Ovide Bastien

Maurice Lemoine on Nicaragua Ovide Bastien

The Nicaraguan popular uprising of April 2018 against Daniel Ortega and his wife and vice president Rosario Murillo left more than 325 dead, 2,000 wounded, 600 political prisoners and 60,000 refugees. Though the brutal government crackdown of mid-July successfully dismantled the hundreds of street barricades protestors had built in cities, government control is based solely on fear and repression, as well as propaganda in media ever more monopolized by the Ortega family itself. Maurice Lemoine, former editor-in-chief of the Monde Diplomatique, nevertheless continues supporting Ortega. Like many other leftists, he claims that Ortega was victim of a coup attempt. This fact, he says, was totally ignored by mainstream media which has long abandoned criteria of professional journalism. Ovide Bastien, who visited Nicaragua annually in the last 23 years - from 1995 to 2011 accompanying students and from 2012 to 2018 collaborating in development projects - argues that Lemoine, by prioritizing the prism - rise of the Latin American right supported by the United States - while ignoring numerous basic facts in the recent history of Nicaragua, commits the very sin he says mainstream media falls into: not respecting basic criteria of professional journalism. His analysis reflects fundamentalism and is tantamount to contempt for the immense suffering of the Nicaraguan people.