and handcuffed, and that both his and González’s mobile phones had been forcibly taken from them.

In an 18 May press release by Freedom House, a US independent watchdog organization, Carlos Ponce, the director for Latin American programs, said that the deportation of the two was evidence of how the Nicaraguan government was “increasingly harassing journalists and human rights defenders because of their work on behalf of populations affected by the proposed new canal connecting the Caribbean with the Pacific Ocean”. Cenidh has also suggested that the deportation of Buob was a reprisal for his recent criticism of the Nicaraguan government’s handling of the Canal project. In March Buob had been the Cejil representative at a hearing at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) in Washington D.C., during which Cenidh and other Nicaraguan organisations denounced the land expropriations carried out by the FSLN government and the repression of the ensuing protests [WR-15-14].

Meanwhile in its annual report on human rights in Nicaragua, published on 29 May, Cenidh registered a 10% increase in the number of reported human rights violations in 2014 compared to the previous year, identifying the ‘Gran Canal’ project as one of the main factors contributing to this increase. Cenidh also criticised the government’s aggressive response to the protests against the Canal, triggered, according to the NGO, by “the threat…of being stripped of their land and forcibly evicted”. In particular it noted the abuses committed by the police in December 2014 against those who participated in marches held in El Tule and Rivas [RC-15-01], calling them the “consequences of the police’s institutional weakness”. According to the Cenidh report, the police as an institution received the highest number of complaints regarding human rights violations (47.49%) – or 749 of 1577 cases.

• Renewable energy

Renewable energy is another area attracting investment. The Eclac report on foreign direct investment (FDI) points out that until now, “Nicaragua has received less FDI in renewable energy generation than other Central American nations, though the US-based Viaspace has invested in a 12 MW biomass power plant”. Last year the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN) government announced that it aims to have 90% of its electricity generated by renewable sources, particularly wind and hydroelectric power. The Eclac report notes that “the construction by a Brazilian conglomerate of the 253MW Tumarín dam is getting underway, but with ownership of the project shared between the State-owned electricity companies and foreign investors.”