Chilean President Gabriel Boric on Saturday called his Nicaraguan counterpart, Daniel Ortega, a dictator, after expressing solidarity with opponents stripped of their Nicaraguan nationality.
“A fraternal hug to Gioconda, Ramírez, Sofía, Carlos and all those from whom Ortega sought to withdraw Nicaraguan nationality,” Boric wrote on Twitter.
It highlights writers Gioconda Belli and Sergio Ramírez, feminist activist Sofía Montenegro and journalist Carlos Fernando Chamorro Barrios.
“The dictator does not know that the homeland is in their hearts and in their actions, and does not deprive himself by decree. They are not alone!”, concluded the president.
The Chilean chancellery had already expressed on Thursday its condemnation of the Ortega government’s decision to withdraw the nationality of 94 Nicaraguan opponents in exile.
“Each day more” Nicaragua becomes “a totalitarian dictatorship, where any type of dissent is persecuted,” said Foreign Minister Antonia Urrejola at the time.
Chile is the first left-wing government in Latin America to openly condemn the Nicaraguan president’s measures.
With the decision to withdraw the nationality of these opponents, the Ortega government has permanently disqualified them from holding public office.
The Spanish government has offered to naturalize these opponents and 222 other Nicaraguan political prisoners who were released and deported to the United States last week.
The United States, the UN and various NGOs denounced the measures taken by Ortega, in power since 2007 and successively re-elected in contested elections.
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© Agence France-Presse