Right-wing coup or popular revolt?

The April 2018 Nicaraguan uprising examined

Dick Nichols1

Completed: October 29, 2018

1
European correspondent of Green Left Weekly and Links, International Journal of Socialist Renewal. Article
written in a personal capacity. Grateful thanks go to Jamie Doughney for his useful comments and editing.
Criticism, correction of errors and questions are welcome and should be sent to dicknichols@greenleft.org.au.

1
Part 1: Introduction
This document investigates the causes of the student protests that broke out on April 18 against
the Nicaraguan government’s decree changing the regulations governing the country’s Institute
for Social Security (INSS). The subsequent conflict has to date claimed at least 269 lives2.

The research focuses on the period from April 18 to April 30 because what actually happened in
these first days of the conflict is key to reaching a conclusion about which of two opposing
accounts of its cause is most believable.

The first account is that of the Nicaraguan government. This is that the events amounted to an
attempt at a right-wing coup against a democratically elected administration3, a coup successfully
defeated with the minimum possible use of force. The INSS changes were merely a pretext for
launching the coup attempt.

For the opposition, by contrast, the events amounted to a revolt against a regime that suppressed
protest with violence: police and paramilitary forces using military-grade weaponry were
deployed to crush peaceful demonstrations that in reaction to state repression escalated into a
popular uprising for justice and democracy.

In this document this difference is called the "core issue in dispute", so as to distinguish it
clearly from the many other questions on which there are conflicting points of view between the
Nicaraguan government, the opposition and the human rights organisations that have investigated
the events. These events include atrocities and attacks on property that have been broadcast on
the mainstream media and the social networks. They have been used as evidence by both sides of
the conflict and by their supporters, nationally and internationally.

It is imperative to determine the causes of these events, which followed upon the clashes of late
April, but this document does not consider them. That is because the most important issue of all
is how the conflict, which has produced so much pain, suffering and loss, actually started. Who
bears the ultimate responsibility?

The method of research used is to present and investigate the Nicaraguan government’s version
of events as completely as possible, making use of its own documents, which criticise the
methods and findings of Nicaraguan and international human rights organisations, as well as the
media interviews given by President Daniel Ortega between July 23 and September 34.

In addition, an Annex comments on the work Monopolising death: Or how to frame a

government by inflating a list of the dead, a critique by Enrique Hendrix of three human rights'
agencies accounting of deaths in the conflict.

2
Figure of the Truth, Justice and Peace Commission of the National Assembly up to August 15. Other Nicaraguan
and international human rights commissions all give higher figures.
3
In November 2016, the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) won 72.44% of the vote in the presidential
elections and 66.46% of the vote in the legislative elections.
4
President Ortega has since given interviews to Deutsche Welle (September 7) and France 24 (September 10).
These are not considered.

2
Any position expressed here is open to being changed in the light of an authoritative on-the-
ground investigation of events, such as the investigation of the Interdisciplinary Group of
Independent Experts (GIEI in its Spanish initials) into the September 2014 murder of the 43
Mexican high school students. On June 15, the Nicaraguan government, as part of the National
Dialogue with the opposition forces organised in the Civic Alliance5, invited the Inter-American
Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) to send such a GIEI to Nicaragua. It also accepted the
presence in Nicaragua of an IAHCR Special Monitoring Mechanism on Nicaragua (MESEMI).

The acceptance by President Ortega and Vice-President Rosario Murillo of investigation and
monitoring by international human rights agencies was one of the the Nicaraguan bishops’ four
preconditions for mediating the National Dialogue between the government and the students and
other opposition forces. Both these bodies are now operating, but said on August 15 that they
were experiencing lack of co-operation from the Nicaraguan authorities.

In addition, on August 31 the Nicaraguan government ended the mission of the United Nations
High Commission on Human Rights (OHCHR) delegation in Nicaragua after the release of its
report critising the action of the Nicaraguan state in the face of the protests.

The rest of this document is structured as follows. Part 2 reviews the main events in the conflict
from April 18 to April 30. Part 3 presents the viewpoint of the Nicaraguan government on these
events. Part 4 assesses the evidence as to the validity of the Nicaraguan government viewpoint.
Part 5 draws conclusions. Part 6 makes some concluding remarks. As noted, the Annex
comments on Monopolising death: Or how to frame a government by inflating a list of the dead
(see link above). The Sources list the main works consulted. The sources of audiovisual and some
documentary material consulted is provided via the links in the text. Translations from Spanish
are by the author. English language sources are marked [in English] in the text.

Note: When the first draft of this document was written, there was no charge for the digital
edition of La Prensa, to which there are links throughout the text. Since then, unfortunately, La
Prensa’s digital edition has become subscriber only, with the lowest cost being $US10 a month.
Lack of time does not allow these links to be replaced with others, for which apologies are made
to readers.

5
The Civic Alliance for Justice and Democracy is the coalition of organisations, centred on the organisations of
the university students who initiated the April protests, that was established to represent opposition forces in the
National Dialogue.

3
Part 2: Events in the conflict
2.1 The initial demonstrations (April 18)

The source of the initial demonstration in the cycle of protest that began on April 18 was the
April 16 decision of the Nicaraguan government, taken after the breakdown of negotiations with
the Higher Council of Private Enterprise in Nicaragua (COSEP), to increase the quotas paid by
workers and employers to the Nicaraguan Institute of Social Security (INSS), manager of welfare
payments in the country.

The main measures adopted, as published in the official government Gazeta on April 18, were:

The employers’ contribution would immediately rise from 19% to 21% of the wage bill,
reaching 22.5% in 2021;

Workers’ contributions would increase from 6.25% to 7% of their after-tax earnings and
the income ceiling beyond which contributions do not increase would be removed, with
all income levels paying 7%;

Those workers using the INSS for health, hospital, disability and funeral insurance
(usually lower paid and casual workers) would have to increase their contribution by 4%
of their earnings (from 10% to 14% in the case of one scheme and from 18.25% to
22.25% in the case of the other); and

All payouts from the fund would be taxed at a 5% rate in order to fund sickness and
maternity benefits.

The announcement of the reform, which meant that costs to business would increase and workers
would be paying more for a smaller pension on retirement, provoked anger, rejection and anxiety.
This was exacerbated by the perception that the administration of the INSS has been opaque and
costly (0.9 % of GDP by 20166) and its funds used to provide loans to developers on terms more
favourable than those of private banks.

The government had declined to implement the IMF’s preferred option for meeting the INSS’s
widening deficit (lifting the retirement age of 60 and increasing the number of compulsory
minimum weekly contribution payments above 750) and was also asking business to meet the
greatest part of the cost of the reform. However, this did not dampen the discontent. The support
given the reform by the main trade union organisations, the Sandinista Workers Federation
(CST), the National Workers Front (FNT) and the National Union of Employees (UNE), and
government efforts to explain the reform (as in this interview with National Assembly speaker
Gustavo Porras), also failed to calm concern.

The decision marked a turning moment in Nicaraguan political life. It was first major decision
since Daniel Ortega was first elected president in November 2006 that had not been reached
through consensus with the big business umbrella COSEP. It was the first Ortega government

6
Source: International Monetary Fund (IMF). See the IMF report on the INSS and its reform options here [in
English], p. 5.

4
decision that affected working Nicaraguans and welfare recipients as a whole and not only a
specific sector of the population, like the peasants and small farmers fighting land expropriation
due to the Trans-Oceanic Canal [in English].

COSEP opposed the reform, as did the American Chamber of Commerce of Nicaragua
(AmCham) and the Nicaraguan Council of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprise
(CONIMIPYME). COSEP had indicated through its president José Adán Aguerri that it was
prepared to bear its proper share of the burden, so long as the other "social partners" did likewise.
COSEP’s position, which reflected that of the IMF, was that the INSS reform could not be
separated from that of the tax system as a whole and decided to lodge a legal appeal against the
reform. CONIMIPYME was not involved in the negotiations.

The main inital protest, in Managua, was "self-convened" (autoconvocada) on Wednesday, April
18 via the hastags #OCUPAINSS and #SOSINSS. It was attacked by members of the Saninista
Youth (JS). On the same day, there was a march and protest outside the INSS office in León,
which JS members also attacked, and another demonstration in Managua outside a building that
had been financed by the INSS, which was also targetted by JS members. Other JS intervenions,
which also involved attacks on media covering the protests, included an incident outside the
INSS branch in Las Robles, Managua.

These attacks came after an April 16 circular from Vice-President Rosario Murillo to local
Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) and JS leaderships calling for them to organise
marches and pickets in support of the reform. The April 17 edition of the daily La Prensa cited
the circular as saying that the essence of the reform was that:
[T]he retirement age is not increased, the number of contribution weeks is not increased and the
thirteenth month of extra pay is to be maintained for retired and pensioned workers.

These three points, along with everything [INSS executive director Roberto] López explained today
should made known to all our comrades of the Councils of Sandinista Leadership [CLS, neighbourhood
organisation of the FSLN], workers, families and youth, in all the municipalities of the country.
Tomorrow afternoon [April 17], we shall carry out marches and/or pickets in support.

As well as the JS attacks on April 18, the police riot squad (antimotines) blocked the protest
which had begun in the afternoon. The JS also attacked protesters in the Central American
University (UCA). The events of April 18 were summarised by an El Confidencial7 article and
the video it contains8.

In its reply9 to the draft IACHR report on its May 17-21 visit to Nicaragua (Gross Human Rights
Violations in the Context of Social Protests in Nicaragua10), the Nicaraguan state makes no

7
El Confidencial is edited by Carlos Fernando Chamorro, former editor of the FSLN daily Barricada (1971-
1998) but now an opponent of the Ortega-Murillo government.
8
More detail can be found in this interview with Patricia Orozco, women’s rights defender and director of
multimedia space Onda Local, and Ana Quirós, of the Women’s Network Against Violence, who says she was
attacked on the day by JS members supported by a group of older men.
9
Observaciones del Estado de Nicaragua Respecto del Proyecto de Informe de da Comisión Interamericana
de Derechos Humanos Denominado "Derechos Humanos en el Marco de las Protestas Sociales en
Nicaragua” con Fecha de 18 de Junio 2018. ("Observations of the State of Nicaragua With Regard to the

5
reference to the activity of JS on April 18. In some interviews given by President Ortega in July-
September, the action of the JS on that day is mentioned, but minimised (see Part 3).

The Nicaraguan state’s comments on the IACHR draft report (henceforward called
"Observations") explained police operations on April 18 as an operation to counter "severe
disturbances of public order, destruction of property and the hampering of the free movement of
people, vehicles and property". («Observations», p. 18)

2.2 Protests spread—the first wave of fatalities (April 19-30)

On April 19, the protest movement, angered by the repressive response of the authorites on April
18, extended further to cover the departments11 of León, Managua, Granada, Boaco, Carazo,
Estelí and Rivas. National Police attempts to suppress the protests also escalated. The main
events were:

The National Police riot squad, using rubber bullets and tear gas, prevented students
concentrated in the National Agrarian University Number One (UNA) from leaving the
campus to hold a protest

Students also occupied the University of Central America (UCA), National Engineering
University (UNI) and Polytechnic University (UPOLI), holding short demonstrations
outside these campuses

At the Managua campus of the National Autonomous University of Nicaragua (UNAN),

leaders of the National Union of University Students (UNEN) opposed the occupations,
supported the INSS reforms and called for an end to protest actions

In Monimbó, the indigenous barrio of Masaya and Sandinista stronghold in the 1979
revolution, the local population threw up a barricade and successfully defended it against
the police

At night fall a cacerolazo was heard in various suburbs of Managua

There were attacks in Masaya on a mobile clinic, the FSLN headquarters and the house of
a cultural promoter associated with the FSLN

The pro-government TN8 reported that journalists from the also pro-government Channel
4 were attacked

Lead presenters on pro-government Channel 2, Dino Andino and Arnuldo Peralta,

resigned in protest against attacks on media workers

The Nicaraguan Telecommunications and Postal Institute (TELCOR), the

telecommunications regulator, cut the live broadcasts of the protests by Channel 12,

Draft Report of the Interamerican Commission of Human Rights entitled ‘Human Rights in the Framework
of the Social Protests in Nicaragua’, dated June 18, 2018. Not available in English. Available here.
10
Available here.
11
Nicaragua is divided into 15 departments and two autonomous regions.

