Sergio Ramirez: “No Compromises in Exchange for Freedom”
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The writer regretted that Daniel Ortega’s political prisoners are the dictatorship’s bargaining chip in exchange for easing sanctions.
HAVANA TIMES – Writer Sergio Ramirez said that political prisoners in Nicaragua should not be bargaining chips in the bilateral negotiations that Daniel Ortega Saavedra’s dictatorship is holding with US officials.
“They are hostages. Daniel Ortega is waiting for the moment when he will receive something valuable in exchange for the hostages that are in his power. Surely, he would want sanctions to be lifted by the United States or to ease them,” Ramirez told 100% Noticias while receiving an honorary doctorate awarded from the National University (UNA) in Costa Rica.
Ramirez dedicated the recognition to the more than 180 political prisoners who remain in the different jails throughout Nicaragua.
“I have heard that they are negotiating privately with the United States government,” he added.
“I hope that their release happens as soon as possible, because they are unjustly imprisoned and all legal grounds are false,” Ramírez said, who in the 1980s was part of the Governing Junta with the current ruler Daniel Ortega.
“There are people who have the right to continue thinking what they want and return freely to their homes and, hopefully, not in exchange of any compromise because there is no reason to make compromises in exchange for freedom,” the writer pointed out. Ramirez is in exile due to the arrest warrant against him by the Ortega Murillo dictatorship.
Regarding the detained opponents, he insisted that “they are hostages, not prisoners” of the Ortega Murillo dictatorship.
Together against the dictatorship
The award-winning author took the opportunity to call on Nicaraguan opponents to put aside political differences and unite to achieve the end of the dictatorship that has been labelled by experts and historians as one of the bloodiest in the history of Latin America.
“We must all stand together and get rid of the dictatorship. We want a democratic Nicaragua. There should be no differences. The struggle is to change the regime in Nicaragua not among the same Nicaraguans who oppose Ortega,” he stated.
As far as the controversy of inviting dictatorships such as Daniel Ortega’s to the Summit of the Americas, Ramirez said that it would be “a real attack on the efforts to restore democracy as the rule of coexistence in Latin America.”
Sergio Ramirez added, “to voluntarily sit in a summit where democracy is to be strengthened, seems to me to be a political mistake.”
Calls on Chaves to welcome immigrants
The 2017 Cervantes Prize winner asked the Administration of Rodrigo Chaves in Costa Rica, to continue with open doors for Nicaraguan immigrants persecuted by the dictatorship in Nicaragua.
“Many are in poor economic conditions, that is difficult. But here they have been welcomed and I am confident that this government will continue with the same policy of welcoming those persecuted in Nicaragua who seek refuge in Costa Rica, because this is a country that has always been an island of democratic security in Central America,” he said.
Ramirez recommended all Nicaraguans to “give each other energy” from any country where they are in exile. He expressed that he has been able to share with compatriots in Costa Rica, the United States, Spain and Mexico.