Nicaragua on Tuesday barred the EU's designated ambassador following criticism of its "systemic repression" of dissent in the five years since anti-government protests were put down with a heavy hand.
Foreign minister Denis Moncada said the Central American country decided to block ambassador-in-waiting Fernando Ponz in response to an "interventionist, bold and insolent communique" from the European Union.
"In these circumstances and in the face of the permanent siege on the right of our people to national sovereignty, we will not receive their representative," Moncada said in a note addressed to Brussels.
The European Union, in a statement Tuesday, said that since 2018, when thousands took to the streets in anti-government protests, "the people of Nicaragua have faced systemic repression."
A clampdown on those protests, observers said, left more than 350 dead, hundreds imprisoned and more than 100,000 in exile, and prompted a UN Human Rights Council probe.
Since then, the government has jailed hundreds of critics, including several would-be challengers to President Daniel Ortega in 2021 elections, shuttered universities and trade unions and banned NGOs.
Ortega was a leader in the leftist Sandinista government that ruled Nicaragua 1979-1990, and won a vote to return to office in 2007, reelected in successive campaigns discredited by observers.
He has engaged in increasingly authoritarian practices, quashing presidential term limits and seizing control of all branches of state.
The United Nations and Western governments have repeatedly accused Ortega's government of illegally attempting to crush any and all opposition.
"The European Union has consistently condemned this repression, repeatedly calling for the liberation of all political prisoners, the full return to the rule of law as well as the return of international human rights organizations to the country," the latest EU statement said.
Moncada hit back that the criticism was telling of the "imperialist and colonialist positions that characterize the European Union."
- 'Cry for justice' -
As ties with the West worsened, Nicaragua last year kicked out then-EU ambassador Bettina Muscheidt and denied entry to the new US envoy due to what it called an "interfering" attitude.
The bloc, in turn, declared Nicaragua's ambassador "persona non grata."
It also prolonged sanctions against 21 individuals and three entities given the "deteriorating political and social situation" in Nicaragua -- including Ortega's wife and vice-president Rosario Murillo.
The steps included an assets freeze and travel ban.
The report, entitled: "A cry for justice: 5 years of oppression and resistance in Nicaragua," accuses the regime of a wide range of human rights violations including arbitrary detention, torture and extrajudicial killings.
The government maintains the 2018 protests were part of a failed coup backed by Washington.
It called a march for the capital Managua on Wednesday on what Ortega has declared a "Day of Peace" on the anniversary of the protests.
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© Agence France-Presse
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