What the State of Emergency means in practice MANAGUA -- When President Daniel Ortega renewed and broadened State of Emergency regulations on October 15, imperialism launched a new campaign of slanders against the Sandinista revolution.
"The measure is another step by the Sandinistas towards totalitarianism," said the White House mouthpiece Larry Speakes.
"It looks like we're taking steps towards totalitarianism," chimed in Cardinal Miguel Obando y Bravo, the most prominent opponent of the revolution inside Nicaragua.
The big-business press joined in on the campaign. Managua-based correspondents falsely reported that there was a state of siege, that martial law had been declared, that a curfew had been imposed, and that even the right to political asylum had been abolished.
A constant theme of such reports was that the decree had caught everyone by surprise and showed that the Sandinistas believed their grip on political power was slipping.
The truth is, of course, that Nicaragua has been under a State of Emergency not since October 15, but since March, 1982, when intensifying US aggression forced the government to suspend many constitutional guarantees. A State of Emergency has been in effect continuously since then and Sandinista leaders have always said that it could be lifted if and only if the Reagan administration stopped its war against the Nicaraguan revolution. But just the opposite has happened.
NICARAGUA All the efforts of the government and of the people must be directed at defeating this aggression on the military, economic and political terrains."
Under the regulations in effect until October 15, freedom of the press and normal judicial process for people accused of counterrevolutionary crimes had been suspended.
The suspension of the right to habeas corpus and to immediately consult an attorney upon arrest, which have been highlighted in the capitalist press as one of the worst "abuses" of the new emergency regulations, in fact have been in effect for a long time. Normal constitutional guarantees, however, continue in force for all cases not involving counterrevolutionary activity.
Additional rights affected under the October 15 decree include freedom of travel within the country; the right to hold public rallies and demonstrations; the right to strike; and freedom of association.
By and large, these are not blanket suspensions. For example, people can still organize public meetings, but must first obtain a permit, and the police is empowered to deny it. Similarly, unions, political parties and other organizations continue to function normally, but the government now has the legal authority to regulate or suspend their activities.
The exception is the right to strike. Sandinista leaders say the country's economic situation is so grave no work interruptions can be permiteed. (The overwhelming majority of the unions, which are led by the Sandinista Front, adopted a no-strike pledge more than a year ago, and there have been no sionificant work stonnades since then significant work stoppages since then.)
Many of these guarantees had also been suspended under earlier State of Emergency decrees until the presidential and National Assembly elections a year ago. At that time, virtually all restrictions except for those on the press and on the judicial rights of suspected counterrevolutionaries were lifted. Moreover, censorship was loosened to a large degree.
This was a concession to the opposition capitalist parties, stripping away pretexts they were using to impugn the legitimacy of the elections and boycott them. It was also a reaction to the US Congress's decision to suspend open funding for the contras.
This was not the only conciliatory gesture made by the Nicaraguan government at the time. Others included an amnesty extended to all contras who laid down their weapons, including top leaders; and Nicaragua's offer to sign the September, 1984, Contadora peace plan although it contained many concessions to Washington.
3
JOSE G. PEREZ
As President Ortega explained in his October announcement, the White House "has continued carrying out its unjust, immoral and illegal aggression against the people of Nicaragua. All the political and diplomatic efforts of the Nicaraguan government, the nations of the Contadora group and other peace-loving countries have been unfruitful in changing this aggressive and criminal policy of the US government."
Despite huge losses, the Nicaraguan people remain finn and the revolution is advancing. In his October 15 speech, Ortega said that the contras "have been hit hard by the people and show symptoms of demoralization and defeat."
In response, the US government is trying to revitalize the contra army. Washington has launched a new offensive against "the efforts of the Contadora group to reach a balanced and just agreement in Central America" and there have been growing tensions
International Viewpoint 25 November 1985 on both the Honduran and Costa Rican borders that could serve as a pretext for a direct US invasion.
