Response to misinformation13 Apr 2020 21:40
We are deeply concerned at a number of reprehensible and mendacious articles smearing the Government, People and Sandinista Revolution of Nicaragua. These include: "President nowhere to be seen as Nicaragua shuns coronavirus curbs", (The Guardian, 8th April), "'Our players are afraid': Nicaraguan football ploughs on amid the crisis", (The Guardian, 1st April) and "Love in the time of COVID-19: negligence in the Nicaraguan response" (The Lancet).
The central claim of all three articles is that Nicaragua is out of step with the WHO, that there is insufficient public education about social distancing and hygiene, and that our health system is inadequate (The Lancet). Added to this are lurid accusations in The Guardian that our Government secretly controls the independent Nicaraguan Football League, that President Daniel Ortega “might even have died” and is “so detached (that) his absence hardly mattered at all”, that there is a “macabre plan” underlying these supposed misdeeds, that an “uprising” in 2018 suffered a “brutal police crackdown”, and, in the most despicable, shameful and disgusting smear of all, that our democratic Sandinista Government (described as a “regime”) “actually wanted to rid itself of part of the population”. This in regards to a country which has suffered centuries of actual genocide, oppression and occupation, first at the hands of racist and colonialist foreign occupiers, and then externally armed right-wing dictatorships and terrorists.
These accusations are mostly completely unsubstantiated - and based entirely on the journalists’ own assertion, or hearsay from unnamed sources or opposition activists -, or in a small minority of cases, some authority is quoted, but is done so out of context and with omission of several relevant and important facts. Such unfounded speculation is especially irresponsible and dangerous during the COVID-19 pandemic, by painting a false picture of an out of control crisis, at a time when misinforming the public can have fatal consequences - as the Guardian itself reported last month.
The truth is that Nicaragua's responsible measures to contain COVID-19 are internationally recognised and supported by, and in full coordination with, the World Health Organisation and in regional and bilateral cooperation with multiple countries, and that Nicaragua is an open, democratic and socially progressive society which guarantees freedom of speech, conscience and human rights to all its citizens
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