Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega escalates diplomatic crisis with US and Europe

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega has decided to break ties with the Netherlands in what is the latest diplomatic feud to be sparked by the former guerilla. The Nicaraguan Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Friday that it had severed all diplomatic ties with the European country because it “offended and keeps offending Nicaraguan families.”

The decision to break ties was made after the Dutch ambassador for Central America, Christine Pirenne, informed the Nicaraguan government that the Netherlands would not be funding a $21.5 million hospital promised long ago. The news outraged Ortega, who accused the ambassador of treating Nicaragua as if it were “a Dutch colony.”

“Those who come to disrespect our people, our homeland, they should not appear again in Nicaragua. And we do not want relations with that interventionist government,” he said during his speech on Friday, which marked the 43rd anniversary of the founding of Nicaragua’s repressive National Police. “We [the Sandinista government] continue to open hospitals, even when we are met with human misery. The human misery of a European country, the Netherlands!” he added.

Diplomatic sources told EL PAÍS that the Netherlands had suspended the hospital project due to the “mishandling of funds, lack of transparency, and the serious human rights situation in Nicaragua.”

“The Netherlands regrets the disproportionate decision by Nicaragua to break off diplomatic relations. We take a firm stand on the worsening democratic structures and human rights violations in Nicaragua,” Dutch Foreign Minister Wopke Hoekstra said via Twitter on Saturday. “Other countries have also noticed difficulties in maintaining an open dialogue with Nicaragua. We will discuss our next steps with the EU.”

The clash with the Netherlands followed a week of heightened tensions with the European Union and the United States.

On Friday, Nicaragua’s Vice President Rosario Murillo, the wife of Ortega, also announced that the Central American country would not accept the new US-appointed ambassador Hugo Rodriguez as its representative in Managua. Ortega initially signed off on the appointment, but withdrew his support in July after Rodriguez told the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee that he would continue to advocate for an end of human rights violations in Nicaragua.

“The United States has spoken out against these abuses, and, if confirmed [as ambassador], I will continue to do so, not because we have any intention to determine Nicaragua’s internal affairs, but because it is our commitment under the Inter-American Charter, which both the United States and Nicaragua signed in 2001,” Rodriguez told the committee.

Despite Nicaragua’s objections, the Joe Biden administration appointed Rodriguez as ambassador on Thursday. Ortega railed against the decision during his speech to police forces. “The candidate for ambassador to Nicaragua appeared before the Senate, and what did he do? He insulted and disrespected us,” he said on Friday. “So we immediately said ‘get out, get out and stay out, and he can continue yelling whatever he likes out there, but here in our country, our flag is respected.’”

On Thursday, in another speech, Ortega attacked the Vatican, Chilean President Gabriel Boric and Brian Nichols, White House Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, who he described as a “poor Black man” with a “bulldog face.” Boric and other Latin American leaders, who have called for the release of political prisoners, were branded as “lapdogs” of the United States and the European Union.

And on Wednesday, Nicaragua declared the European Union ambassador, Bettina Muscheidt, “persona non grata” and gave her three days to leave the country. The decision was made after the EU delegation demanded freedom for Nicaragua’s political prisoners at the United Nations General Assembly last week.

“The EU profoundly regrets and rejects this unjustified and unilateral decision,” the European External Action Service (EEAS) said in a statement released on Sunday, a day after Muscheidt left Nicaragua. “The EU also profoundly regrets the disproportional and unjustified unilateral decision taken on Friday by the Nicaraguan government to cut diplomatic ties with the kingdom of the Netherlands and expresses its unwavering support to the Dutch government,” it added, warning that it would respond in a “firm and proportional manner.”

In recent months, Nicaragua has also rejected all proposals for dialogue, including those put forward by Pope Francis, Colombian President Gustavo Petro and the US government.

“Ortega’s strategy is to escalate the crisis to a point where only the use of force will solve it, but he knows very well that the use of force is not an option the international community is going to consider,” Eliseo Núñez, a former opposition deputy in Nicaragua, told EL PAÍS. “Everyone believed that they could push Ortega to the brink of the abyss, but he has taken the international community to that brink and is forcing it to choose between two options: a global economic blockade, which would collapse Nicaragua, or to sit back and wait to see what happens.”

Some analysts believe that Washington is seeking to exhaust all diplomatic routes with Nicaragua via Ambassador Rodriguez in order to justify future action against the country, such as expelling it from the DR-CAFTA free trade agreement.

“Ortega has been using vulgar, racist and blasphemous rhetoric,” Arturo McFields, Nicaragua’s former ambassador to the Organization of American States (OAS), told EL PAÍS. “It is a narrative that is aligned with Russia’s foreign policy. Right now, Russia is facing NATO, the United States and the European Union. Ortega is sticking in a parasitic way to the foreign policy of Moscow and China.”

McFields recalled that Nicaragua was one of the seven countries that did not want the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, to appear remotely at the United Nations General Assembly. “I believe that in the next few days, Ortega is going to break diplomatic relations with other countries in the European Union,” said McFields.