UNAB Calls for Protests in the Patriotic Month

The Blue and White National Unity (UNAB) calls on Nicaraguan citizens to join the campaign of protests against the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo, which has viciously repressed all the demonstrations against it.

Actions such as waving the flag of Nicaragua, during Independence Month, and stopping consuming liquor are considered acts of rebellion against a dictatorship that oppresses them.

Ivania Alvarez, from the political council of UNAB, said that the sale of cigarettes and alcoholic beverages generates a lot of taxes to the Ortega dictatorship, so she emphasized: “we have the power to stop that, stop consuming.” The consumers’ strike is scheduled for September 13, two days before the 198^th anniversary of the independence of Central America.

In addition to the consumers’ strike, the UNAB will try to march—once again—to demand the release of political prisoners. “While there are more than 130 political prisoners, more than 80,000 Nicaraguans in exile, media outlets confiscated…in Nicaragua nothing is normal, that is why we call the people of Nicaragua to a national march,” Alvarez said.

The march is planned for Saturday, September 21, in Managua, but there is still no defined route and UNAB members are trying to obtain authorization from the National Police, an institution that—since September 2018—maintains a de facto ban on all protests against the regime and instead guarantees security only to the pro Ortega political rallies.

Another form of citizen’s resistance is to place the blue and white flag in visible places, but upside down with a black ribbon in mourning for the hundreds of people killed in the country.

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“As a symbol of the triumph of the national flag over any other party flag, we invite Nicaraguan citizens to voluntarily carry the blue and white flag on their means of transportation, home, business or any other visible place,” Alvarez said.

En este mes de septiembre azul y Blanco consumamos con responsabilidad por Nicaragua. Cambiando nuestros hábitos de consumo disminuimos los ingresos del régimen . #ParodeConsumo #UnidadNacional pic.twitter.com/ADpZjZs3SI

— Unidad Nacional Azul y Blanco (@UnidadNic) September 3, 2019

Far from reality

The announcement of a protest campaign by UNAB came a day after the head of the Nicaraguan Army, General Julio Cesar Aviles Castillo, swore allegiance to the Ortega dictatorship and accused -without mentioning names or evidences-,“non-governmental organizations and others, who made calls to loyal comrades to open the possibility of giving a coup d’état to the legitimately constituted Government, which we will never do,” he emphasized.

“They are the same people who pressed for us to fulfill a mission that is not within our competence, [disarming Ortega’s paramilitary forces] ignoring or wanting to ignore the laws of the Republic, pretending that we will go out and provoke a war between brothers,” Aviles continued.

Guillermo Incer, a representative of UNAB, said the statements of General Aviles are far from the reality that exists in Nicaragua. He recalled that international human rights organizations “attest to the crimes against humanity that were committed here (in Nicaragua)” and the silence of the armed forces during the repression.

In addition, the UNAB representative insisted that “it is the obligation of the Nicaraguan Army” to disarm the paramilitaries that in collaboration with the National Police caused the death of 328 people during 2018.