man, little by little, he was becoming weaker and weaker. he asked for medical attention, which was always denied. so the death of hugo torres is only one more example of the police state and the inhumane situation in which 0rtega keeps most. entire nicaragua is under arrest. even nicaraguans who think they can work freely are deprived of their freedom. nicaragua has become a huge prison. well, you were, as you ve already acknowledged, you were actually formally sentenced to 13 years for conspiracy to undermine national integrity. but the fact is you were arrested and imprisoned when you had declared that you were going to run for the presidency of nicaragua back in 2021. do you think that was the reason that 0rtega wanted you out of action? i think it was the reason. in my case, i ve devoted my entire life to promote human rights in nicaragua, first as a civil servant in charge of demobilisation and the reintegration of former combatants, and later, as an academic.
if they cannot pursue an education for their children, and they re doing it because they don t have any other options. however, i don t think that the world can solve our own problems. we nicaraguans have to focus on trying to build a new country, and there are some people that take great personal challenges. i m only one of many, many examples. many other nicaraguans has gone through terrible things to face 0rtega. but those who do not have a chance, they only have exile as a chance. and that s why we need to care, because we can only solve this humanitarian crisis, not only a political one, but a humanitarian crisis by involving the international community in finding a solution. right. but interestingly, you re now sitting in the united states and you will be well aware that in the last few months, the biden administration has made it harderfor nicaraguans who are seeking asylum to enter the united states.
costa rica or through guatemala and mexico, to try to reach the united states. are you proposing that in that context, you want to see tougher economic sanctions put on ortega and his regime? economic sanctions, targeted sanctions against the 0rtega inner circle because people in nicaragua is poor precisely because there s a corrupt regime. i understand. and i ve also been very careful in not speaking about economic actions or sanctions that will hurt the poor. i think that that s very important to emphasize. but they do have the poor, mr maradiaga. look, we have to look at the reality. i mean, the united states last year, in response to what they saw as egregious abuses by the 0rtega regime, put new sanctions on the gold mining industry in nicaragua. but if you look at the nicaraguan economy, the gold mining sector is one of the few relative success stories which actually employs thousands of nicaraguans. so, of course, those sorts of sanctions ultimately will hit your fellow citizens
of nicaragua has been very hard. nicaragua doesn t have a petroleum, oil. we don t have geopolitical importance to the level of venezuela, for example. so i ve been working very hard in explaining even before that in books, for example, that we published back in 2009, explaining 0rtega s dangerous relationship with iran, with russia, with china. and i think that little by little that is being taken into account, not at the speed that we wanted, but we hope that this is a new phase of international diplomacy against the 0rtega regime that would allow us to isolate completely that police state. but to be clear, when you talk about isolation, i always wonder how far you really think you want the international community to go? nicaragua is the second poorest country in the western hemisphere, second only to haiti. your people in nicaragua are so poor and so desperate. hundreds of thousands of them every year are trying to escape the country, whether to
but also another 90 activists who have since had their citizenship taken away from them the latin american leaderships in countries like mexico, colombia, argentina, brazil have been very quiet, haven t they? have you noticed? i have noticed that, but i have a different perspective. i think that for the very first time in decades, and i can say that myself, as someone who testified in front of the un security council in geneva, at the human rights council as well, and travel latin america, five to seven years ago, it was very hard to mobilize certain people who had previous sympathies to the sandinista revolution. that is not the case any more. it s very clear that the 0rtega of today has nothing to do with the sandinistas of the 1980s and is being abandoned, isolated