Part of this imperialist counter-offensive, Ortega said, has been a step up in the activities inside the country of the allies, of the agents of imperialism who act from within some political parties, mass media and religious institutions." Their goals are "to sabotage the military defense of the homeland, place obstacles in the way of economic policies, sabotage the national effort to raise production, and provoke confusion and discontent among the masses."
Explaining the need to further tighten emergency regulations, Ortega said that "The government and the heroic people of Sandino cannot permit that these actions ... continue to be carried out with impunity.
"The brutal aggression by the United States and its internal allies has created a truly extraordinary situation.
The people mobilised to defend the revolution. Summer 1985 (DR)
Speaking to reporters in Managua on October 23, Commander of the Revolution Bayardo Arce, a member of the FSLN National Directorate, drew a balance sheet on the US response to these actions.
"That has happened in the last year Did we moderate Reagan's policies? No. In the past year, they imposed the economic blockade, restored funding to the counterrevolution, and increased all the campaigns of sabotage against us.
"What did we gain with Contadora?" he continued. "Was the September 1984, Act maintained? No. A new Act emerged, making more concessions to the United States."
Arce also addressed one of the main arguments used by liberal commentators, who say that Ortega's declaration was a "mistake" because it damaged Nicaragua's "image" abroad.
The FSLN leadership, Arce said, knew it would be forced to pay a political price for the decision, but that "when external factors might affect domestic ones, we give preference to the domestic ones"
"We appreciate international opinion, we appreciate even more international solidarity," Arce explained, "but we appreciate most of all the willingness and capacity of our people to continue forward with its revolution"
He also took up the parallel claim that the tightening of the State of Emergency shows that the Sandinistas are losing the war. "Anyone who watches boxing knows that the one who is winning and has his opponent cornered doesn't withdraw to his own corner to let the other one catch his breath. Rather, that is the moment when he makes the greatest effort to knock him out. Unless, of course, the match is fixed - and our fight with the United States isn't fixed."
Contrary to the reports in the capitalist press the atmosphere throughout Nicaragua is calm. The sentiments of working people were captured well by Oscar Danilo Munoz, a textile worker who said the day after Ortega's speech: "The State of Emergency doesn't affect me at all. Only those who are conspiring against the revolution should be afraid.
On October 17, the nation's main unions issued a joint statement backing the decree as necessary to defend "the greatest historic conquest of the working class: having taken political power on July 19, 1979 ...
"We make use of workers' power through the instruments of the revolutionary state," the union leaders said. "The State of Emergency goes in defense of the historic conquest achieved by the workers ... With the State of National Emergency we guarantee and deepen the right to make the revolution."
The capitalist news media, of course, ignored such statements. Instead they tried to paint a lying pieture of an entire nation up in arms against the government.
"Some 7,000 Catholies defied recent government restrictions on public meetings and attended a procession for the Virgin of the Rosary headed by Cardinal Miguel Obando y Bravo in this city," reported the Associated Press from Esteli on October 21.
In fact, no "defiance" was involved at all. Obando has been having such processions throughout the country for several months, and the Esteli march had been approved by authorities, as had a similar one in the town of Tipitapa the day before.
In their dispatches, international news agencies have repeatedly insisted that the emergency measures are aimed against the Catholic religion. This is a bald-faced lie. There are no restrictions on freedom of worship or belief.
But it is true that the measures are partly meant as a warning to some religious figures, and in particular to Managua Archbishop Miguel Obando y Bravo.
Since being raised to the rank of Cardinal last May, Obando has been waging a sustained political campaign for "reconciliation" with the contras.
The CIA's 15 of September Radio has been making extensive use of the cardinal's sermons, and even transmitted live - courtesy of Managua's Radio Catolica - Obando's first mass as a cardinal on Nicaraguan soil. Obando himself has publicly signalled his agreement with this. On his way back from Rome, last June, he stopped in Miami where he said mass and gave his blessings to a congregation that included top contra leaders.