6
 Channel 23, Channel 51 and 100% News. Broadcasting of the first three channels was
restored after several hours, but 100% News was kept off air until April 25.

Vice-president Rosario Murillo described the protesters as "tiny, toxic groups" bent on
destabilising the country.

The first three fatalities12 of the conflict were registered: two were in the area surrounding
UPOLI, and one of them was a policeman.

During these protests13, it emerged that, in their attempts to suppress demonstrations, the police
were prepared to go beyond the use of rubber bullets, stun grenades and tear gas and to resort to
live ammunition.

On April 20, the protests grew bigger in Managua and León and also intensified in other centres
such as Masaya, Granada and Estelí, with the first burnings of buildings taking place, such as of
the University Centre of the National University (CUUN) in León. The government also
denounced attacks on the headquarters of the INSS and Ministry of Youth in Managua, the Public
Library of Nueva Guinea, the FSLN headquarters in Masaya and the pro-government radio
station Nueva Radio Ya. In Managua, metal "trees of life" erected in 2013 were brought down by
protesters who regarded them as symbols of the Ortega-Murillo administration. In the evening,
Radio Dario in León was set on fire while workers were inside broadcasting. Two of the attackers
suffered lethal burns from the explosion they had set off. The big business umbrella COSEP
called for an end to the repression of protest, dialogue between the protesters and government and
announced a demonstration against the violence for April 23 in Managua. Rosario Murillo
announced that the government would set up a roundtable for dialogue over the INSS reforms. In
Managua and León, students took refuge from the shooting in the cities' cathedrals and called for
citizens to bring them food, water and medical supplies. On the day there were at least 20
fatalities14 across the country, the overwhelming majority from gun shots.

Heavy clashes continued overnight and on the following day, April 21, the FSLN headquarters
and the town hall of Diriamba (Carazo department) were ransacked and burned down, while shots
were fired at the church of Jinotepe. There were reports that of National Police being detained for
refusing to take part in the repression of the protests. President Ortega’s first speech after April
18 called for peace but made no mention of those who had died in the conflict. There were at
least 12 fatalities on the day15, including a policewoman and journalist Ángel Gahona, killed
while covering a protest in the Atlantic coast town of Bluefields.16

12
This is the IACHR figure for fatalities on April 19. The figure of the Nicaraguan Association for Human Rights
(ANPDH) is four, while that of the CVJP is also four (three in Managua and one in Estelí).
13
See summary here and here and graphics here.
14
This is the IACHR and CVJP figure for fatalities on April 20. The figure of the ANPDH is 24.
15
This is the IACHR figure for fatalities on April 21. The CVJP figure is 16 and that of the ANPDH is 13.
16
On August 27 a Managua court judge sentenced two young men, Brandon Lovo and Glen Slate, to 25 years and
20 years jail respectively for the crime. Gahona’s partner, fellow journalist Migueliuth Sandoval, believes that
the anti-riot squad (antimotines) of the National Police were guilty of Gahona’s murder. See her comment on the
sentence here.

7
 On April 22, early in the morning, around 30 supermarkets in Managua, 16 belonging to the
WalMart chain, were looted. The Ortega administration attributed the looting to the protest
movement operating in league with criminal gangs (pandillas). Pro-government media reported
that gangs were threatening residential neighbourhoods. The anti-government media reported
that, in some neighbourhoods, locals stopped the looting or at least protested against it and also
reported that the police stood by while it was taking place. They accused the government of
organising the operation in order to discredit the protest movement, making use of the JS. On the
same day President Ortega announced the withdrawal of the INSS reforms. The education
ministry decreed the suspension of all classes at all three levels of education for April 23. The
web sites of anti-government media Confidencial and La Prensa suffered cyber attacks. Students
occupying UPOLI re-affirmed their support for peaceful protest and their rejection of any attempt
at infiltration by violent elements. There were at least eight fatalities on April 2217, the
overwhelming majority resulting from gun shots. Two of these resulted from an attack on the
UPOLI.

On April 23, during the Managua march demanding an end to violence, COSEP president José
Adán Aguerri called for the students to be included in any national dialogue. The original route of
the march planned by COSEP was changed on the insistence of the students so that it ended at
UPOLI. Other marches took place in Rivas, Diriamba, San Marcos, Jinotepe, Estelí, Chinandega,
Matagalpa and Siuna. The National Police began releasing people detained since April 18, some
of whom claimed that they were tortured while in custody. By this date, six TV presenters and
journalists on pro-government channels had resigned. There were at least two fatalities18, both
due to gun shots.

On April 24, protests including roadblocks extended to municipalities in rural regions like Nueva
Guinea. The Council in Defence of the Land, representing peasants and others opposed to the
Trans-Oceanic canal project, expressed its support for the student protests, called for dialogue
between government and opposition and proposed a general strike to force such a dialogue. The
National Assembly unanimously approved a resolution supporting national dialogue. There was
at least one fatality19.

On April 25, the April 19 University Student Movement (MU19A) was created. At its first media
conference the following demands were presented:
The immediate return of the National Police to its real function, serving the people;
The immediate release of students, journalists, doctors and all people supporting the protests;
The quashing of all charges brought by police against members of civil society;
Legal proceedings to begin immediately against those involved in the death of more than 30 citizens;
and
An end to police persecution of students and citizens.

17
This is the CVJP figure for fatalities on April 22. The figure of the ANPDH is 12 and that of the IACHR is
21.
18
This is the IACHR figure for fatalities on April 23. The ANPDH figure is three and that of the CVJP is four.
19
This the ANPDH and CVJP figure for fatalities on April 24. The IACHR figure is three.

8
The students also demanded the resignation of police chiefs Aminta Granera and Francisco Díaz
and a guarantee of no reprisals. They also agreed to take part in the National Dialogue to be
mediated by the Episcopal Conference of Nicaraguan bishops. Human rights monitoring agencies
reported no fatalities or one20.
On April 26, the deputy prosecutor-general announced an official inquiry into the events of the
previous week. There were no reports of fatalities.
On April 27, National Police chief superintendent Aminta Granera [in English] was reported to
have resigned her position21, leaving Francisco Díaz, the father-in-law of president Ortega’s son
Maurice, as replacement. There were no reports of fatalities.

On the weekend of April 28-29, the National Assembly FSLN majority voted to create a Truth,
Justice and Peace Commission (CVJP), with a three month deadline to bring down its findings on
the events that began on April 18. The Episcopal Conference gave president Ortega a month to
convene the National Dialogue. Thousand of peasants and small farmers converged on Managua
in a pilgrimage called by the Catholic church to pray for the victims of the violence. The CVJP
recorded no fatalities for the weekend, while the ANPDH recorded two and the IACHR one.

On April 30, Daniel Ortega called for a minute’s silence in memory of the dead at the annual
commemoration of May Day and of the death in 2012 of FSLN comandante Tomás Borge. The
ANPDH registered one fatality for the day, while the IACHR and CVJP registered none.

20
The ANPDH and IACHR report one fatality for April 25, while the CVJP reports none.
21
Granera formally resigned on August 25.

9
Part 3: The Nicaraguan government viewpoint
In this third part of the document the Nicaraguan government viewpoint on these developments—
that they represented a "soft coup" organised by the Nicaraguan right wing with US agency
support—is outlined in relation to the key issues involved. It is presented in four sections that
cover: the April events themselves; the immediate sources of these events; the identity and role of
irregular armed groups ("paramilitaries" or "parapolice") active in the conflict; and the
background necessary to understand the events.

Issues raised by the Nicaraguan government viewpoint are listed at the end of each section.

3.1 The Nicaraguan government version of the events

No lives were lost in the clashes on April 18. How then did the rapidly rising death toll start from
April 19?

In its "Observations" the Nicaraguan state ascribed the root cause to a fake news report. This
claim was repeated in its August 24 reply22 to the report of the Office of the United Nations High
Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR)23 and by president Ortega in his September 3
interview with the Spanish news agency EFE24. The «Observations» document stated:
[O]n April 18 there were social protests which resulted in no deaths. However, the media, manipulating
the news, broadcast a false story about the death of a university student at the Central American
University, something which never happened, a story that served as trigger of the events that took place
starting from April 19. Groups unconnected with social demands but interested in the the destabilisation
and breakdown of the country’s constitutional order unleashed a coup attempt that evolved into havoc,
arson, looting and rioting.

The State of Nicaragua expresses its categorical position that the events analysed by the IACHR are not
taking place in the framework of social protest but rather in that of an attempt at institutional and
constitutional breakdown so as to remove the legitimately elected authorities and overthrow the
government (that is, a Coup d’Etat).

Starting from this fake news the preconceived plan of political coup with the participation of gang
members [pandilleros] began to be unfolded, with the result that on April 19 there were three deaths, one
of whom was a policeman who died as the result of a gun shot while he was re-establishing public order
and freedom of movement in the surrounds of the UPOLI. This criminal pattern was simultaneously
reproduced in some of the main cities of the country, revealing the existence of prior planning and
organisation. (p. 6)

In his July 23 Fox News interview President Ortega stated that the violence was due to "armed
attacks on the part of paramilitaries that were launched against the institutions of the state, against
the police, and against Sandinista families". In a July 24 Telesur interview with Patricia
Villegas25 [dubbed in English], Ortega repeated this picture, claimed the police were only
22
"Considerations of State of Nicaragua on the So-Called Report Human Rights Violations and Abuses in the
Context of Protests in Nicaragua, 18 April-18 August 2018". See here.
23
Human Rights Violations and Abuses in the Context of the Protests in Nicaragua, 18 April-18 August 2018.
24
See p. 38 of transcript.
25
The Spanish text of the interview is available here.

10
maintaining public order and attributed the aggression that sparked the wave of violence and
deaths to armed right-wing groups:
Those who appeared [on April 18] were not the retirees, not the people on social security, not the people
in the fund—those didn’t protest, those agreed with the bill [changing INSS arrangements]. Those who
came out to protest were the right-wing political groups that have not recognised the government, those
who called for abstention at every election, the NGOs, the parties of the right.
They turned out to protest, there were a few incidents with the lads from the Sandinista Youth, the most
it came to was some stone-throwing that cut open the head of one of these NGO leaders. And it finished,
because the police turned up to stop the row, and the police acted carefully, without hitting anyone, until
the situation calmed down, the groups withdrew and the night was calm.
The following night [April 19], in surprising fashion armed groups appear, attacking police stations,
attacking town halls, across the whole country, attacking headquarters of the Sandinista Front across the
whole country. That is, looking for confrontation (...) and they’re armed, they’re armed! They weren’t
going about unarmed, they were armed! So, that’s where the fights begin, there were fights,
confrontations.
The coup-making right wing in, so to speak, its military expression, attacking authorities like the police,
and attacking the local authorities where the Sandinista Front governs. Obviously, they weren’t going to
attack a town hall run by the right wing, but attacking the town halls where the Sandinista Front rules, to
try to take them over; but since they saw the attacks were coming, the comrades had also dug in in the
town halls, fighting from there, defending themselves, including against attacks with AK-47 rifles,
attacking the town halls.

