Jim O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay South, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

It might also be worth considering whether the Department can encourage international human rights bodies to seek authorisation to return to Nicaragua. I am thinking in particular of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

It is a worrying development if there is this level of oppression in Nicaragua. I hope that the election on 7 November will be monitored. I am not aware as to whether international election monitors will be permitted into Nicaragua and, if they are, whether they will be given the freedom to appraise the election fairly. We can take a message from what has happened in Nicaragua, in that it is an example of a revolution that went wrong. Unfortunately, what started out as a revolutionary independence movement has transformed into a vanity project for President Ortega, his Vice President, who doubles up as his wife, and part of the Sandinista regime.

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