Nicaragua, September 8, 2021. The Public Prosecutor’s Office of Nicaragua ordered a search warrant and a prison warrant for the writer and journalist Sergio Ramírez. Ramirez, 79, served in the leftist Government Junta of National Reconstruction and as Vice President of the country 1985-1990 under the presidency of Daniel Ortega. On Wednesday, he has been formally accused of allegedly carrying out acts that promoted and incited hatred and violence and linked him to plans of «destabilization of the good progress of the country» and conspiracy to undermine national integrity.
The Public Prosecutor’s Office informed that the accusation was filed against Ramírez for having received, through the Luisa Mercado Foundation, money from the Violeta Barrios de Chamorro Foundation (FVBCH). The Public Prosecutor’s Office accuses the VFBCH of alleged misappropriation and laundering of money, goods, and assets.
In a public video broadcast on his Twitter account: @sergioramirezm, the journalist reacted. He said that the Ortega family dictatorship has accused him through its own Public Prosecutor’s Office of the same crimes for which many worthy and brave Nicaraguans are today imprisoned in the dungeons. He recalled that in 1977 the Somoza family already accused him of crimes similar to today’s and that dictatorships lack imagination and repeat their lies, viciousness, hatred, and whims. «They are the same delusions, the same blind stubbornness for power, and the same mediocrity of those who are having in their fist the repressive instruments, and having stripped themselves of all scruples, also believe that they are masters of the dignity, conscience, and freedom of others». He said that the only weapons he possesses are words, and they will never «impose silence on me».
The announcement of the Public Ministry generated a wave of rejection in social networks. It is part of a new chapter of persecution by Daniel Ortega’s dictatorship against intellectuals critical of the Government. Sergio Ramírez was vice president of the Sandinista government between 1985 and 1990 and founded the Movimiento Renovador Sandinista; he retired from politics in 1996.
In 2017, Ramirez was awarded the Cervantes Prize for his book «La fugitiva» (The Fugitive). «Allow me to dedicate this award to the memory of the Nicaraguans who in recent days have been killed in the streets for demanding justice and democracy, and to the thousands of young people who continue to fight, with no other weapons than their ideals because Nicaragua becomes a Republic again», were the words of his speech during the award ceremony.
In recent years Ramirez became a critic of power. During an interview with Mexican El Economista, he talked about the «great obsolescence» of the ultra-traditional left in Latin America: «a left that has been trapped in the past and that past deforms the thinking of the present», he assured. The writer is currently outside Nicaragua.