In a July 25 interview with Gray Zone journalist Max Blumenthal [dubbed in English26], Ortega
said of the events of April 18:
The first incidents took place on April 18. On April 19, we realised there was an offensive under way, a
military one. These were not peaceful demonstrations. Those had taken place earlier and those peaceful
demonstrations, peaceful demonstrations of the opposition, went on calmly with no problems. But that
night of April 19, in the various departmental capitals of the country, they—armed groups—launch
simultaneous attacks.

In his July 28 CNN interview, Ortega stated that the violence had been started by right-wing
paramilitaries who had acted at night, attacking government and FSLN buildings and opening fire
on the police. They were "the first people wearing hoods [encapuchados]". In his July 30
interview with Euronews27 [dubbed in English], the Nicaraguan president said:
What we’ve had now is an attempted coup. That’s what we’ve been through, that’s what the people have
suffered. And I want to clarify that for the audience of Euronews, because I read the Euronews headlines
about Nicaragua, and they say: "After 90 or 100 days, already 300 dead" No!

In his August 6 RT en Español interview, Ortega said:

And when we presented the bill, protest started again, first normal protest, I would say, shouts, some
stone-throwing between protesters; then the police arrive, calm things down and, the following night
[April 19], armed groups start to appear to attack police stations, to attack town halls, to attack
Sandinista Front headquarters, that is, there’s a whole wave of armed attacks that begin to cause deaths
in the country.
26
Ortega’s original answers can be heard in this recording of the interview which translates Blumenthal’s questions
into Spanish. Translation is from the original Spanish transcript.
27
See here for transcript.

11
In his September 3 interview with EFE28 the Nicaraguan president stated:
Then, when the decree is passed, some protests start, there were some incidents, there was no death at
that point, although they later invented the story that a student had died. I saw these protests taking place
on the television, because they were broadcasting protests from one side and from the other side, and
there were no arms there, at that moment there were no weapons, neither on the one side nor the other.

The weapons came out during the night of the following day, and they combined what were marches
without weapons during the day, and during the night they came out in armed groups to attack town
halls, to attack headquarters of the Front, to attack hospitals, to attack everything that is a state
institution, trying to destroy them, trying to burn them down, and to kill Sandinistas. That’s when the
skirmishes began, the confrontations began, the deaths began. (pp. 38-40 of transcript)

In its Informe Preliminar ("Preliminary Report") the CVJP reached these preliminary conclusions
as to the events of April 18-30:
1. The present socio-political crisis used as its trigger the ministerial decree on reform of contributions to
the INSS. Although preliminary steps were taken to initiate protest movements in the framework of the
fire in the Indio Maíz Nature Reserve, the attack on the demonstrators in the mobilisation of April 18 by
young people sympathetic to the government inflamed emotions between both groups, multiplying the
protests across the whole country despite the fact that three days after they began the goverment repealed
the reforms that originated the conflict.

2. Initial demands vindicating repeal were replaced by others of a more markedly political character,
changing as well the character of peaceful marches to territorial protests focussed on the main access
roads to and centres of cities, escalating to unacceptable levels of intolerance, including calling for civil
disobedience, violating the basic human rights of the population in terms of life, health, education,
freedom of movement, citizen safety, food, production and work, among other questions.

The CVJP’s preliminary conclusions do not describe the events beginning on April 18 as a coup.

3.1.1 Issues raised by the government’s account

a) Was there a false news report of a death on April 18?

b) Did any attacks on protesters take place during the day of April 19?
c) Did the National Police use only non-lethal methods of crowd control against
protesters on April 18 and April 19?
d) What evidence is there that the spread of protests to cities across Nicaragua was pre-
planned?
e) Were weapons used by protesters on April 19?
f) What was the extent of attacks on government and FSLN property on the night of
April 19?

3.2 The Nicaraguan government account of the sources of the events

How did this alleged coup attempt arise? How and by whom was it organised?

28
See n. 15 above.

12
In his Telesur interview, President Ortega agreed with the suggestion of interviewer Patricia
Villegas that "this was a re-edition of the [contra] war of the 1980s". The protests represented the
implementation of a plan that the most intransigent sectors of the Nicaraguan right—those who
had never accepted the FSLN victory in the November 2006 elections—had prepared with the
backing of US congresspeople based in Florida: "They could not understand that the Front has
got back into government (...) they could not accept it."

According to the Nicaraguan president, although a large sector of the business class collaborated
in the consensus economic policy of the new Front government, its most contra sections mounted
a campaign to cut US investment in Nicaragua. This lobbying campaign within the US
culminated in the 2016 Nica Act opposing "loans at international financial institutions for the
Government of Nicaragua unless the Government of Nicaragua is taking effective steps to hold
free, fair, and transparent elections, and for other purposes29."

For Ortega:
The Nica Act put the poison there; the interventionism of the US in Nicaragua put the poison there.
That’s the root of the problem (...)

It divided the businesspeople: with some businesspeople supporting the Nica Act and taking steps to
help the passing of the Nica Act. Other businesspeople didn’t agree with the Nica Act legislation,
because they understood it would cause devastating damage to the whole county, it wasn’t about
damaging the government, but the whole national economy.

So that’s where the fracture began, the fracture that now divided the employer bloc over the
understanding it had with the government, which was strictly an undertanding of a commercial-
economic order, it wasn’t political: politically, ideologically, they obviously didn’t fit in. Every time
they could, they took a stand, and they always focussed on aspects of the political-institutional order in
their criticism of the government of Nicaragua.

According to Ortega in his RT interview, the Magnitsky Act30 was also used to divide business:
They threatened to put on this list they call Magnitsky, the Russian’s list, they threatened to put on the
list not only Sandinistas, but also businesspeople for being aligned with the Sandinistas ... This was an

29
The summary in the US House of Representatives bulletin reads:
"Nicaraguan Investment Conditionality Act (NICA) of 2017. This bill directs the President to instruct the U.S.
Executive Director at each international financial institution to use U.S. influence to oppose any loan for the
government of Nicaragua's benefit, other than for basic human needs or to promote democracy, unless the
Department of State certifies that Nicaragua is taking effective steps to:
hold free elections overseen by credible domestic and international electoral observers;
promote democracy and an independent judicial system and electoral council;
strengthen the rule of law;
respect the right to freedom of association and expression;
combat corruption, including investigating and prosecuting government officials credibly alleged
to be corrupt; and
protect the right of political opposition parties, journalists, trade unionists, human rights defenders,
and other civil society activists to operate without interference."
30
See here for detail on the Magnitsky Act.

13
 element that created, let’s say, favourable conditions for this coup attempt, because the alliance [with
business] was being affected.

From that point a coup plan was developed—the only element missing was a favourable political
context for launching it. The first opportunity came with the fire in the Indio Maiz Reserve in late
March-early April.
When the Indio Maíz business began we were seriously worried, because they started to mobilise public
opinion on the social networks on a theme that is, obviously, very sensitive–nature, the environment–and
blaming the government for the fire! They immediately lay hold of it, since this conspiracy has
international networks and international expressions, and so then this version immediately appears on a
global level and protest emerges condeming the Government of Nicaragua for allowing the Indio Maíz
Reserve to burn. (...)

North American experts, sent by the Government of the United States itself, came here, experts in forest
fires (...) and when they understood the situation here they told us that it would last for a long time, that
it was going to last for months. I said then that this was getting complicated for us, because the
conditions were there for developing this plan, given that they had been stockpiling more arms than they
had, those with which they had been committing crimes in the countryside and some rural areas and
locations.

This possible coup attempt was forestalled by the arrival of rain:

It turns out that the region where the Indio Maíz Reserve is is one where the rainfall level is very high
and while there was a period when it didn’t rain, suddenly it began to "bucket down", as the saying goes,
and the fire was put out. So Indio Maíz fell through for them.

The reforms to the INSS were the next opportunity for the coup plotters. At one point in his
Telesur interview Ortega partially attributed the opportunity to the anger of the businesspeople
with their share of the burden of the INSS reform:
The other problem is that, when you increase the burden on businessman by a few percentage points
extra, it causes discomfort. They didn’t want to have the 3.5 percentage points applied that was being
applied to them under that reform, which was being applied to them two points this year, one point in
2019, half a point the following year. It was a gradual reform.

And although, according to Ortega, "everyone understood the need for the reform: the
businesspeople had to do their bit, government its bit and the workers their bit", business’s
rejection of the reform was the signal to relaunch the conspiracy to overthrow the government:
They then reacted, even though they knew the reform was necessary and they themselves had talked to
the [international] organisations31, that they themselves had said the reform was necessary. But when the
reform arrives, then they launch themselves against the reform, and this was, let’s say, like the signal to
reactivate a plan that was already in motion and that had, this plan, regained strength weeks before when
the Indio Maíz Reserve was burning. At that point they now get the plan moving seriously, given all the
resources that the United States, US organisations, had been supplying them, preparing people, preparing
cadres.

31
Chiefly the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

14
A key role in organising the coup attempt was played by the social networks. In his CNN
interview Ortega commented:
Here war through the networks came into play, a war we didn’t know about and which we have been
experiencing up until now, and which was organised through the agencies of the United States, preparing
people for this sort of war, because, well, because we’ve always been in the sights of the United States
(...)

In his interview with RT en Español the Nicaraguan president said of the "global networks" that
"they are always against processes that have a revolutionary, progressive, pro-independence
character32..The shock troops to carry out the plan were the pandilleros who have always been
present in Nicaragua’s poorest neighbourhoods. In his Telesur interview with Patricia Villegas
Ortega said:
Now, as far as the younger of these young people goes, there are some that are undeniably students, but
others who aren’t students, these are the gangs of impoverished people, who have been here in
Nicaragua and with whom we’ve been working so that they start giving up on violence and start
engaging in family, work and study (...)

That is, there have always been gangs in Nicaragua and for the last 11 years work was done with the
gangs. I remember as well, at a police public meeting just after we came into government, how the
police were doing work with the gangs, so that the gangs would give up their home-made weapons, and
in exchange they were given sporting gear, they were given materials for study, that is, they were given
things so that they could change their attitude.

That is, the home-made weapon was already a reality in Nicaragua, even if the gang hadn’t taken on the
character of a mara33; it was a gang that held out despite the presence of the police (...)

Villegas: And all this surfaced in the midst of this situation?

Ortega: These gangs were then called up as a shock force: that is, they called them up, they paid them.
Villegas: With payment?
Ortega: With payment. In all the municipalities of the country, they paid them so as to call them up.34

Who organised this work? Asked by Euronews interviewer Óscar Valero to name the ringleaders,
Ortega replied:
Look, if we were to move to detain the ringleaders, I can just imagine the reaction there would be! If to
what we’ve done, who we’ve been capturing–detaining those that are directly, materially taking part in
terrorist actions–[we added] those who are organising and overseeing these terrorist actions, well, here
32
In March 2018, the government proposed to establish controls on social networks.
33
«A mara (or marabunta) is a form of gang originating in the United States, which spread to Central American
countries such as El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala.Maras activities range from arms trafficking, assault,
auto theft, burglaries, drug trafficking, extortion, human trafficking, identity fraud, identity theft, illegal
gambling, illegal immigration, kidnapping, money laundering, people smuggling, prostitution, racketeering,
robbery and vandalism. Almost all maras display tattoos on their bodies as a sign of their affiliation to their gang.
"La vida por las maras" or "the life for the gang" is a very commonly used phrase by these gangs.» (Wikipedia)
34
The "Observations" of the Nicaraguan state on the June 21 IACHR report say that "organised crime and drug-
trafficking finance these criminal groups who, hooded, operate and move on motorbikes and vehicles with fire-
arms, mortars and blunt objects". It lists the names of 12 gangs operating in Managua, León, Masaya and
Granada. (p. 43)

15
 come the human rights organisations to speak on their behalf and to want to punish Nicaragua, and here
comes the US Congress with resolutions against Nicaragua.

