Key Nicaragua Official Starts Hunger Strike
Foreign Minister Miguel D’Escoto has begun a hunger strike against what he called “state terrorism” by the Reagan Administration for financing contra rebels trying to overthrow the Sandinista government.
“I am making this fast as an expression of Christian rejection of the policy of state terrorism imposed by the U.S. government against Nicaragua,” he said after a Sunday night Mass in a pro-Sandinista “popular church” in a working-class neighborhood in Managua.
D’Escoto, who is a Maryknoll priest, said he asked President Daniel Ortega for a temporary leave from his Cabinet post to carry out the hunger strike.
Asked how long he was prepared to fast, he said: “Indefinitely.”
Congress last month voted to appropriate $27 million in “non-lethal aid” to the contras, who have been waging a four-year war to overthrow the Sandinista government.
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