NСOs in the political and economic confrontation
Event: June 14, 2015, a protest was held against the construction of a trans-oceanic canal across Nicaragua. The protest was organized by environmentalists and human rights activists of Amnesty International, led by former actress Bianca Jagger, the first wife of the soloist of the Rolling Stones group.
The purpose of the action: to prevent the construction of the trans-oceanic channel on the territory of Nicaragua. Achieve a complete rejection by the Nicaraguan authorities of this idea. Not to allow the political and economic presence in the region of China and Russia, which not only build the channel, but the Russian Federation will also protect it, therefore, another goal is to prevent the appearance of the Russian military presence in Latin America. This is akin to the emergence of a new Cuba, a real danger emerges for the United States, the emergence of a Russian military base near the “Yankee” border, which, in their opinion, contradicts the Monroe Doctrine. The project of the Nicaraguan channel is extremely disadvantageous for the United States. The fact is that the channel in Nicaragua will be a broader and deeper alternative to the Panama Canal, which is now under the control of the States.
Direction: state administration, ecology
Tool: international centers, human rights defenders, celebrities
Method: protest, manifestation
Media coverage:
https://ria.ru/world/20150614/1069893120.html
Reaction of the society: The public, first of all farmers of Nicaragua actively supported the protests. Thanks to the high-quality work of social engineering specialists from Amnesty International, thousands of Nicaraguan farmers came to protest against the construction of a trans-oceanic canal. The demonstration was held in the city of Juigalpa. The demonstrators carried banners with slogans against the country’s president, Daniel Ortega, and the Chinese company HKND, which became the project operator. The local police have already reported about one wounded as a result of the action and about the burning by the protesters of the banners of the ruling party, the Sandinista Front for National Liberation. This is the second powerful protest, the first was held in December 2014. The authorities had to resort to the use of force after a week of talks with protesters. In the suppression of protests, police special forces and soldiers used tear gas and rubber bullets. Protests against the
construction of the canal continued in subsequent years. And in 2018, the protests also acquired a social connotation. Obviously, the architects of the protests will not stop shaking the situation in Nicaragua until the project of the channel is finally “buried”.
International Resonance: Jorge Ute-Perez, Director of Center for Molecular Biology at the University of Central America, said in an interview with the New Scientist magazine that the construction of the Nicaraguan Canal will cause a regional ecological catastrophe, will destroy thousands of biological species. The same as and Professor of Zoology and Evolutionary Biology of the University of Constance Axel Meier, in an article published by the authoritative scientific journal Nature, indicate that the construction of the Nicaraguan Canal will destroy about four hundred thousand hectares of tropical forests and wetlands, will lead to an ecological catastrophe in Nicaragua and other countries, will put the existence of the Bosawas Biosphere Reserve, the Indio Mais Biological Reserve and the northern part of the Cerro Silva Nature Reserve.
The US Embassy in Managua demanded that the Nicaraguan authorities disclose all the details of environmental monitoring and tendering for the construction of the Nicaragua Canal.
The UN Human Rights Council criticized media censorship by the Ortega government. The Inter-American Press Association also called on the Ortega administration to stop censorship, and the organization’s president, Gustavo Mome Seminario, said that Ortega’s actions against the media “expose the authoritarianism of the government, which in eleven years sought only to destroy the state for its own benefit.”
What they have achieved: the main goal was partially achieved, provocation against the construction of a trans-oceanic canal in Nicaragua in the form of protests. In November 2015, the Hong Kong firm HK Nicaragua Canal Development Investment Group, postponed the start of the project to the end of 2016, and later to 2019. However, neither China, nor Nicaragua, nor Russia abandoned this idea, waiting for the recession of protests in Nicaraguan society.
For more than 3 years, the country has been in a state of unceasing social crisis, aggravated by artificially intensifying protest attitudes in society and pressure from international human rights organizations. Professionals in the field of social engineering skillfully put pressure on the problem that 30,000 farmers would have to leave their territories. Under the influence of environmentalists and human rights defenders from Amnesty International, farmers continue to believe that the channel can cause irreparable damage to the environment and thereby deprive them of their source of income. They don’t trust President Ortego’s statement that the channel will bring economic benefits to Nicaragua’s economy, including them. Therefore, mass peasant protests periodically flare up in the country.