The only specific name referred to by Ortega in the interviews given to date is Félix Maradiaga,
head of the Institute of Strategic Studies and Public Policy (IEEPP in its Spanish initials) and
secretary of the defence department in the last conservative government35. On June 5, the head of
the National Police’s Legal Support Branch, Luis Alberto Pérez Olivas, accused Maradiaga of
heading a criminal network named "Viper", operating out of UPOLI and engaged in "hiring
killers to carry out murders, trafficking in drugs, weapons and ammunition as well as media
terrorism".

In his interview with Ortega, Gray Zone’s Max Blumenthal raised the name of Maradiaga as the
main contact for the United States’ National Endowment for Democracy (NED) in Nicaragua.
Ortega commented:
Actually, it’s been more than demonstrated that these characters have been directly linked to acts of
terror, to acts of violence. This gentleman paraded there in UPOLI, with a big beard and armed men
behind; they themselves were taking the photos!

Blumenthal: Are you saying there’s a photo of Maradiaga with armed men?

Ortega: Yes, Maradiaga, there in the UPOLI, with a big beard, he let his beard grow and had an armed
man behind him36. The weapons were there! Well, he looked like a character from ISIS. Afterwards,
when the accusation came out, because he is the subject of a charge where a law case has been started,
then he rushed to cut off his beard, it was the first thing he did, cut off his beard and travelled to the
United States. Anyway, he is facing a law case, because here there has to be one law for all.

The role of the Catholic Church in the protests was taken up by Ortega in his Telesur interview:
Villegas: There are videos, widely distributed on the social networks, of churches as places where there
were even snipers, where weapons were hidden. The priests of the Nicaraguan hierarchy of the church
have been present in a very active way in these acts of violence, they have denounced the government as
an oppressive regime. What’s happening with the church? (...)

Ortega: I would echo the words of Cardenal Brenes [archbishop of Managua] this Sunday [July 22]
when he said, when he told the faithful who were there in the temple, that we have to struggle for peace,
that peace is the most important thing. (...)

I believe in the words of the cardenal when he says he’s for peace, and I know that not all the Episcopal
Conference was active in this coup attempt. No! There were cases of some priests who–either their
bishops didn’t know or their bishops tolerated it–but the fact is that some priests lent their churches so
they could be used as barracks, and that they even tortured people there that they captured at the road
blocks; they tortured them, and this was unbelievable, in the presence of a priest as well.

3.2.1 Issues raised by this account

35
Subsequently, a number of student leaders and former Sandinista leaders have been arrested and charged with
terrorism.
36
The video clip allegedly showing this can be found here. Background in this article [in English].

16
 a) What evidence is there that the protests were conceived as (the start of) a coup
attempt?
b) What evidence is there of involvement by Nicaraguan business organisations
(COSEP, AmCham etc) in organising (i) the protests against the Indio Maíz Reserve
fire and (ii) the INSS protest?
c) What evidence is there of Catholic Church involvement in organising (i) the protests
against the Indio Maíz Reserve fire and (ii) the INSS protest?
d) What evidence is there of US agency involvement in (i) the protests against the Indio
Maíz Reserve fire and (ii) the INSS protest?
e) What evidence is there of pandillas being used as shock troops in the INSS protest?
f) What evidence is there that pandilleros were paid to take part in a coup attempt?
g) Who were the masked youths who staffed the road blocks and fired home-made
mortars from behind barricades?
h) Who were the alleged leaders of the alleged coup conspiracy? Was Félix Maradiaga
one of them?

3.3 Nicaraguan government viewpoint on the identity and role of paramilitaries

In the reports of the various human rights agencies, Nicaraguan and international, a key role is
played by the actions of informal armed groups, usually masked, going under the names of
"paramilitaries" or "parapolice". Who were these people, according to the Nicaraguan
government?

In its "Observations" on the IACHR’s June 21 report, the Nicaraguan state denied that it made
use of irregular armed groups:
We repeat that in the police interventions to restore order and calm for people in the face of violent acts
committed by groups of armed and hooded delinquents in Managua, León and Chinandega only
professional police forces took part. Consequently we deny the existence of groups called parapolice,
mobs or shock troops by political and opposition sectors. (p. 26)

The National Police has not had, does not have and will not have parapolice forces (...) (p. 38)

In the July 23 interview with Fox News, President Ortega said:

These are groups that obey political organisations. Some of these have elected deputies to the National
Assembly, they are members of the Liberal Party37. Others have not participated in elections. They have
been organising these paramilitary groups for some time, trying to take advantage of every little situation
to launch attacks.

In his July 24 Telesur interview with Villegas, Ortega said that the only paramilitary groups in
Nicaragua were those that had operated against the Sandinista government since 2007,
"murdering peasants, murdering soldiers, murdering police".
These are the gangs that could be called paramilitaries in Nicaragua, because they are gangs organised
by the right wing, armed by the right wing, funded by the intelligence agencies that come, obviously,
from the organisations of the United States, and are those who started the armed attacks on April 19 (...)

37
The reference is to the formerly governing conservative Constitutionalist Liberal Party.

17
 Villegas: If I understand you well, your government has not financed or sponsored paramilitary groups.
Would that be your reply to the mass of headlines that are out there today in the entire world media?

Ortega: It’s that, if we’re going to talk about paramilitaries, the only paramilitary force there is are these
right-wing groups. (...) You’ve got armed forces, army, police that are constitutional forces and, at the
same time, underground armed forces that have become the death instrument in the right wing’s coup.

In his July 25 interview with Blumenthal, however, Ortega accepted that armed self-defence had
become necessary for Sandinista citizens because the opposition was exploiting the decline in the
street presence of the National Police to attack them.
It was now a question of defending life, because the armed coup-makers were on the hunt for
Sandinistas, looking for them in their homes, murdering them, burning down and looting their houses.
And with the police in the meantime confined to barracks, and I certainly accept that it was a measure
that above all wasn’t appropriate to the situation that was being experienced.

It was, let’s say, a measure requested by the Episcopal Conference, a point it put as a condition for
starting the [National] Dialogue, and at that moment, trusting in the Episcopal Conference that this
would reduce the attacks and crimes of the opposition’s armed groups, I accepted the police being
confined to barracks. But instead they took advantage of this to increase crimes across the country,
destroying schools, destroying health centres, setting fire to town halls, hospitals, everything, everything
that is terrorism, terrorist activities to sow terror in the population.

So it was understandable that families, Sandinista or not, that were victims of these attacks looked for
ways to defend themselves. It’s a constitutional principle, every citizen has the right to defend his or her
life when attacked, when assaulted.

When CNN interviewer Andrés Oppenheimer broached the question of paramilitaries in his July
28 interview with the Nicaraguan president, this exchange took place:
Oppenheimer: President, are you saying that the paramilitary, the parapolice are oppositionists in
disguise?

Ortega: That’s it, that’s it.

Oppenheimer: President, sorry, but this [file] is full of photographs, and the first one I find here has
paramilitaries with the flag of your party, the Sandinista Front.

Ortega: They aren’t paramilitaries.

Oppenheimer: But they’re wearing hoods!

Ortega: Haven’t you seen right-wingers wearing hoods? Haven’t you seen them hooded? Haven’t you
seen the photos of them? They were the first to wear hoods; afterwards the people, to defend themselves,
because they were murdering them, what they did was organise self-defence, and that’s not being a
paramilitary, coordinating your work in defence of life, so that they don’t burn down homes, so they
don’t burn down public buildings, as they have been burning down town halls, medical centres and all
that.

Oppenheimer: Let’s see if I understand this properly: you’re saying that the people we’re seeing in this
photo are paramilitaries?

Ortega: They are not paramilitaries! They are not paramilitaries! No!

Oppenheimer: What are they?

18
 Ortega: Citizens defending themselves.

Oppenheimer: Defending themselves with AK47s?

Ortega: And then again, I don’t know if this is a real photo, because you know these days frame-ups get
done. Maybe this photo has been concocted by the rightwingers themselves, it’s easy to insert flags of
the Sandinista Front and then present the shot as if it were of a paramilitary group. What I ask is: have
you seen photos of hooded rightwingers with weapons?

Oppenheimer: To tell the truth, no.

Ortega: Aha! Now do you see? Then something’s being hidden, because they exist.

Oppenheimer: It wouldn’t be because they don’t exist?

Ortega: They exist! Get on the networks, they themselves circulate them, and they’re still on the
networks, there’s a collection of photos there.

Oppenheimer: President, there are many cases documented by human rights groups of lots of people
who were kidnapped from their homes by these people, by these armed and hooded paramilitaries,
parapolice, let’s call them like that.

Ortega: No, here we have a Volunteer Police, that, yes, the Volunteer Police exists in law.

In the Nicaraguan president’s July 30 Euronews appearance interviewer Óscar Valero broached
the issue of paramilitary forces in this way:
Valero: There are very many examples of these paramilitaries collaborating with the security forces.
The BBC went to a Nicaraguan locality38 and spoke to these paramilitaries and without any sort of
shame they said they collaborated with the police.

Ortega: No, no, we have here what we call the Volunteer Police.

Valero: No, no, but these persons were hooded, they weren’t Volunteer Police, because the Volunteer
Police don’t go around hooded, I imagine.

Ortega: Not so, because the Volunteer Police on special operations, and the police force itself on special
operations, wear hoods. In normal times! There are countries, including right here in Latin America,
where even judges have to move about wearing hoods, so that they don’t get murdered afterwards .

The question of paramilitaries was not raised in the August 6 RT en Español interview. In the
September 3 EFE interview, however, Ortega repeated that there were no paramilitary groups
with "links to Sandinism":
The only paramilitaries that have existed in Nicaragua are these that have been forming and coming
together since 2007 and that have committed a great deal of crimes and continue to commit them. We,
obviously, have conducted this battle with the police, with the army39 (...) (p. 22)

3.3.1 Issues raised by this account

a) What evidence is there of the organisation of pro-government paramilitary forces?

38
See the BBC coverage here.
39
The actual role of the Army of Nicaragua (formerly Sandinista People’s Army), declaredly neutral in the
conflict, is an important issue that is not discussed here.

19
 b) What evidence is there of the involvement of right-wing paramilitaries on the
opposition side?
c) What weaponry was used by each side of the conflict?
d) Were the hooded groups supporting the police Volunteer Police?

3.4 The Nicaraguan government’s view of the background to the coup attempt
The Nicaraguan government’s version of events lays a lot of stress on the continuity of US
interventionist policy towards the country and the links between Nicaragua’s domestic right wing
and far-right elements in the US, in the US Congress and US administrations. Common to most
interviews given by President Ortega is the history of US interventionism in Nicaragua, from the
occupation of the country by soldier of fortune William Walker in the 19th century to the
imposition of the 40-year-long Somoza dictatorship and the 1980s contra war against the
Sandinista Revolution.

