A burned bus is seen during a protest against Nicaragua’s President Daniel Ortega’s government in Tipitapa, Nicaragua June 14, 2018.REUTERS/Oswaldo Rivas
June 14, 2018
By Alonso Soto
TIPITAPA, Nicaragua (Reuters) – Thousands of shopkeepers and businessmen in Nicaragua on Thursday heeded calls for a national strike by foes of President Daniel Ortega, and the action shut down much of the country after nearly two months of deadly protests urging his ouster.
Streets were deserted in cities and towns as banks and supermarkets, gas stations and corner stores were shuttered. Few people ventured out during the 24-hour stoppage.
Police officers with assault rifles lined the largely empty main streets of the capital Managua. The strike, organized by university students, farmers and business owners, was the latest tactic by a loose national alliance formed to dislodge the president.
“Look at this, it’s a desert,” said Juan Jose Murillo, 38, pointing to a vacant parking lot and the empty stalls of the usually bustling Huembes market, a central shopping destination.
Murillo, a street vendor, said he has struggled to make a living since demonstrations started. “I don’t support any political party, I just want the conflict to end.”
Ortega’s attempt to push through welfare cuts in April kicked off the bloodiest confrontations since a civil war ended in 1990. The government of the former Marxist guerilla and leader of the Sandinista rebel movement quickly dropped the planned welfare cuts. But the crackdown on protesters has sparked the biggest crisis he has faced since beginning his second stint as president in 2007.
Nearly 150 have been killed and hundreds injured in eight weeks of clashes between pro-Ortega forces and protesters armed with rocks, slings and homemade mortars.
A new round of talks between the government and civil society representatives were scheduled for Friday.
A previous round mediated by local Catholic bishops was suspended in late May after witnesses and rights groups accused government security forces of opening fire on thousands of demonstrators.
A few blocks from blood-spattered street barricades in Tipitapa, 13 miles (22 km) northeast of Managua, the silence was rent by cries of sorrow as relatives and friends gathered around the body of Agustin Mendoza, 22, his coffin streaked in the blue and white of the national flag.
Masked gunman in civilian clothes shot Mendoza Thursday morning as he was filming nearby clashes, according to a mourner who said Mendoza was a cousin. Video footage from a relative shows someone sprinting through a dispersing crowd of protesters and a bearded Mendoza falling to the ground, his jeans soaked in blood from a stomach wound.
(Reporting by Alonso Soto; Writing by Delphine Schrank)
