Showdown for Nicaragua : Cosmetic Changes Mask Profound Lack of Rights

The lifting of Nicaragua’s state of emergency and the abolition of political tribunals last week have been hailed in some quarters as giant steps toward compliance with the human-rights commitments that President Daniel Ortega made under the Central American peace plan. However, these steps are much less significant than they first appear because Managua has other means to oppress the internal democratic opposition.

The lifting of the emergency decree, imposed in March, 1982, does not affect other repressive laws that remain on the books. For example, the police retain powers to try and sentence individuals under codes dating from the Somoza era. The principal law used to arbitrarily arrest and prosecute political defendants continues to be Decree 1074 of June, 1982. The shutdown of private television broadcasting occurred through a 1979 decree. Press censorship began with Decrees 511 and 512 in 1980. Labor strikes are banned by a 1981 decree. Without the reinstatement of full constitutional rights, the end of the emergency is virtually meaningless.

Extra-legal persecution is also unaffected. Last August, violent Sandinista mobs called turbas resurfaced after a two-year dormancy. On Jan. 22, rock- and bottle-throwing turbas attacked the offices of the democratic alliance, Coordinadora, where the Mothers Movement for Political Prisoners was observing its first anniversary. Some in the opposition group were injured in the violence while Sandinista police stood by watching.

And two weeks ago, even as Ortega was telling foreign audiences that he would step down if it was the people’s expressed wish, his fellow comandante, Bayardo Arce, was vowing that the Sandinistas will never yield power. The Sandinista newspaper, Barricada, repeatedly warns that freer speech does not include challenges to the government. The message to the Nicaraguan people is that pluralism will not be tolerated.

There is also less than meets the eye to the abolition of the political tribunals, because the independence and effectiveness of the regular judiciary is now highly suspect. In December the Sandinista-dominated National Assembly approved President Ortega’s appointment of a new Supreme Court after three justices resigned in protest against the executive’s failure to comply with judicial orders.

In the Central American peace accord, Managua pledged “to promote respect for human rights” and to ensure “the full exercise of all civil and political rights.” It specifically agreed to establish complete “freedom of press, television and radio . . . without prior censorship”; to grant political groups freedom of association, free speech and movement “in order to proselytize”; to decree an amnesty guaranteeing “freedom in all its forms,” and to terminate state-of-emergency laws while reestablishing “the full exercise of all constitutional guarantees.”

A good measure of Nicaragua’s compliance is the list of 33 criteria in an amendment to the U.S. foreign-aid bill passed overwhelmingly by the House in December. To date the Sandinistas have partially implemented only a handful of the 33 steps: The opposition newspaper La Prensa, one of several presses forced shut, is publishing again; Radio Catolica is back on the air, and other independent news programs are scheduled to begin this week; three of 18 expelled Catholic priests may return; some (one-tenth, according to Nicaraguan rights groups) of the country’s unverified number of political prisoners were released, and some opposition rallies have been held without reprisals. Though very welcome, none of these reforms resulted from institutional changes, and they can be rescinded at any time simply on executive say-so.

Among the criteria that Managua is not even discussing, much less implementing, are reforms aimed at institutionalizing human rights. These include: separating the armed forces from the Sandinista party; abolishing the role of the Sandinista Defense Committees in dispersing food ration cards; permitting the International Committee of the Red Cross to visit all prisoners; ending incommunicado detention, and repealing the provisions of the Nicaraguan constitution that allow the executive to suspend it.

The House resolution’s calls for reforms to ensure the rights of specific groups also have gone unheeded. These would guarantee an uncensored and free press; the full spectrum of private television and radio broadcasting; the right to strike; the reopening of the Catholic Church’s social welfare, human-rights and publication offices; the resumption of the cardinal’s televised Sunday masses, and inclusion of religion in the curriculum of private schools. So far in vain, the resolution also calls on the Sandinistas to stop using the military draft punitively against the opposition and their children; to end the forcible relocation of campesinos into strategic hamlets and resettlement camps, and to stop the turbas’ harassment.

The resolution was endorsed by liberals and conservatives alike. Even one of its opponents, Rep. George W. Crockett Jr. (D-Mich.) acknowledged that “this amendment lays out standards for human rights and democratic reforms to which we can all subscribe.” It is nothing more than what Nicaragua pledged to implement when it signed the peace accord.