The alleged coup that began on April 18 is depicted as a continuation–in 21st century conditions
of NGOs, social networks, media warfare and "fake news"–of the same interventionist policy.
Here is a selection of quotations from president Ortega’s interviews on the subject:

July 24 Telesur interview:

Ortega: The political base is in Florida, it’s in Miami; that’s where the political base is: that is, that’s
where the congresspeople, the senators are who feel that it’s a political duty of theirs to put an end to
Sandinism. And since they couldn’t put an end to Sandinism in the 1980s war, and Sandinism survived
despite leaving government, kept struggling, rewon government, then these are the people doing this job
and it’s a job that obsesses them, and we see clearly how these congresspeople, these senators, clearly
target Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua. They are the three countries they most target.

Villegas: They are the three "jewels in the crown" at the moment, to put it a certain way.

Ortega: They are targeting, they are targeting. So then, initiatives of all sorts start from here, such as
looking for financing for these groups, organising financing, via the government of the United States.

Villegas: There’s $31 million in USAID, at least declared, for Nicaragua.

Ortega: That’s how it is. So they look for financing for what the US government supports, and at the
same time they pull in financing via other channels, so that these people can carry out their conspiratorial
plans.

July 25 Gray Zone interview:

Blumenthal: Did you have warnings about this [the alleged coup attempt]?

Ortega: No, it was a conspiracy, well worked out. Of course, we knew the background to this situation,
those who wanted to get Nicaragua into a war. When we got back into government in 2007, they began
to form these armed groups. Many of them were linked to drug-trafficking though networks in Costa
Rica and Miami and with links to the US intelligence services and so on, and with financing--we knew
that existed. From that moment a campaign began, trying to establish that there was an armed opposition
to the Sandinista dictatorship, from 2007. You have only to look back at the right-wing newspapers to
see how they were featured—the photos are there—presenting themselves as patriots, and they

20
 murdering peasants, murdering Sandinistas, murdering local officials and also attacking police stations
and killing police.

July 28 CNN interview:

Oppenheimer: But, president, you are painting a picture that’s—I don’t want to say surreal because
it’s not appropriate—but unheard of, because 21 Latin American governments, including left-wing
governments, such as Ecuador’s and Uruguay’s, have condemned your government for all these
incidents. So what are they? Stupid? Deceived? In the pay of the CIA? Twenty-one governments of
the Organisation of American States demanded that your government stop these practices40. So,
none of those governments believes this picture you’re painting for me—that they are right-wing
groups—none of those governments believes it.

Ortega: Yes, because they’re letting themselves be swayed by the media campaign. That is, we
have a powerful media war. That is to say, I don’t see the international press focussing objectively
on what is happening in Nicaragua, what’s marked out is a line, a bias.

Oppenheimer: Well, I’m giving you an opportunity to...

Ortega: Yes, I know. But the bias of the media, what I see in the communication media, is simply
to highlight the ineligibility of the government. This is a government that was working with a lot of
success, that was really an example, Nicaragua was taken as an example from 2007 until April,
regarded as a government that managed to achieve peace, stability and understanding between the
main economic powers and the workers. Suddenly it explodes. Why does it explode? Simply
because this line of wanting to destroy that process had now arrived.

That is, the extremist forces in the United States that are based in Florida don’t accept that the Front
is in government and since 2007 when we returned to government the armed, structured, groups
with bases of outreach from Florida and from Costa Rica began to murder soldiers, policeman and
when these fights took place the human rights organisations would protest that someone who died in
that fight was a "patriot".

July 30 Euronews interview (in which Ortega was asked if he had proof of US intervention in
support of the protests):
We face a powerful enemy, that intervened militarily in Nicaragua on various occasions, the United
States, and which continues to intervene in Nicaragua (...) Of course, we have the evidence. There are all
the funds that the US organisations, through USAID and other North American organisations, send to all
these people, including said publicly by them there, the piles of millions that they devote to Nicaragua,
for democracy they say, announced by them. But they are funds that are afterwards diverted to
destabilising the country, to provoking violence and producing armed acts like those that these gangs
have been committing crimes since 2007, when we returned to government.

August 6 RT en Español interview:

Ortega: There are two narratives [about events in Nicaragua], undoubtedly, but there’s a history and the
history begins with the expansionism of the United States. The century before last, the United States was
already trying to take possession of Nicaragua, through its expansionist policy the United States was
already causing wars in Nicaragua; and then, last century, there were already troops of the North
American army occupying Nicaragua, there were troops of the North American army appointing
40
The OAS meeting took place on July 18. See here for detail.

21
 presidents, murdering Sandino, installing Somoza; Somoza is the child of Yankee intervention in
Nicaragua.

And that is what the expansonist culture of the United States—that expansionist culture which is firmly
settled in Washington irrespective of who’s governing—can’t forgive us, namely that the Front
overthrew the last marine that the United States put in place to govern Nicaragua, which was Somoza.
They can’t forgive that, and that explains what’s happening today (...)

Ortega next explained the contra war with its 30,000 dead and 30,000 wounded, the post-2007
clashes in the remote rural zones and his government’s stability-creating alliance with business
("demonised in the United States").
Dominzain: And that’s how this equilibrium broke, because of pressure from the United States? Or why
did it break?

Ortega: Then, million of dollars, year after year, to sustain communications media and to also sustain
the conspiring of these groups that have operated in our country in the guise of Non-Government
Organisations. And punishing Nicaragua, that is to say, the first punishment was that they took us out of
a fund that they had in Central America to support small business, to improve the conditions of
impoverished people, that was known as the Millenium Challenge Account. Well, they withdrew us
from that fund, they sanctioned us, it was the first sanction the United States applied to us, formally
speaking.41

After commenting on the Nica and Magnitsky Acts, Ortega added:

That is, they simply began to again attack a government that has always sought good relations with
the United States; we always look for good relations with the United States, but what we’ve found
is aggression on the part of the United States. They are for subordination, i.e, slavery, and if we
don’t subordinate, don’t give in, then comes the aggression. Those, then, are the precedents, that’s
the way they’ve been organising.

September 3 EFE interview:

Fernando Garea: That is, those that protest on the street against your government, on the one hand are
financed and backed by the United States and secondly are groups linked to drug trafficking?

Ortega: Exactly. This is a continuity, or rather, there has not been any break here in the interventionist
policy of the United States against Nicaragua whenever the Sandinista Front appears.

3.4.1 Issues raised by this account

a) What evidence is there of US agency funding and support for Nicaraguan students
before April 18?
b) What evidence is there of continuous hostility by US administrations and agencies
towards the present Nicaraguan government?

41
The Venezuelan government provided the necessary funding for the unfinished fund projects. See here, here and
here.

22
Part 4: Evidence as to the validity of the arguments of the Nicaraguan
government
In this fourth part, the arguments of the Nicaraguan government are tested against the evidence
available at the time of writing (first week of September). The issues discussed are those listed at
the end of each section in Part 3, i.e. at 3.1.1, 3.2.1, 3.3.1 and 3.4.1 above.

4.1 Nicaraguan government version of events

a) Was there a false news report of a death on April 18?

The only mention of a death on April 18 that I could find was on the Twitter address #SOSINSS
used by the protesters. However, this tweet at the same address denies that there have been any
deaths and that "the rumour of a young woman knifed in the UCA is false". This exchange
confirms the falsity of the rumour and urges that it not be spread. There is also no mention of a
rumour of a death on this clip on #SOSINSS [in English] summarising the situation as of April
21. A search42 of Nicaraguan pro-government and pro-opposition print and internet media failed
to find any mention of a death or rumour of death on April 18. Therefore, there seems to have
been a report of a death which was denied by the social media covering events and was not used
to stir anger against the government.

b) Did any police attacks on protesters take place during the day of April 19?

Contrary to the claims of official Nicaraguan government sources, April 19 saw police attacks
against the students during the day with tear gas and rubber bullets. A further selection of
material in addition to that given in Part 2 can be found here, here, here and here43. The police
also stood aside while the JS were attacking student protesters.

c) Did the police use only non-lethal methods of crowd control against protesters on April 18 and
April 19?

No. In addition to the clip of police loading live ammunition shown in Part 2, here is further
evidence of the use of live ammunition on the day. Darwin Manuel Urbina (case number 1 in the
list of fatalities attached to the Annex to this analysis) was killed by a shotgun blast on the night
of April 19, believed by his mother to have been fired by the riot squad.

e) What evidence is there that the spread of protests to cities across Nicaragua was pre-planned?

42
The search was conducted via individual web sites, video material posted on the internet, Twitter accounts
#SOSINSS, #OCUPLNSS and #SOSNICARAGUA and the Reddit chain Nicaragua. Sources consulted were: La
Prensa, El Nuevo Diario, the Managua-based La Jornada, Confidencial, Bolsa de Noticias, El Observador
Económico and Trinchera de las Noticias, opposition or non-government TV channels TV Red (Channel 11),
100% Noticias (Channel 15), CDNN 23, Enlace (Channel 21), Channel 12, Telenica (Channel 8), VosTV
(Channel 14), Canal Católico (Channel 51) as well as the pro-government channels--Channel 2, Channel 4,
Channel 6, Channel 8, Channel 9, Channel 10, atv98 and Channel 13 (Viva Nicaragua).
43
These sources are, in order: Tweet by bystander Alejandra Arguello who was asked by demonstrator to film his
denunciation of JS attack on protest; tweet by Confidencial, denouncing attack on one of their photographers;
tweet by journalist Néstor Arce showing tear gas atttack on students at the National Agrarian University (UNA);
and fottage by La Prensa, showing police attacks on the National Engineering University (UNI).

23
The protests were called for any location that wanted to participate, via the hashtags #SOSINSS
and #OCUPAINSS, with local details distributed via social networks. News of the protests was
broadcast via social networks and were also covered by TV channels, until they were taken off air
in the afternoon of April 19. There is no evidence of centralised planning of protests.

See here for interviews with protesters at the time, and see this interview with two students from
the León branch of UNAN for an account of how the protests spread in León.44

d) Were weapons used by protesters on April 19?

Most likely. Special operations policeman Hilton Rafael Manzanares Alvarado (case 2) died of a
shotgun blast on the night of April 19, apparently fired from inside the UPOLI.

f) What was the extent of attacks on government and FSLN property on the night of April 19?

The only incidents that I could find for April 19 were the attacks in Masaya mentioned in Part 2.

4.2 The Nicaraguan government account of the sources of the protest

a) What evidence is there that the protests were conceived as (the start of) a coup attempt?

So far, none. The protests were advertised as peaceful mobilisations against the INSS reforms.
They were, of course, mobilisations to force changes in Nicaraguan government policy, with
social media featuring fierce criticism of the Ortega-Murillo administration ("regime"), seen as
out of touch and arrogant. This was also the case with the #indiomaiz campaign against the
government’s apparent inaction with regard to the fire in Indio Maíz biosphere. However, no
evidence of a coup plot—with specified personnel, chains of command, resources etc—has yet
been provided. Nor has a Nicaraguan version of one interpretation of the January 2014 Ukraine
Maidan events been substantiated, namely that protesters were deliberately murdered by snipers
from their own side in order to incriminate the government and force its capitulation.

