Carlos Sánchez Berzaín
January 4, 2019
(Interamerican Institute for Democracy) The use of the Interamerican Democratic Charter (IDC) against Daniel Ortega’s and Rosario Murillo’s regime has sparked Nicolas Maduro’s and Evo Morales’ violent defense. When we consider the objective reality of assassinations, torture, political imprisonments, violation of human rights, and all types of crime being committed, Maduro’s and Morales’ reaction, on behalf of Venezuela and Bolivia and in favor of the Nicaraguan regime, is a public confession and explicit evidence of the existence of an “organized criminal group” under the direction of Cuba of which they are part of.
The current international system has standards and procedural guidelines to stop and punish crimes committed by those illegal holders of power. Besides using the IDC, the United Nations’ organization is an opened option, but in the case of Nicaragua, Cuba, Venezuela, and Bolivia, the use of the Palermo Convention on Transnational Organized Crime would be faster and more effective.
Article 2 of the Palermo Convention indicates that “by organized criminal group, it shall be understood to be a structured group of three or more persons that exists during a certain time and deliberately acts for the purpose of committing one or more serious crimes, or those crimes listed under this present convention, with the intent to gain, directly or indirectly, a financial or other benefit or material gain”. It further defines that “by serious crime, it shall be understood that behavior that constitutes a punishable crime, punished with incarceration for a maximum of at least four years or with a greater sentence”.
I repeat, the dictators from Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Bolivia do not belong in the political realm and function within the realm of Transnational Organized Crime in order to indefinitely hang-on to power. Sixty years of dictatorship in Cuba are a vivid example of an endless, repetitive, series of crimes “iter criminis” that commits every and all types of recurring crime with impunity, and under the protection of political power. At the end of 2018, the axis of confrontation in the Americas is not ideological but factual and is “Transnational Organized Crime against Democracy.”
In Nicaragua, massive street protests began on 18 April of 2018 and Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo placed underway the application of measures and methods for social-control, designed, tested and tried by Cuba’s Castroist dictatorship. Up to now, this methodology has -in a sustained and recurrent manner- caused almost 500 deaths with evident assassinations, over 2,500 injured, more than 2,000 political prisoners subjected to torture, and an undetermined number of exiled, violating individual human rights and basic freedoms.
Ortega’s and Murillo’s crimes have been, and are, committed from their role as Nicaragua’s Heads of State, using the total concentration of political, legislative, judicial, economic, military, and police power and by the use of massive propaganda, using the Castroist Chavist, or 21st Century Socialism’s system, to ascend to power through elections and then dismantle democratic institutions afterwards, replacing them through the application of despicable laws, eliminating the Rule of Law, the separation and independence of the Branches of Government, annulling the opposition and supplanting it with functional accomplices.
Both; the Castroist Chavist system of building “21st Century Socialism dictatorships”, as well as the methodology for social control based on fear and the violation of human rights, are the creation of Cuba’s Castroist dictatorship. These have been applied for the past 20 years, starting by Venezuela with Hugo Chavez then Nicolas Maduro, in Ecuador with Rafael Correa, in Bolivia with Evo Morales, and in Nicaragua with Daniel Ortega. Other States, such as Argentina with the Kirchner’s, Brazil with Lula and Rousseff, and several Central America’s countries as El Salvador and Honduras, were well advanced undertakings, but were contained by democracy.
When dictator Nicolas Maduro babbles “the reprehensible Luis Almagro, shows once-again, his servility to the interests of the United States’ foreign policy …” and dictator Evo Morales fumes “we reject that by the Empire’s instructions and with the intent to topple governments, the OAS pretends to apply the Democratic Charter to Nicaragua” we are witnessing a response -orchestrated from Cuba- of the Transnational Criminal Group that without any reservation justifies the crimes that are committed in Nicaragua, because -following this very same agenda- they commit the same crimes in Venezuela where the IDC has already been applied, and in Bolivia where sooner than later the IDC will be applied.
Published in Spanish by Infobae.com on Sunday, December 30th, 2018
Translated from Spanish by; Edgar L. Terrazas, member of the American Translators’ Association, ATA # 234680.