Most recently, the cardinal and his associates staged a major provocation against the government. They formed a business named COPROSA (Archdiocesan Commission for Social Advancement), obtained a printing press and set about issuing a newspaper called Iglesia without bothering with called Iglesia without bowering with any of the legal formalities and without submitting the paper to the censor.
As a result, the government was forced to impound all 10,000 copies of Iglesia and shut down the unlicensed printing establishment.
In an October 17 speech commemorating the sixth anniversary of the Ministry of the Interior, Commander of the Revolution Tomas Borge publicly lambasted Obando's campaign for "reconciliation" with the CIA forces.
Referring to the traitors who aided US intervention against Nicaragua in the early 1900s, Borge declared, "the ghosts of Diaz, Chamorro and Moncada still live. Now they are called Robelo, Cruz, Pastora, Bolanos, and others who today are travelling around the country asking that Cain be forgiven for Abel and begging heaven that Judas Iscariot be granted absolution, at the same time that they curse the whip that drove the merchants from the temple.
To emphasize that the new restrictions came in response to very real threats, Borge revealed that State Security had just broken up a terrorist cell in Managua. Several people were arrested and forty kilos of explosives confiscated. Some of those involved were presented to reporters the day after Borge's speech, and they said they had planned to bomb the airport, two bus storage depots, a shipping center, a supermarket and an electric substation.
The same day, authorities in Region VI - the north-central provinces of Matagalpa and Jinotega — announced that they had dismantled an extensive contra civilian support network.
Both the Region VI network and the Managua terrorist cell were political, not simply military, operations. In both cases, a key goal was undermining the Patriotic Military Service (SMP), Nicaragua's draft.
The reason for this is not hard to understand. The SMP has made a big difference in the war. It has allowed International Viewpoint 25 November 1985
NICARAGUA for the orderly but massive expansion of the regular army into a force now numbering more than 50,000.
In fighting the SMP, the underground contra networks have a de facto division of labor with above ground religious sects, such as the Jehova's Witnesses, as well as the Obando wing of the Catholic Church. In their sermons, pro-imperialist ministers make countless appeals for parents to send draft-age sons abroad, often using unmistakable biblical references, such as Herod's slaughter of the innocents.
But young men who turn to smuggling rings rarely make it to a foreign country. Instead, they are handed to the contra and forced to bear arms against their country.
The Region VI and Managua contra operations show the need for the kinds of restrictions the Nicaraguan government is imposing under the State of Emergency.
In these cases, the investigations lasted for many months. Had the government been forced to tip its hand as soon as the first arrests were made - through habeas corpus proceedings, normal trials and so on -others connected to the operations might have gotten away. It is also an illustration of why the government considers the restrictions on freedom of the press, assembly and association to be necessary. The Sandinistas say they will not allow public campaigns advocating dialogue with the contras or opposing the Patriotic Military Service. These, given the situation Nicaragua is in, would simply become a legal, above-ground complement to the contra war and especially to the CIA's efforts to set up an "internal front" in the major cities.
The FSLN makes no bones about this policy. Asked if it was prohibited in Nicaragua "to call for a dialogue with the counterrevolutionaries," Commander of the Revolution Bayardo Arce answered categorically: "We are not going to permit public propaganda in support of US positions."
At bottom, Nicaraguan leaders say the State of Emergency is not aimed at "punishing" a reactionary minority by depriving everyone of their rights, but at defending and safeguarding the rights of the toiling majority.
As Commander of the Revolution Tomas Borge explained, "This is a State of Emergency to defend the workers, not repress them; to defend the aspirations of the peasants, artisans, women, students and professionals not to deny them ... This is a State of Emergency to defend the homeland, not to sell it out.
This is a State of Emergency only to tie the hands of the enemies of the people."
International Viewpoint 25 November 1985