At the inaugural April 25 media conference of the April 19 University Student Movement the
spokepeople did not demand the resignation of President Ortega, possibly an indication that the
movement did not at that point conceive itself as wanting to overthrow the Ortega government.
However, the demand for the resignation of the government was already present in the
demonstrations taking place. After the first week of conflict, the demand for a government of
transition was being raised by the students, as in this interview with Yubrank Suazo, a
representative of the April 19 University Student Movement in Masaya.45 Whether the
Nicaraguan government itself believed the self-convened protests to be a coup attempt or
conspiracy is a separate issue.

b) What evidence is there of involvement by Nicaraguan business organisations (COSEP,

AmCham) in organising (i) the protests against the Indio Maiź Reserve fire and (ii) the INSS
protest?

44
One of the students, Amaya Coppens, has since been arrested by the police on charges of terrorism.
45
Yubrank Suazo was arrested on the same day as Amaya Coppens.

24
None has emerged in regards to either. COSEP opposed the INSS reforms and was intending to
launch a legal appeal against them, but there is no evidence of COSEP involvement in organising
the protests. However, once the protests began, and especially after the first fatalities, COSEP
saw the chance to pressure the government to drop the changes and called a peace march for
April 23. COSEP also sought to befriend the students by calling for them to be included in the
National Dialogue. (See section 4.4 for a student leader’s opinion on this issue.)

c) What evidence is there of Catholic Church involvement in organising (i) the protests against
the Indio Maíz Reserve fire and (ii) the INSS protest?

None. The Episcopal Conference of Nicaragua (CEN) called for the withdrawal of the INSS
changes and an end to the violence, and, on April 20, the dioceses of Managua and León made
the city cathedrals available as a refuge for the students and as a place where supporters could
bring them supplies of food and medicine. In a speech to the students in Managua cathedral on
April 21, the auxiliary bishop of Managua, Silvio José Báez Ortega, called them "the moral
reserve of this country" and added that "your cause is just".

d) What evidence is there of direct US agency involvement in (i) the protests against the Indio
Maiź Reserve fire and (ii) the INSS protest?

None has been produced to date. This is not to say that US agencies have not been funding what
they conceive of as "pro-democracy" projects in Nicaragua, as Max Blumenthal of Gray Zone
explains in this article.

e) What evidence is there of pandillas being used as shock troops in the INSS protest?

Material produced to date in support of this claim is: this National Police media release
containing a statement by Salvadoran mara member Oscar Antonio Rivas that he had
been hired for $300 a week to create disorder in Nicaragua; this video purporting to show
gang members torturing a Sandinista; the National Police case against "Viper" (see
Section 3.2), accused of heading up a gang based in UPOLI; and this news clip from the
pro-government Channel 4 purporting to reveal the presence of an arms cache and clashes
between gangs inside UPOLI.

This material is questionable. The Oscar Antonio Rivas and "Viper" statements are confessions
for which no independent corroboration has yet been produced. According to the May 24 El
Nuevo Diario, "Viper" had been expelled from UPOLI by the students occupying the campus for
detaining people with a weapon and for revealing information to the JS. "Viper" was also
revealed to be a transport inspector. His confession to the police, supposedly revealing the
structure of the leadership in the UPOLI occupation, has also been countered by a statement of
Kenneth Romero Aburto, also accused by police of belonging to the gang led by "Viper".
Romero accused the police of torture to extract a confession from him incriminating the UPOLI
occupation. As matters stand, it is impossible to know what the truth is in any of this.

Pandillas and/or individual pandilleros may have supported the opposition but evidence to this
effect has yet to emerge.

25
f) What evidence is there that pandilleros were paid to take part in the coup attempt?

None has been produced to date beyond Rivas’s confession statement that he was paid $300 a
week.

g) Who were the masked youths who staffed the road blocks and fired home-made mortars from
behind barricades?

Overwhelmingly, they were young people from the barrios that came out to support the students.
The roadblock is the traditional popular protest measure in Nicaragua. In the present conflict,
those staffing the roadblocks would block traffic if there were deaths among the students or
attacks by the National Police or paramilitaries. This article from the Salvaradoran web site El
Faro gives a good account of those controlling the roadblocks, mainly young men.

h) Who were the leaders of the alleged coup conspiracy? Was Félix Maradiaga one of them?

We await the evidence. However, as Maradiaga faces a possible closed trial under Nicaragua’s
new anti-terrorism legislation and as human rights organisations have been prevented from
attending most trials to date [this, in English, is an example], it is difficult to know what will
happen. Maradiaga describes the charges against him as "so ridiculous, so removed from reality
that they would be an occasion for laughter, for jokes, were it not for the fact that we face a
murderous regime responsible for more than 130 deaths in less than 50 days".

Since mid-August, a series of arrests of other alleged ringleaders of the alleged coup has taken
place, including students and former FSLN leaders, and the same proviso with regard to
Maradiaga would apply to the trials they will face.

4.3 Nicaraguan government viewpoint on the identity and role of paramilitaries

a) What evidence is there of the organisation of pro-government paramilitary forces?

The evidence regarding the organisation of brigades of pro-government pramilitaries or

parapolice is strong. See this BBC report based on an interview with a former FSLN military
officer who states that the paramilitaries are government-organised groups, mainly of former
FSLN military still loyal to president Ortega. This article [in English] describes the role of pro-
government paramilitaries in the retaking of Monimbó on July 17 and this article the attack in
detail.

The government’s denial of the existence of pro-government paramilitaries is also in conflict with
its own agreement at the National Dialogue to implement the 15 recommendations of the IACHR,
issued on May 21. Recommendation eight states: "Dismantle parapolice groups and adopt
measures to stop informal armed groups from attacking and harrassing the civilian population."

Further evidence comes in the high proportion of fatalities killed by one or two shots. According
to the July 25 report of the ANPDH46, there had by that time been 448 deaths coincident with the

46
Web link could not be found. Document in possession of author. The previous (July 2) ANPDH report with
similar figures can be found here.

26
protests, 357 (80%) of which were due to gun shots. Of these 357, 276 (77%) had died of a single
shot and 115 (32%) of a shot or shots to the head, prima facie evidence of sniper activity.

b) What evidence is there of the involvement of right-wing paramilitaries on the opposition side?

None has emerged to date. The pro-government media has consistently referred to the youth
defending roadblocks and attacking government and FSLN buildings as "right-wing
paramilitaries", as in this clip, but no evidence has been produced so far of an opposition
paramilitary force armed and organised in the way the pro-government paramilitaries have been
operating.

c) What weaponry was used by each side of the conflict?

Many Nicaraguan homes have contained weapons since the end of the contra war, when soldiers
on both sides who were returning to civilian life often took their rifles home with them. The
visual evidence to date shows the opposition using home-made mortars, Molotov cocktails and
shotguns, while the pro-government forces have used shotguns, pistols, assault rifles (mainly
AK47s) and the Dragunov sniper rifle [in English].

d) Were the hooded groups supporting the police Volunteer Police?

Individual members of the Volunteer Police may have participated in the pro-government
paramilitaries, but these groups seem to have been composed largely of ex-military and organised
through their own command structure separate from the Volunteer Police.

4.4 The Nicaraguan government’s view of the background to the coup attempt

a) What evidence is there of US agency funding and support for Nicaraguan students before April
18?

There is some indirect evidence. The main source is Max Blumenthal's article "US Gov.
Meddling Machine Boasts of ‘Laying the Groundwork for Insurrection’ in Nicaragua", in which
he cites this article by sociology professor Benjamin Waddell. It says:
The NED has awarded projects to a wide variety of civic organizations [in Nicaragua]. However, the top
grantees have been Fundacion Iberoamericana de las Culturas (six grants), Asociación Hagamos
Democracia (five grants), Center for International Private Enterprise (four).

Seventeen grants were provided to unnamed organizations working within Nicaragua. In 2017, for
example, the NED provided an anonymous organization with $86,000 to foster “a new generation of
democratic youth leaders.” According to the project description, the funds were intended,

“To promote democratic values and participation among youth in Nicaragua. Forums in schools and
universities will educate students about democratic values and human rights. A network of youth leaders
will foster a more active role of youth in defending democracy. Additionally, a magazine and social
media will facilitate discussion on youth issues and democratic activism.”

In the same year, the NED funded a project titled, “Strengthening the Strategic Capacity of Civil Society
to Defend Democracy.” Again, the NED’s website does not report the name of the organization that
received the grant. However, per the project description, the funds were used to,

27
 “To strengthen the capacity of Nicaraguan pro-democracy activists to forge a common civil society
strategy to defend democracy. Periodic publications will cover the state of democracy and the situation
of human rights in Nicaragua. A group of civil society organizations and social movements will convene
a series of forums to discuss their content and identify advocacy opportunities.”

In these cases, fears of government reprisals against the groups—not unrealistic given its intolerance for
dissent, have led the NED to withhold the names of the groups from public documents (italics in
original).

Nicaraguan students may have been the beneficiaries of this funding. Blumenthal’s piece
associates that possibility with a visit to the US by a Nicaraguan student delegation:
The Nicaraguan students’ junket to Washington was paid for by Freedom House, a US government-
funded NED partner whose agenda typically aligns with the neoconservative wing of the American
foreign policy establishment.

Freedom House crafted an itinerary for the students that culminated with a photo-op with some of the
most hawkish Republicans in Washington: Senators Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, and Rep. Ileana Ros-
Lehtinen.
Back in Managua, another prominent student leader, Harley Morales, reeled in disgust at his peers’
appearance on Capitol Hill. “It was terrible,” Morales told the newspaper El Faro. “They (Cruz, Rubio,
and Ros-Lehtinen) are the extreme Republican right. We are very unhappy with this trip; they were paid
for by the United States and an agenda was imposed on them. We have given ourselves a terrible
image.”

In his El Faro interview Morales, an activist with the University Alliance (one of the five student
organisations that make up the University Coalition) also made the following points:
How did this trip to Washington come about?

This trip was something very strange. We are very unhappy with this trip. Including with our
representative. When we planned it there were already many players wanting to intervene over the
agenda. That happened from the beginning. I’m referring to organisations, opposition politicians, some
more to the right (...). This trip was financed from the United States (Freedom Foundation) and an
agenda was imposed on them [the delegation], and that’s terrible. They were the ones who decided
where the students would go.

So why did you accept it?

We didn’t accept it. We were going with a clear goal that they would take part in the general assembly of
the Organisation of American States. It’s terrible. We didn’t know about the meetings with Ted Cruz and
Ileana Ros, nor with Marco Rubio. We are very unhappy about that. When the guys get back, we’re
going to talk to them. We cannot yield on the basics.

What are you referring to?

It’s that they didn’t tell us they were going to those meetings. It was very strange. All the movements
now have advisers. People that have contacts. Sons of politicians, businesspeople (...) They have a very
clear political line. Of the three students that went to Washington, two are from the April 19 Movement
and one, Fernando Sánchez, is from our alliance.

And he didn’t tell you he was going?

28
 It’s that in the Coalition they now don’t see us as groups. Somebody called him and said: we’re going to
take you. They didn’t communicate anything to the rest of us.

What is it that you don’t like about the meetings with Rubio, Cruz and Ros?

We’re not selling ourselves! Not even in our own [Civic] Alliance. We put our points on the table. We
have got legitimacy and this Alliance exists for us [the students], not for the private sector, and we can
delegitimise the Alliance and leave. We are not the children of COSEP. I’m from the left. I wouldn’t
have gone.

What response has there been to these meetings inside the university student alliance?

We’re going to have to have a plan of error correction. We’ve given ourselves a terrible image. If they
were already saying we were the children of COSEP, what are they going to say now? That we’re the
children of the US Republican Party? We have to talk about that when they get back.

