Lula downplays Daniel Ortega’s dictatorship and proposes dialogue at the UN

After having denied ties with the dictator Daniel Ortega during the 2022 presidential campaign, the government of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) proposed to the Human Rights Council of the United Nations (UN) the establishment of a “constructive dialogue ” with the Nicaraguan regime.

The proposal, presented this Tuesday (7th) by Ambassador Tovar da Silva Nunes in Geneva, Switzerland, came with a caveat that the Brazilian government is concerned about “reports of serious violations of human rights” in the country. However, no strong condemnation against Ortega was given – the dictator was not even mentioned.

“The Brazilian government follows events in Nicaragua with great attention and is concerned about reports of serious violations of human rights and restrictions on democratic space in that country. In particular, summary executions, arbitrary arrests and torture against political dissidents” said the ambassador during session of the UN Human Rights Council this Tuesday.

Nunes added that “Brazil is ready to explore ways for this situation to be constructively addressed in dialogue with the government of Nicaragua and all relevant actors.” He also stated that Brazil is open to granting asylum to the more than 300 Nicaraguans expelled from the country by the Ortega regime.

The move comes after Brazil decided not to sign a joint declaration with 55 other countries against human rights violations practiced by the Ortega dictatorship.

A UN report, presented on Monday (6), documented cases of extrajudicial executions, arbitrary arrests, torture, including sexual violence, arbitrary deprivation of nationality, among other abuses. Oppression of Christians is also common in Nicaragua, where religious leaders have been jailed without trial for participating in demonstrations against Ortega. More recently, the dictatorship closed down the main employers’ organization in the country, in one of the hardest blows ever dealt by the regime against business chambers in Nicaragua.

The Brazilian position was sewn by the Itamaraty after Brazil’s suggestions for the text of the joint declaration against the Ortega dictatorship were not accepted by the other countries.

This is the first public nod that the Lula government makes to the dictator after the results of last year’s elections in Brazil. During the campaign, the PT’s defense even entered the Superior Electoral Court (TSE) to remove a publication from the social networks People’s Gazette that showed the historical relationship between Lula and Ortega.

Brazil’s position, however, has been criticized, even by members of the Planalto Palace. For this wing, the fact that Lula minimizes the effects of the Ortega dictatorship may generate a contradiction to the discourse in defense of human rights embraced by the government.

According to Horácio Lessa Ramalho, a political scientist and consultant in Government Relations at the Getúlio Vargas Foundation (FGV), the position of the Lula government in the UN council was already “predictable”.

“From now on, both this and several other issues that touch these allies of Lula and the PT, mainly in Latin America, we will hardly see positions in the opposite direction”, argues Ramalho.

UN report presents crimes against human rights in Nicaragua

For the UN, the Ortega regime committed several crimes against humanity in recent years. “Widespread human rights violations amounting to crimes against humanity are being committed against civilians by the government of Nicaragua for political reasons,” says the report presented this week.

The UN representatives also recalled the latest episodes involving Ortega’s decisions, such as the situation of more than 200 political prisoners, including opposition politicians and business leaders, detained during the political crisis in Nicaragua and later “deported” to the United States. United States, after negotiation with Washington. Some of those arrested were planning to run against Daniel Ortega in the 2021 election.

“On the same day, the Judiciary announced that these people had been ‘deported’ and that they had violated Law 1055, therefore being considered ‘traitors of the homeland’. The court ruling deprived all 222 individuals of their civil and political rights,” said UN Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights Ilze Brands Kehris.

Brazil’s positioning distances Lula from other left-wing presidents

The position of the Lula government in relation to the Nicaraguan regime put Brazil at odds with other left-wing leaders in South America, such as Chile and Colombia.

During the meeting of the UN council, the Chilean government, led by left-wing President Gabriel Boric, pointed to the risk of an even greater humanitarian crisis due to human rights violations by the Ortega dictatorship.

In addition to Chile and Colombia, the same position was defended by the governments of Peru, Paraguay and Ecuador. In the opinion of political scientist Horácio Ramalho, Boric paves the way for the new left to distance itself from the position adopted by Lula in relation to leftist dictatorships such as in Nicaragua and Venezuela.

“Recently the President of Chile made a speech calling for this reflection. He defended that one cannot turn a blind eye to these democratic issues and he makes a very harsh criticism, precisely against Venezuela and Nicaragua. So I believe that at a certain point this new left distances itself from the Lula government”, completed Ramalho.

In addition to the South American bloc, the European Union also condemned Ortega’s human rights violations and attacks against democracy and the rule of law. Along the same lines, the US government said it was “concerned about the deterioration” of the situation and described the behavior of the Nicaraguan government as “deplorable”.

TSE blocked posts that pointed to Lula and Ortega’s relationship in the presidential campaign

Lula’s silence in relation to complaints against human rights violations by the dictatorship in Nicaragua in the UN council is nothing new in PT governments. During the first terms, the PT member met several times with the Nicaraguan dictator to discuss, for example, regional integration.

Last year, during the election period, the TSE accepted Lula’s campaign request and ordered Twitter and Facebook to remove 31 posts that pointed to Lula da Silva’s historic support for the Daniel Ortega dictatorship.

Judicial censorship, of a preliminary (provisional) nature, even reached a tweet from People’s Gazetteon September 22, with the news that the Ortega regime had cut off the signal for the CNN news channel in that country.

In the decision, Minister Paulo de Tarso Sanseverino responded to a request for censorship by Lula’s coalition, which alleged that, together, the posts promoted a “repeated smear campaign” against the PT, “with the aim of instilling in voters the idea of that he persecutes and threatens Christians, as well as his ally and friend, Nicaraguan dictator Daniel Ortega”.

According to the minister, the posts, presented to the TSE by Lula’s coalition, had “manifestly untrue content in which the misinformation is propagated that the candidate Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva defended the invasion of churches, would persecute Christians, as well as support the dictatorship of Nicaragua”.

Lula compared Ortega to Germany’s Angela Merkel

In 2021, for example, the PT summit even published a note welcoming the elections in Nicaragua, which gave victory to dictator Daniel Ortega, in power for 14 years. The election, contested by international observers and politicians, was held without the presence of Ortega’s opponents, who were arrested. The PT demonstration ended up being criticized by both opponents and supporters of former President Lula.

With the episode, the acronym deleted the note from its website. And the president of the PT, deputy Gleisi Hoffmann (PR), claimed that the text on the elections in Nicaragua had not been submitted “to the party leadership”.

Weeks later, in an interview with the Spanish newspaper El País, Lula compared Ortega to leaders of democratic countries who came to power in clean and uncontested elections.

“Why Angela Merkel [ex-primeira-ministra da Alemanha] can stay 16 years in power, and Daniel Ortega not? Why Margaret Thatcher [ex-primeira ministra britânica] can stay in power for 12 years, and [Hugo] Chavez [ex-ditador falecido da Venezuela] no? Why Felipe Gonzalez [ex-primeiro ministro da Espanha] could you stay in power for 14 years?”, questioned the PT.

Faced with negative repercussions both among allies and opponents, Lula said that his statements to the newspaper were “distorted”. “It is false and in bad faith to claim that Lula would have supported leftist dictatorships (…). I can’t judge what happened in Nicaragua, I don’t know what people did to get arrested. But if Daniel Ortega arrested the opposition to run for election, as they did in Brazil against me, he is totally wrong”, he claimed at the time.

In addition to the nod to the dictator of Nicaragua, the Lula government also reestablished Brazil’s relations with the regime of Nicolás Maduro, from Venezuela, interrupted during the government of former President Jair Bolsonaro (PL).