Chile and Argentina are offering Nicaraguan exiles citizenship in their countries after Nicaragua's President Daniel Ortega recently stripped his critics and opposition figures of their citizenship.

Spain has also made the same offer to Nicaraguan exiles as more than 300 critics from Nicaragua lost their citizenship in their home country, according to Axios.

On February 9, at least 222 former political prisoners in Nicaragua deported to the United States were declared statelessness. Some of them are included in the list of Nicaragua's leading opposition activists.

A week later, Ortega's authoritarian regime stripped the citizenship of 94 Nicaraguans, which included some of Nicaragua's celebrated writers and journalists.

A U.S. State Department spokesperson condemned the move made against opposition figures. Other organizations who also denounced Ortega's decision include Amnesty International and Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

The Nicaraguan exiles were charged with treason for supporting anti-government demonstrations, which started in 2018. Nicaragua's two most well-known living writers, Sergio Ramirez and Gioconda Belli, were included in the list of those exiled and charged with treason.

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Daniel Ortega on Nicaraguan Exiles

Daniel Ortega's government called Nicaraguan exiles, who were stripped of their citizenship, "traitors to the motherland," according to The Guardian. The Nicaraguan president defended his decision to deport his imprisoned opponents, claiming they were behind the protests, which he alleged to be a foreign-funded plot to overthrow him.

Ivan Briscoe of the International Crisis Group said that the release of the prisoners was to decrease the "public costs of his repression," especially while the international community is watching.

Briscoe added that Ortega would prefer to impose a "low-level authoritarian" regime while hiding the more visible forms of abuses. Ortega's move to strip the opposition of their citizenship was not a new tactic. Chile faced the same incident in the 1970s with the Pinochet dictatorship stripping the citizenship of Orlando Letelier.

Peter J. Spiro, an international law professor at Temple University, said Ortega's move also has some resemblance to what was done before in Bahrain, where a court removed the citizenships of 115 people in one mass trial on charges of terrorism.

Nicaragua's Forced Exiles

In a statement, Erika Guevara Rosas, Amnesty International's director for the Americas, said Daniel Ortega is trying to replace the "unjust imprisonment" in the country with forced exile. The Amnesty statement added that Ortega's government is embedding its systematic policy of repression in the country.

The group also called on the international community to reassess its efforts in facing the new abuses conducted by the Nicaraguan government. Spain has offered citizenship to the 222 exiles, while the United States has granted Nicaraguans a two-year temporary protection.

However, Jennie Lincoln, an academic in contact with many of the exiles, said many of the former prisoners in the U.S. were left in "a state of legal and mental flux," and "psychologically they are stateless." 

Meanwhile, Bishop Rolando Alvarez, head of the Matagalpa diocese, made a heroic stand to stay in Nicaragua. He refused the offer of exile and did not get on the plane to the U.S. with the deportees earlier this month.

The bishop, who was also stripped of his Nicaraguan citizenship, noted that doing so would be like admitting to the crime he was accused of. Alvarez was reportedly offered two options, exile or jail, to which the bishop chose the latter. He said he refused to "leave his homeland."

READ MORE: Nicaragua President Daniel Ortega's Critic Edgard Paralles Picked Up by Two People Not in Police Uniform and Was Detained

This article is owned by Latin Post.

Written by: Mary Webber

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