Trump administration: Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega & family need to 'get out of the way'
WASHINGTON -- The Trump administration called for new leadership in Nicaragua, charging that the government of President Daniel Ortega has hollowed out democratic institutions, won’t cooperate with international human rights investigators and directed state security forces to violently suppress protests.
U.S. Ambassador Michael Kozak, of the State Department’s bureau of democracy, human rights and labor, told a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on Thursday that demonstrators have even been blocked from getting treatment for their injuries and government-run hospitals have reportedly required families to sign certificates that falsified the cause of deaths as a condition of retrieving relatives’ bodies.
Kozak and other administration officials told Congress that the only way to address the ongoing crisis in Nicaragua is with new elections that would allow the Nicaraguan people to pick new leadership.
“Nobody is going to be able to reconcile with the regime in power,” Kozak testified. “It’s really important for them to get out of the way and let the country make a future for itself. It’s how do you make that happen mechanically. How do you put enough pressure on the family basically to make that choice and get out of the way.”
Read more: https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/white-house/article214790385.html
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