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According to the national press, the government of President Daniel Ortega declared the European Union ambassador to the country “persona non grata” and had requested her expulsion from the country. The news comes after the bloc’s intervention in the United Nations General Assembly, where Brussels asked the government of Daniel Ortega to release political prisoners and respect human rights, among others.
The government of Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega declared the ambassador of the European Union, Bettina Muscheidt, “persona non grata” and asked her to leave the Central American country, for “interference and disrespect for national sovereignty,” according to the country’s press. Central American, citing diplomatic sources in Brussels.
According to these sources, Muscheidt was summoned by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Latin American country, which told her that she was no longer welcome in the country.
The national newspaper ‘La Prensa’, whose newsroom is in exile in the midst of a harsh campaign of repression against voices opposed to the president, published this information.
“The ambassador of the European Union in Nicaragua, Bettina Muscheidt, was urged to leave the country today after a meeting with the Ortega foreign minister, Denis Moncada,” the local newspaper said on September 28.
The decision would be the latest in a series of measures aimed at silencing opponents or their critics. In recent times, the government has shut down independent media outlets and has lashed out at the opposition by sending several leaders to jail.
Ambassador Muscheidt had been in Nicaragua since 2021. The Ortega Executive has not issued any statements in this regard so far.
A forceful intervention of the EU regarding Nicaragua before the United Nations
Muscheidt’s departure from Nicaragua would come after the intervention of the European Union in the UN General Assembly, where the bloc urged Ortega to “restore democracy” and “end all repression, including repression against political opponents clergy, the independent media, civil society and human rights defenders”.
A week ago, the European Parliament approved a resolution on Nicaragua. Brussels has established sanctions against officials, government institutions, relatives and relatives of Daniel Ortega, after being accused of human rights violations.
The former Nicaraguan ambassador to the Organization of American States, Arturo McFields, who resigned from his post in March, assured that Muscheidt was “vulgarly expelled.”
Managua has rejected other diplomats in recent months. For example, in June it did not receive the candidate for Nicaraguan ambassador to the United States, Hugo Rodríguez, and in February, the Vatican ambassador, Waldemar Stanislaw Sommertag, was declared “persona non grata” and had to leave the country.
The Ortega government has also received strong criticism from citizens, who took to the streets in 2018 and were repressed by the police. In its first year, the crisis in the country, increased after these protests, left at least 355 dead, according to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR).
In the 2021 presidential elections, in which seven of Ortega’s main opponents were imprisoned, the president was criticized internationally for holding an election that was described as a “farce.”
With Reuters and EFE
