Nicaragua adopted a highly controversial “Putin”-the law

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Emma Teitel
Emma Teitel
Emma Teitel is an award-winning national affairs columnist with the Toronto Star who writes about anything and everything. She got her start at Maclean's Magazine where she wrote frequently about women's issues, LGBT rights, and popular culture.

Nicaragua’s Parliament has adopted a much kritisiertes law on the “regulation of foreign agents”. Therefore need to register in the future, individuals and organizations that receive money from abroad, and in Nicaragua, working as a foreign agent. You have to take the authorities on a regular basis to account for the use of these funds and be excluded from political activities.

Thus, according to the Sandinista government party, the FSLN, the authoritarian President, Daniel Ortega, foreign interference is to be fought in Nicaragua. The socialist FSLN, which controls the Parliament, the Central American country, approved on Thursday, with 70 votes to 17, the law, they had introduced themselves.

The law should make political opponent unable to act

The head of the opposition Alliance Alianza Civica, Juan Sebastián Chamorro, condemned the law as a violation of human rights and the Constitution. It aims to make opponents of the “dictatorship” unable to act. He spoke of the “Putin law”, because it is similar to a scheme in Russia – there is no need to register, since 2012, government organisations as foreign agents if they Finance themselves with money from abroad.

The European Parliament had called last week in a Resolution, the EU heads of state and government that has already imposed sanctions against Ortega supporters on the President and his wife and Vice-President, Rosario Murillo, to extend, should the law be passed, as well as two more in Nicaragua.

Law could put critical Posts under sentence

One of the other laws directed against cyber-crime and could, among other things, critical social media ‘ imprisonment. The other provides for life imprisonment for vaguely defined “hate crime”. Both could be approved in the coming days by the national Assembly in Managua.

The EU Parliament had also demanded that Nicaragua because of the “Repression” by the government of an Association agreement with the EU to exclude. Because of the new laws, people had warned rights organization Amnesty International in front of a “new Phase of oppression” in Nicaragua.

Icon: The Mirror

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