Nicaragua peace media bias
NICARAGUAFebruary 19, 2020
While Nicaragua returns to peace, media and international NGOs conjure
epidemic of violence with dubious reporting
Media bias against Nicaraguas Sandinista government is unremitting, and
international NGOs are feeding it by misreporting a violent land dispute in
the Bosawás nature reserve.
By John Perry
Heres a headline you wont see in the corporate media: Nicaragua is at
peace.
After the violent attempt to overthrow the government in 2018, which cost at
least 200 lives, the country has largely returned to the tranquillity it
enjoyed before. This is not only the impression that any visitor to
Nicaragua will receive; it is confirmed by statistics: Insight Crime
analysed homicide levels across Latin America in 2019 and showed that only
three countries were safer than Nicaragua in the whole continent.
Whats more, three of Nicaraguas neighbors, in the northern triangle of
Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala, are all among the most violent
countries. They are specifically plagued with high levels of fatal violence
against women. In the first 24 days of 2020, for example, 27 Honduran women
met violent deaths, while next-door, Nicaragua continues to have one of the
lowest levels of femicide in Latin America.
But wait. A headline in January denounces the Tragic Epidemic of Violence
in Nicaragua. This month the UN slates the Nicaraguan government for
supposedly allowing repeated attacks against indigenous peoples. A UN
situation report talks about a general environment of threat and
insecurity. Toward the end of 2019 the purported systematic, selective and
lethal repression of peasant farmers was reported.
Where do these allegations come from, and what do they mean?
Media and NGOs distort local land dispute
The latest smears are based on an incident at the end of January. Landless
farmers attacked a Nicaraguan community in the large forest of Bosawás. It
was reported by Reuters to have led to six deaths, with 10 more people
kidnapped and houses destroyed. The Guardian, New York Times, and Washington
Post all repeated the story.
Nicaraguas right-wing newspaper La Prensa quoted the NGO Fundación del Rio,
which called it a massacre. US-backed opposition group the Civic Alliance
joined in by branding it ethnocide. Amnesty International condemned what
it called the states indifference to the suffering of indigenous people.
And the Interamerican Commission for Human Rights said the government was
failing its international obligations.
Bosawás is the largest area of tropical rainforest north of the Amazon. It
has few roads and mainly tiny communities, many relying on rivers for
transport. Many local people belong to indigenous groups who have been
granted land titles by the government. Others are settlers (called
colonos), some who have bought land but others who occupy it illegally.
Disputes between established farmers and landless peasants are common, and
for many years have sometimes resulted in violence. The problems of policing
such places, with their history of conflict and corruption, are not confined
to their remoteness.
What really happened in the recent case only became clear after the police
arrived to investigate, having been called to the scene of two deaths, not
six, late on the afternoon of January 29.
In the community of Alal where the attack occurred, the police found 12
houses had been burned down and two people had been injured. No one had
disappeared. By January 31, local authorities had checked three more nearby
communities and found no evidence of murder or kidnapping. Community leaders
condemned the false news reports.
Then, at a completely differently location 12 kilometers east of Alal, along
the River Kahaska Kukun, near the community of Wakuruskasna, police found
and identified four bodies; two in one part of the river and two in another
part, apparently dead from gunshot wounds. Local people said they knew of no
one who had disappeared or was missing.
Investigations continued and two days later senior police and government
officials met with the community in the local school to explain the
investigations and the enforcement work they were doing, as well as the help
that people would get to rebuild their destroyed houses.
On February 5, the families of the victims met with Nicaraguas Procurator
of Human Rights, Darling Ríos, to denounce the crimes committed. The police
are pursuing the criminal gang involved and, at the time of writing, have
captured one culprit who was carrying a sub-machine gun.
The background to this story is important and is ignored by the
international media and human rights groups. A significant proportion of
Nicaraguan territory is legally held by indigenous groups and has been duly
titled by the Nicaraguan government in each communitys ownership. The
authorities that administer them are designated by the communities
themselves.
In the indigenous territory of Mayangna Sauni As, made up of 75 communities,
there is an internal dispute over control of these communal lands. Some of
the leaders have sold land to groups of outside settlers, which is possibly
at the root of Januarys conflict.
Sadly, despite a massive and ongoing process of land reform in Nicaragua,
there are still cases of displaced peasant farmers who cannot buy expensive
land in populated areas and seek to buy it cheaply, and perhaps illegally,
elsewhere, or simply to occupy it. Sparsely populated areas like Bosawás are
especially vulnerable.
The ensuing conflicts are portrayed by international NGOs as struggles
between environmentally conscious indigenous people and destructive
outsiders, abetted by the government. The reality is that poor people are in
competition for land, sometimes violently. And the violence is spasmodic:
there were few reported deaths in land disputes for the last two years,
although there were several in 2015 and 2016, mainly affecting a different
indigenous community, the Miskitu.
It is hardly surprising that the corporate media sides with indigenous
groups. Inevitably, as in the Alal case, whoever can get a story out via a
phone call will receive attention, and even an agency like Reuters is likely
to accept such a report before the facts can be checked.
Human rights NGOs spread debunked fake news
To those unfamiliar with Nicaragua, any news item about indigenous groups
conjures images of un-contacted tribes in the Amazon, which is far from the
real situation. Corporate media sets the scene with romantic images of
rainforests. Only rarely do they send reporters to investigate in depth.
If this is to be expected of todays media, it shouldnt be the case with
human rights NGOs. Yet Nicaraguan-based human rights bodies are
notoriously biased politically, and have long passed the point where they
can be considered objective.
Their recent allegations of a government campaign of rural assassinations,
for example, were shown to be completely false. All the local NGOs compete
for donations from foreign governments, and as one admitted, exaggerate
their death counts in order to get it.
Regrettably, the international NGOs are little better. Amnesty
Internationals reporting on Nicaragua has been shown as full of errors and
misrepresentations. Global Witness was called out for biased reporting of
the land disputes in the Bosawás area, in which it absurdly labeled
Nicaragua the worlds most dangerous country to be an environmental
defender. (Slain Honduran environmentalist Berta Cáceres is rolling in her
grave.)
Despite many efforts to get Global Witness to listen to the complexities of
the real story, it refused to withdraw its allegations even when some were
found to be completely untrue.
This is why headlines like A Tragic Epidemic of Violence should not be
taken at face value. Even the BBC, which said six indigenous people
reportedly killed in attack was wrong.
Media bias against Nicaraguas Sandinista government is unremitting, and
international NGOs are feeding it along with the US government.
Meanwhile, behind the headlines, the Nicaraguan people are successfully
recovering the precious peace and safety they enjoyed before the violent
events of 2018. Most are relieved that the real epidemic of violence ended
just a few months after it began.
John Perry
John Perry
John Perry is a writer based in Masaya, Nicaragua whose work has appeared in
the Nation, the London Review of Books, and many other publications.