In your opinion are there players interested in manipulating you?

A lot. I was in UPOLI on April 22, and I remember now how many players that I recognised were
already there, looking for people to talk to. There were many groups fighting over the leadership of the
students. And many trying to "advise". That’s the key word. The "advisers", whom I believe are taking
decisions, and there are movements who let themselves be advised by certain persons.

How is your relationship with COSEP at the present moment?

We are very clear. We know that when COSEP doesn’t need us, they are going to discard us. But we
have other plans.

What this interview indicates is that, after April 19, a contest for political influence over the
student movement immediately broke out among existing political forces opposed to the
Nicaraguan government, that they are looking to exploit it as a weapon in their differences with
the government, and that the student movement itself is politically heterogeneous.
It also indicates that sections of the movement are concerned not to be identified with the US
right wing and that, while the Florida-based wing of the US neoconservative right is looking to
influence the movement, it had no role in the student protests.

b) What evidence is there of continuous hostility by US administrations and agencies towards the
present Nicaraguan government?

The picture of unrelenting hostility between Washington and the present Nicaraguan government
is one-sided, as indicated by US government appreciation of Nicaragua’s effort in the war on
drug trafficking and collaboration with it, and in its appreciation of Nicaragua as a "containing
wall" against migration towards the US from countries further south.

In addition, in August 2015, the US abandoned the requirement for Nicaragua, before receiving
US aid and US support for international aid, to satisfy the US that it was making progress in the
settlement of the property claims of US citizens arising from the expropriations of the Sandinista
Revolution, an imposition known as the "property waiver" [in English]. The US Embassy in
Nicaragua stated at the time:
The United States recognises the work of the current government administration to resolve pending
claims in an expeditious and satisfactory manner. (...) We recognise and appreciate the determination

29
 shown by the Government of Nicaragua in recent months to resolve outstanding claims in an expeditious
manner satisfactory to all parties.

In addition, US private investment in Nicaragua amounts to about $250 million annually and the
approval of the United States (so far) within financial institutions like the World Bank, the IMF
and Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) has seen Nicaragua receive around $300 million a
year from these institutions. While Nicaragua is a member of the Bolivarian Alliance for the
Peoples of Our America (ALBA)47, it is also a member of the Central American Free Trade
Agreement (CAFTA), along with the US, the Dominican Republic and the other Central
American countries (with the exception of Belize and Panama).

As for the economic policies of the Nicaraguan government, in July 2013 Carlos Felipe Jaramillo,
World Bank director for Central America, Latin America and the Caribbean, described Nicaragua
as the "model country" of the region. In August 2014, Forbes magazine’s Mexican edition
presented a positive analysis of the "miracle" of the Nicaraguan economy driven by increased
private, largely US, investment. In May 2017, Fernando Delgado, IMF mission head for Central
America, stated:
Basing itself mainly on attracting foreign investment, on growth in competitiveness in comparison with
the North American market, its main client for exports, and on a truly praiseworthy macroeconomic
stability, its model has been successful over the past five to ten years.

Francisco Aguirre Sacasa, under the Aleman government (1997-2002) Nicaragua’s ambassador
to the United States and Canada and a former foreign minister, described the recent state of the
US-Nicaragua relationship [in English] in the February 2017 issue of Envio:
One of our assets is that we’re a safe country, especially compared to Central America’s three Northern
Triangle countries: El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. Another is that we don’t currently represent a
migration problem: we’re not a massive source of illegal immigrants, unlike our three Northern
neighbors, which in some years have had more than 50,000 unaccompanied minors trying to enter the
United States illegally, causing a bona fide humanitarian crisis. We’re also seen as a country that
collaborates with the US in the fight against international organized crime. Furthermore, it’s
acknowledged that Nicaragua has performed well economically and socially in the Latin American
context and the alliance between our private sector and government is regarded as a model to be
replicated in other countries. For all these reasons, Washington has kept cooperation with our country
open on all issues, even removing the Damocles’ sword of whether or not it would approve the property
waiver each year.

This is the positive side of Daniel Ortega’s Nicaragua that Washington has worked with for some
years… and is still working with so far. But now a negative side has been brought to Washington’s
attention: the serious setback or erosion of Nicaragua’s political governance, particularly on electoral
issues.

On a scale ranging from very good to hostile, relations between Nicaragua and Washington fluctuated
47
ALBA means «dawn» in Spanish. The present members of the alliance are the Latin American countries Bolivia,
Cuba, Nicaragua, Surinam and Venezuela and the Caribbean countries Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica,
Granada, the Federation of Saint Kitts and Nevis and St Vincent and the Grenadines. Honduras was expelled
from ALBA after the July 2009 coup against president Manuel Zelaya and Ecuador withdrew on August 23,
2018, calleging indifference on the part of the Venezuelan government to the emigration of its citizens to
surrounding countries.

30
 around “correct but not cordial” from 2007 until mid-2016. Since mid-2016, however, I’d say they’ve
dropped to “correct but tense,” due to a series of measures taken by Comandante Ortega (zero electoral
observation, expulsion of US officials, cancelation of the chief opposition, etc).

I was in Washington over the end-of-year holidays and met with people from important political NGOs,
think tanks, international organizations and the Latin American community who influence policy
towards our sub-continent. All these people expressed concern about the erosion of Nicaragua’s political
governance. That confirmed for me that Daniel no longer has friends in Washington.

The turn in the US attitude towards Nicaragua dates from the June 2016, when a Supreme Court
decision prevented Eduardo Montealegre, the main opposition candidate to Daniel Ortega, from
running in the November 2016 presidential poll [in English], by excluding him as leader of the
Independent Liberal Party. As a result, there was a high rate of abstention, the extent of which
was a matter of controversy.

31
Part 5: Conclusions
The Nicaraguan state has yet to provide compelling evidence for its view of the events beginning
on April 18 as the start of a coup. Its argumentation presented to date so far falls into the
following categories:

a) Confessions made by individuals presented at press conferences of the National Police.

According to human rights law and law on evidence confessions have to be shown not to have
been made under oppression and, where contested, require corroborating evidence. In the present
cases none, so far, has emerged.

b) Circumstantial evidence. The fact, for example, that there were exchanges of fire between
police and the protesters occupying university premises from April 19 does not constitute
compelling, let alone conclusive, evidence that the latter were implementing a coup.

c) Hypotheses presented as the only possible explanation of events. One example is the
explanation given in the "Observations" for the spread of the protests to other cities:
Starting from this fake news the preconceived plan of political coup with the participation of gang
members (pandilleros) began to be unfolded, with the result that on April 19 there were three deaths, one
of whom was a policeman who died as the result of a gun shot while he was re-establishing public order
and free circulation in the surrounds of the UPOLI. This criminal pattern was simultaneously reproduced
in some of the main cities of the country, revealing the existence of prior planning and organisation
(emphasis added). (p. 6)

Against this hypothesis is the shared account of the IACHR and OHCHR reports: that the spread
of the protests and of violence were due to the initial repressive measures adopted by the
government, and that the evolution of the conflict reflected not the application of a coup plan but
the escalation of a dynamic of attack and counterattack originally set in motion by that repression.

Similarly, the "Observations" say:

Additionally, it needs stressing that the draft report [of the IACHR] does not mention one house,
business, office or bank being affected that belongs to the COSEP or civil society organisations, which
makes one think that those who caused the havoc, the looting, the fires and the crimes are the opponents
[of the government]. (p. 12)

Opposition attacks on government buildings certainly look to have taken place, but the fact that
no property belonging to COSEP-related enterprises was attacked does not prove that all the
attacks that did happen were exclusively the work of the opposition, given that there are eye
witness reports of police standing by while attacks on property and looting were taking place (as
in Managua on April 22).

That is, the exclusive responsibility of the opposition for these attacks remains to be proven.

d) Material without relevance to the core issue in dispute. This material without bearing on the
core issue in dispute itself falls into six classes. Irrespective of the truth or otherwise of the
charges made against the opposition with regard to this material, it is not relevant to determining
the nature and sources of the events that began on April 18.

32
 i. Accusations of bias in the reports of human rights’ organisations (as an example see the
section of the Nicaraguan state’s "Observations" entitled Methodological rigour of the
IACHR [CIDH in its Spanish initials], pp. 14-17;

ii. Accusations that the human rights’ organisations, international and national:
have deliberately omitted all armed attacks, seiges, harrassing, and kidnappings to which the local
detachments of the National Police have been and continue to be a target, those that by the
decision of the President of the Republic and on the request of the National Dialogue, were
brought back into their barracks. It is enough to point out: Matagalpa, Jinotepe, Masaya, León,
Jinotega, Diriamba, Sébaco, Nagarote, Nindirí, among others; and the masscare and kidnapping of
police in Mulukukú and El Jicaral. The reconfining of the police to their barracks allowed
freedom of action on the part of the delinquents, bringing as a consequnce an increase in criminal
activity. ("Observations", p. 8);

iii. Accusations that the human rights organisations, international and national, have
paid more heed to opposition versions of specific events and opposition sources of
evidence;

iv. The alleged indifference of human rights’ organisations reports to the victims of
the government side of the dispute (including the 22 police officers who died in it);

v. The alleged lack of attention in both the IACHR and OHCHR reports to the degree
of material damage caused by opposition destruction of property;

vi. Allegations that the human rights organisations are constrained by the political
interests of their funding bodies (chiefly US agencies).

e) Statements yet to be substantiated. The Nicaraguan state case contains statements, such as the
claims that the identity of the coup ringleaders is known and that pandilleros were paid to launch
roadblocks and attack government property as part of the coup. In both cases compelling
evidence has yet to be produced.

f) Statements contested by the other parties to incidents in question. The Nicaraguan state case
contains statements as to the course of events in many cases (including high-profile ones like the
murder of journalist Ángel Gahona and the burning to death of six members of the same family in
Managua on June 16) that are contradicted by witnesses. Such incidents are not relevant to the
core issue in dispute, but they cast doubt on the objectivity of the version of the Nicaraguan
authorities. The Excel file attached to the Annex to this report ("Comment on Monopolising
death: Or how to frame a government by inflating a list of the dead") indicates the instances
where accounts of fatalities can reasonably differ in over 100 of 293 cases of death occurring
between April 19 and June 25.

g) Statements against which sufficient evidence already exists to make the Nicaraguan state’s
version(s) of events questionable. This is the case with regards to the status and composition of
paramilitary and/or parapolice forces. In the course of his media interviews between July 23 and
September 3 President Ortega produced four different versions as to the nature of these irregular
armed groups (namely: they don’t exist; they are groups created by the opposition parties; they

33
are groups of citizens forced to organise self-defence against opposition attacks; they are the
Volunteer Police masked to avoid retaliation).

This category would also contain this statement in the "Observations" to the effect that the
National Police do not make use of conventional firearms, prima facie negated by video
evidence,
For the restitution of order and the protection of Nicaraguan communities and families, the
forces of the police do not not employ conventional fire-arms in the context of violent protests,
being restricted to the deployment of non-lethal neutralising weapons, weapons with non-lethal
munitions and the use of deterrent weapons (stun grenades, tear gases) in the name of
minimising the risk of death and injury, in correspondence to the high levels of armed violence
and the principles of commensurateness, opportunity and proportionality. (p. 46)

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Part 6: Final observations
Were the events of April 18 the beginning of a coup attempt? In a September 3 interview on
Confidencial TV, Guillermo Fernández Maldonado, OHCHR mission head in Nicaragua said:
We did not find indications that it was like that [an attempt at coup d’etat] nor that it was something
orchestrated according to a preconceived plan but that it was an escalation caused above all by the
initiative of the state and its forces.

