Tegucigalpa (EFE).- The Government of Nicaragua, through the Nicaraguan Social Security Institute (INSS), stopped paying old-age pensions to Nicaraguan opponents who were denationalized on February 10 after being declared “traitors to the homeland ”, denounced those affected this Saturday to the Confidencial digital medium.
Among those affected are the legendary former guerrilla commander Dora María Téllez, former comrade in arms of Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, and former member of the National Reconstruction Government Junta after the fall of the Somoza dictatorship, Moisés Hassan.
Also the former secretary of international relations of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) Julio López Campos; and the former guerrilla commander, historian and Sandinista dissident Mónica Baltodano.
In addition, the former Minister of Education and sociologist Humberto Belli, brother of the writer and poet Gioconda Belli; among others.
system wipes
According to those affected, between February 19 and 21, which is the date on which the INSS paid the old-age pension for this month, their relatives, to whom they left a special power to withdraw the payments, did not receive the pension under the argument that they did not appear in the records of the insured after being stripped of their nationality.
Until now, neither the Ortega government nor the INSS have published any regulations in this regard.
According to Confidencial, the executive president of the INSS, Roberto López, ordered the execution of the measure based on the sentences of the Court of Appeals of Managua, on February 9 and 10, respectively, which declared them stateless, traitors to the country and fugitives from justice.
Former Minister Belli, exiled in the US since June 2021, described the seizure of his pension, which was withdrawn by someone he trusted to whom he left a legal power of attorney, as “theft”, and this time he could not do it because, according to a INSS worker, “Mr. Belli is not in the system.”
“The sentence that declares us traitors to the country and strips us of our citizenship, orders our real estate to be frozen, but not an income that belongs to us by law, such as a pension, which is not a gift, but a right that we earned after save for many years,” Belli reproached, in statements to Confidencial.
“They are stealing it, because this type of sanction is not provided for in any law, nor in the Constitution,” he added.
They explore legal actions against the State of Nicaragua
Belli, who has Italian nationality, announced that he contacted the Italian Embassy in Nicaragua to request support and will seek a lawyer to explore legal options against the Nicaraguan State.
For his part, the former secretary of international relations of the FSLN, who received his pension payment in a bank account, classified the measure as “disgraceful, brutal, and contempt for human rights,” which “rounds off a set of atrocities that has no precedents in Latin America, nor in the world,” he denounced.
For the former Nicaraguan ambassador to the Organization of American States (OAS), Arturo McFields, who rebelled against Ortega for not allowing free elections in his country and who was also denationalized, the stripping of pensions from retirees is “a theft,” he wrote on Twitter.
Nicaragua has withdrawn the nationality of 317 Nicaraguans, among them the writers Sergio Ramírez and Gioconda Belli, the bishops Rolando Álvarez and Silvio Báez, the former commander of the revolution Luis Carrión, the former Sandinista vice chancellor Víctor Hugo Tinoco, the veteran rights defender Vilma Núñez, and the journalist Carlos Fernando Chamorro.
Nicaragua has been going through a political and social crisis since April 2018, which has worsened after the controversial general elections of November 7, 2021, in which Ortega was re-elected for a fifth term, fourth in a row and second together with his wife, Rosario Murillo. , as vice president, with her main contenders in prison or in exile.
