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Nicaragua Group Protests Undoing of Land Reform
THE Nicaraguan Centre for Human Rights (CEN-IDH) has charged the Army and National Police with utilising all forms of violence and humiliation' to evacuate rural farmers from lands distributed to them through constitutional decrees 3-38 and 7-60 introduced by the Sandinistas during the 1980s. Under these land reform decrees, farmlands and other properties abandoned or liquidated before, during or after the revoluUon- were parcelled out to landless cam pesinos in the form of small family subsistence plots or cooperative farms.
According to agreements signed by the government. Nicaragua's new privatisation process was to avoid violent evictions of occupied areas and focus instead on uninhabited entitles such as factories or state farming cooperatives. The privatisation or return to prior owners of lands inhabited by campesinos was to be fairly negotiated', with financial compensation for those people asked to relocate.
But military actions of the past few months have contradicted agreements made by the government. CENIDH reported that in June, 21 farms belonging to members of the Rural Workers' Association (ATC) were violently 'cleaned
out' by members of the Army and National Police, In prepa ration for the return of the lands to their prior owners. According to CENIDH, 11 of the 21 properties evacuated formerly belonged to the family of ex-ruler Anastasio So-moza. The Somoza family now live in the US where they still command substantial political and economic prestige and have lobbied Congress and political allies tn the Bush administration to pressure President Chamorro to rectify the land question’.
Both the Army and the Po lice (nearly half of which is now estimated to be composed of ex-contras) have been accused in recent months of being unnecessarily brutal to popular sector demonstrators and. for the first time since the Somoza regime, collaborating in Joint repressive operations against civilians.
One of the most alarming dislocations occurred on 30 June at the Santa Josefina plantation in Matagalpa. when 300 combined police and army troops arrived with attack dogs and violently evicted 40 cam-
pesino families The Nicaraguan daily El Nuevo D^rio reported that soldiers and police beat men. women and Children and threatened to kill the campesinos if they did not leave the premises. Security forces burned homes and crops and arrested many ATC activists.
According to CENIDH s president, Vilma Nunez, the arrests were Illegal and based on stereotypical accusations such as usurping private homes and damaging private property, which under decrees 3-38 and 7-60 have no basis. She said that most of the cam pcsinos has lived on the lands in question for years and that many possessed land titles granted by the Sandinista government.
To exacerbate the situation, added Nunez, the ATC leaders were jailed without a judicial order, clearly in an attempt to frighten people and dissolve the (rural campesino) movement’ in order to continue evicting people illegally. CENIDH has called on Nicaraguan judicial authorities to release the jailed ATC members, some
of whom have been held illegally for more than a month. ATC leaders have decried the government s clean up' policy sayfng, nwy'wA uldn't resolve the land problem this way. if they really cared about national peace ant! economic stability
During April. May and June, 4,000 campesinos on small farms In the departments of Matagalpa, Jinotego. Chinan dega and Leon were violently forced off subsistence plots distributed to them under land reform decrees. At the same time, thousands of poor families in Managua were told by security forces to evacuate their neighbourhoods, tn violation of laws 85 and 86 of the Constitution. The pro-government daily La Prcnsa reported that on 14 June, security forces tortured a group of campesinos in Matagalpa. tying them up, beating and threatening them to persuade them to abandon their homesteads.
CENIDH staled that the repressive actions by Nicaraguan security forces have not been limited to illegal expulsions, but have Included extended
military occupation of the vacated lands — a state of terror and blackmail' to prevent campesinos from organising. CENIDH criticised the way the residents were relocated, as an unjust and imposed departure... part of a policy of systematic political prosecution and selective arrests of campesino leaders'. Many campesino leaders are upset about the Sandinista government's failure to complete the legal paperwork on Its land reform actions. Only about 20% of those who benefited from the process actually received formal land titles, making the present dilemma even more difficult.
Political analysis explain President Chamorro s acceptance of the rising levels of military repression against rural campesinos as a result of increased political pressure on her administration, both from the ultra-right faction of her National Opposition Unity coalition and from the US Congress. I leaded by conservative Senator Jesse Helms (R-NC). one of the most ardent Opponents of the former San-
dinista government, the US Congress voted in cnrly June to withhold US S 116 million In vital economic aid to Nicaragua, pending more progress in the privatisation process and the return of nationalised properties lo their prior owners.
In an effort lo end the US freeze, Nicaragua's Foreign Minister Ernesto Lea! an ' nouneed a new plan 'to return properties, or pay damages to former owners of properties confiscated by the Sandinistas. There are 4,700 claims on 18,000 properties confiscated between 1979 and 1990, and the Nicaraguan government has instituted a property ombudsman post in the attorney general's office lo study the claims and execute the returns as quickly as possible’.
Leal has argued to Washington officials that the Nicaraguan government has, in fact, achieved impressive progress in the privatisation process, given the fact that it has managed to privatise nearly 50% of all slate companies. despite Intense opposition from workers. He also pointed to Chamorro's other major economic achievements, her renegotiation of Nicaragua's USS 11,000 million foreign debt and her drastic lowering of Inflation. — Third World Network Features.