Maldonado indicated that the mission had wanted to investigate the Nicaraguan government’s
version of events:
In fact, from the first meeting the Minister of Foreign Relations [Denis Moncada] said that the viewpoint
of the government was that this was not a social protest but that it was an attempted coup. What we said,
as I said just a minute ago, is that we had come to investigate facts and international obligations. If the
government gives us access to the information that backs up this viewpoint and allows us to travel
through the country and find witnesses and verify what has happened, and we find that this is the case,
then we’re going to say so. But they didn’t provide the information and they didn’t let us go outside
Managua.

So far, then, the Nicaraguan government’s version of events remains uncorroborated by

independent investigation. Until such corroboration arrives that viewpoint can only have the
status of a scenario which different observers may find more or less plausible.

In addition, if such corroboration is not forthcoming doubts about the incomplete and
questionable parts of the official narrative can only increase. These include:

The lack of any acknowledgement of police violence on April 18-19. In the government’s
narrative, the violence begins from the side of the coup-promoters on the night of April
19;

The claim that widespead opposition attacks on government and FSLN property began on
the night of April 19, when there is so far no evidence that this is the case;

The changing account about the existence and identity of unofficial armed groups
(paramilitaries, parapolice);

The presentation of official accounts of fatalities and other incidents as established fact
when circumstances are in many cases disputed by witnesses;

The insistence that human rights organisations have not registered the deaths of police and
other victims of the opposition when this is not the case (see OHCHR report pp. 34-36);

The assignment of the cause of the student protests to the manipulations of United States
institutions when the students themselves ascribe them to what they see as the abuses and
failings of the government;

The lack of acknowledgement, consistent with the view of events as a coup, of the
accumulated grievances of many younger Nicaraguans. Issues mentioned by the students
include: the Ortega administration’s alleged control of the Supreme Court, the National
Assembly and Supreme Electoral Council; alleged corruption and nepotism as supposedly

35
 revealed by the placement of Ortega-Murrillo family members in important posts in the
media and Albanisa (the Nicaraguan-Venezuelan joint venture through which Venezuelan
aid has been channelled); obligatory membership of the FSLN and FSLN-related "mass
organisations" in order to get access to jobs, scholarships, social program benefits and
business permits; alleged indifference to environmental degradation (including the
potential impact of the Trans-Oceanic Canal and the alleged incompetence and slowness
in bringing the bushfire under control in the Indio-Maíz Reserve); and the "consensus"
political method of permanent dealing with and concessions to the other two main
institutions in Nicaragua—big business in COSEP and the Catholic Church.

To date, none of the agencies of the Nicaraguan state have provide a detailed counter-version of
events to the shared account of the human rights organisations, whatever bias and inadequacies
their reports might turn out to contain in the light of an exhaustive and independent investigation.

In Nicaragua, scepticism about the government’s view of the conflict has been expressed by
people not directly associated with either side in the conflict and with long experience of the
politics of the country. These include members of the nine-member FSLN leadership from the
1980s and early1990s.

On April 22, former comandante and agriculture and agrarian reform minister Jaime Wheelock
sent this letter to president Ortega in which he stated that "the reaction of the authorities has been
disproportionate with the use of firearms by the police and shock troops, causing scores of deaths
and hundreds of wounded among our people."

In a May 17 interview on Vos TV Wheelock said that the protest appeared to him "not to
belinked in any way with a conspiracy that has as its centre the United States and also belongs to
an offensive against the countries that belong to ALBA."
I have read some declarations by the Frente and some editorials that express this position and its seems
to me that this is one of the most serious mistakes that have been committed here. Since it’s a question of
this big conspiracy that is being anticipated, a counter-offensive has been launched by certain
government circles against what was a spontaneous demonstration by university students.

Later, in an August 9 interview on Confidential TV, Wheelock said:

The truth is that, in the analysis that I’ve done of this situation and in all the appearances of the
government, I’ve found that there’s a resistance on the part of the executive to saying what really
happened. In any case it’s hard for them to appear before public opinion and have to say that they made
a mistake, that they committed errors. Starting from that point, a whole series of legal constructs or
constructs of criminal behaviour that don’t correspond to reality get set up. I would say, in the case of
those, for example, who are demonstrating against the government or making demands on or requests of
the government, that they don’t fit into a framework of rebellion that in any way has to do with sedition.
In short, what I find is that a people reacted with indignation to the fact that they were firing with live
ammunition on unarmed students.

In a July 4 letter to the National Dialogue, Humberto Ortega, Daniel Ortega’s brother and former
chief of the Sandinista People’s Army (later Army of Nicaragua), called on the government to
dissolve the paramilitary groups and hold early elections. Ortega’s letter also said:

36
 Let us honour the fallen of yesterday and today, let us stand in solidarity with the suffering families, with
our people and with the young students who demand peace with full liberty with that same fervour as
young Sandinista student Camilo Ortega Saavedra,48 who gave his life defending the heroic people of
Masaya and Monimbó.

In a July 27 appearance on the CNN program "Camilo", Humberto Ortega said that
indiscriminate repression by the Nicaraguan government was the chief cause of the violence and
recognised that the police were accompanied by illegal paramilitary groups whom he considered
chiefly responsible for the fatalities. He repeated his call for early elections and also called on the
army to disarm the paramilitaries.

Establishing the truth about the nature and causes of Nicaragua’s conflict will require an
independent investigation of acknowledged objectivity. The OHCHR report, in line with the
organisation’s requirement for UN member states to apply international human rights standards,
has called on the Nicaraguan authorities to carry out that work. It recommends the Nicaraguan
state to:
Ensure that independent, impartial, effective, thorough and transparent investigations be promptly
conducted into all allegations of serious human rights violations and abuses that have occurred since 18
April, especially extrajudicial killings, torture, enforced disappearances and arbitrary or unlawful arrests
and detentions; ensure that criminal investigations comprise all those who perpetrated,directly or
indirectly, ordered, supported or tolerated such acts, including the chain of command of relevant
authorities. These acts should not remain without sanction. (p. 39)

However, in his September 3 Confidencial TV interview, Maldonado stressed the difficulties that
Nicaragua’s institutions as presently functioning would have in fulfilling that recommendation:
Arrests in their enormous majority have been arrests without a legal warrant. In many cases they were
not by agents of the state charged with ensuring compliance with the law, not by the police, but by
hooded, armed people whom we still don’t really know who they are. There are various versions, one
that they are Volunteer Police, but these don’t have, according to the law, the authorisation to conduct
these sorts of activities (...)

The global standard is that trials have to be public, with some exceptions. In this case all have been
private [with] systematic violation of the standards of due process (...)

Not even the Truth Commission [CVJP] has had access to the detention centres (...)

If we don’t have independent institutions, a prosecutor-general’s office independent of the government,

legal power independent of the government, then not even material responsibility or the chain of
command can be investigated, because this independence does not exist, it continues to be instructions
from above. Here we have very important challenge in the case of Nicaragua.

In the absence of evidence corroborating the Nicaraguan government’s view of the events of
April as an attempted coup it will become increasingly difficult to avoid the conclusion that the
events of April were a peaceful protest that state repression transformed into a citizen rebellion
against the repression itself and for the democratic replacement of the government implementing
it.

48
The younger brother of Daniel and Humberto Ortega, killed in a National Guard attack in Masaya in 1978.

37
If this shortfall of corrobating evidence continues, the initial decision of the Nicaraguan
government to repress the protests, finalised by the "clean-up" (limpieza) carried out in June and
July, would make its view of the protests as a coup instigated by the Nicaraguan right and the
United States indispensable for it —not as any description of reality but as justification of its own
choice to crush dissent with lethal force.

38
Sources
Position of the Nicaraguan authorities

State of Nicaragua (June 18, 2018). Observations of the State of Nicaragua with Regard to the
Draft Report of the Interamerican Commission of Human Rights entitled ‘Human Rights in the
Framework of the Social Protests in Nicaragua’. (This text is not available in English.)

State of Nicaragua (August 24, 2018). Considerations of the State of Nicaragua with Regard to
the So-Called Report "Human Rights Violations and Abuses in the Context of the Protests in
Nicaragua. April 18-August 18, 2018", elaborated by the OHCHR. (This text is not available in
English.)

Truth, Justice and Peace Commission (July 10, 2018). Preliminary Report. (This text is not
available in English.)

National Police. Various media releases. (These texts are not available in English.)

Daniel Ortega. Various TV interviews. See text for links and here for transcriptions. (These texts
are not available in English.)

Sources supporting the position of the Nicaraguan authorities

Blog Against Manipulation (These texts are not available in English.)

Tortilla Con Sal (available in English)

Alex Afruns (June 25). Nicaragua : del terrorismo considerado como el arte de manifestar

Max Blumenthal (June 19, 2018). US Gov. Meddling Machine Boasts of ‘Laying the
Groundwork for Insurrection’ in Nicaragua’

Max Blumenthal (July 30, 2018). An Exclusive Interview with Nicaraguan President Daniel
Ortega

Max Blumenthal ( August 15, 2018). How Nicaragua’s ‘Left-Wing’ Opposition MRS Are NGO
Opportunists Lobbying the West for Regime Change

Carlos Fonseca Terán (May 2, 2018). They Shall Not Pass (This text is not available in English.)
Carlos Fonseca Terán (June 8, 2018). Between the Opposition’s Nonsense and the Need for
Reconciliation and Dialogue (This text is not available in English.)
Carlos Fonseca Terán (July 6, 2018). Do They Want to Make a Revolution? (This text is not
available in English.)

Enrique Hendrix (July 15). Monopolising death: Or how to frame a government by inflating a list
of the dead

Edward Hunt (May 10, 2018). Is the U.S. Meddling in Nicaragua?

39
Dan Kovalik (April 25, 2018 ). The Empire Turns Its Sights on Nicaragua – Again!

Dan Kovalik (June 15, 2018). The US & Nicaragua: a Case Study in Historical Amnesia &
Blindness

Camilo Mejia (June 15, 2018). Open Letter to Amnesty International by a Former Amnesty
International Prisoner of Conscience

Charles Redvers (August 15, 2018). A Response to Misinformation on Nicaragua: It Was a Coup,
Not a ‘Massacre’

Kevin Zeese and Nils McCune (July 13, 2018). Correcting The Record: What Is Really
Happening In Nicaragua?

Reports of Human Rights organisations

International

Amnesty International (May 2018). Shoot to Kill: Nicaragua’s Strategy to Repress Protest

Inter-American Human Rights Commission (June 21, 2018). Gross Human Rights Violations in
the Context of Social Protests in Nicaragua

Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (August 2018). Human
Rights Violations and Abuses in the Context of the Protests in Nicaragua, 18 April-18 August
2018

Nicaragua

Five reports of the Nicaraguan Human Rights Centre (CENIDH), dated May 4, May 17, June 18,
July 18 and July 31.

Updates of the Nicaraguan Association for Human Rights (ANPDH) on victims of the conflict
(not available via the ANPDH website): to access google "Informe Preliminar de Ciudadanos
Nicaragüenses Muertos".

Timeline of events

Wikipedia (ongoing). Protestas en Nicaragua de 2018

Background on the student movement

NACLA (June 15, 2018). Deciphering the Nicaraguan Student Uprising

Lori Hanson and Miguel Gomez (June 20, 2018). The Students of Nicaragua’s April Uprising

40