The Diplomat
Spanish Socialist MEP Ignacio Sánchez Amor proposed yesterday that the European Parliament should send a mission to Nicaragua to monitor human rights, although he acknowledged that if the agreement was adopted, dictator Daniel Ortega would not let it in.
Speaking in a debate on the situation in Nicaragua in Parliament’s Human Rights Subcommittee, Sánchez Amor accused Ortega of sinking his country, “with the old and rancid discourse of colonialism, sovereignty and non-interference”.
We Europeans have to overcome the fear of being accused of being colonialists and understand that if we defend a set of universal values, we have to defend them, without holding back because someone says we are interfering,” he said. Defending the set of values that we consider universal is never interference.
Sánchez Amor said that the Central American country was heading for elections in which the presence of members of the European Parliament would be highly undesirable, because they would be witnesses to a farce. He added that it would be important to carry out a human rights mission, “although we won’t do it because they won’t let us in”, he said, before insisting that we must advocate dialogue, but “with strong, sustained and selective pressure”.
