THE Nicaragua Solidarity Campaign Action Group (NSCAG) has criticised Amnesty International for its “highly biased” coverage and reporting of the political crisis in Central American country.

In its report published today entitled Dismissing the Truth, the NSCAG called Amnesty’s October 2018 report Instilling Terror: From Lethal Force to Persecution “unbalanced” and said the NGO is “completely failing to explain the context for or causes of the recent violence in Nicaragua.”

The report challenges Amnesty’s conclusion that the country’s Sandinista government instigated “a strategy of indiscriminate repression with intent to kill not only in order to completely smash the protests, but also to punish those who participated in them.” 

Amnesty, the NSCAG report says, “has a history of producing controversial and unbalanced reports about Nicaragua that began soon after the Sandinista revolution defeated the Somoza dictatorship in 1979.”

The report also says Amnesty “appears to see its role as examining solely the alleged violations by the state, without considering the violence faced by the state. “

The NSCAG says the report’s aim is “not to exonerate the Nicaraguan government from blame for any deaths but to show that Amnesty completely fails to provide a balanced assessment of events” and ignores the interests of a large number of Nicaraguans “who want the country to return to the state of peace and security which it enjoyed before the protests began.”