Russia backs Nicaragua in its demand for justice after 15 U.S. interventions

Below is the response from María Zajárova to a question from the media, on July 4, on the anniversary of the sentence of the International Court of Justice on the case “Nicaragua v. USA” approved on June 27, 1986.

Question: What is your opinion of the information about the anniversary of the victory in The Hague of the Nicaragua case against the United States in Managua?

María Zajárova: I would like to explain that it is about the historic sentence of the International Court of Justice of June 27, 1986, which forced the United States to compensate all the damages caused by the North American military and paramilitary activities in the territory of the Republic of Nicaragua in the eighties.

According to the documents duly presented by Nicaragua, these amount to tens of billions of dollars. However, final victory is still a long way off: the Court’s ruling has been ignored by the United States for 37 years.

We fully support the demand to restore historical justice made by President of Nicaragua Daniel Ortega in his recent address to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. We also consider it to be absolutely unacceptable that the United States continues its aggressive policy against that sovereign state in the spirit of the Western countries’ neo-colonial aspirations.

I would like to remind everyone that at that time Washington unleashed a civil war in Nicaragua, including by training, arming and financing the Contras, who had won international ignominy through their bloody terror against the people of Nicaragua and the Government of the Sandinista National Liberation Front.

Throughout the republic’s history, the United States conducted about 15 interventions into Nicaragua under various pretexts. For example, in 1854, it razed the city of San Juan del (Norte) to the ground because the American ambassador had been slapped in the face for trying to interfere in the trial of an American national who was suspected of murdering a black person.

As for the Contras, the Western media presented them exclusively as “freedom fighters.” This cynical division of criminals into “good guys” and “bad guys” is still with us. It was used with regard to Islamic terrorists, including in Russia, and it is being used in other countries as well. This is the essence of the “rules-based order” which Washington is advocating because it not only allows the United States and its satellites to act arbitrarily and with impunity but also provides justification for their “upright” actions against undesirables.

This transcription was published in Spanish by The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation