NICARAGUAN indigenous and civil society groups have written an open letter to the United Nations warning against political manipulation by US-funded NGOs to undermine the democratically elected government.

The Nicaragua Solidarity Campaign is is one of more than 30 international religious groups and organisations to have also signed the letter which has been sent to the UN Human Rights Council and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

It accuses the NGOs, including the US-based Oakland Institute, of silencing the voices of Nicaragua’s indigenous people and ignoring community leaders when conducting reports.

The letter charges them with manipulating violent incidents in Nicaragua’s Caribbean Coast Autonomous Regions, using them as “ideological propaganda against Nicaragua’s socialist government.”

The NGOs have accused the Nicaraguan government of “ethnocide” labelling the Central American country “the most dangerous country for environmental defenders.”

One even warns of the “total disappearance” of indigenous peoples, when in fact the total population of the Miskitu and Mayangna peoples amounts to 180,000 and 30,000 respectively.

But the organisations are accused of ignoring the complexities of the region, and attributing intra-indigenous attacks to the so-called settled community, presenting them as evidence of “the failed Nicaraguan revolution.”

“The UN system and other international institutions seem to almost invariably accept the reports of international NGOs as if they were presented by impartial interlocutors, which, in the case of Nicaragua, categorically is not the case,” the letter warned.

“In doing so, these organisations fail the majority of indigenous and Afro-descendant people in Nicaragua by misrepresenting the problems they face and by spreading falsehoods about the causes of any violence,” it added.

Nicaragua’s 40,000 indigenous families benefit from the region’s most ambitious system of decentralised indigenous government. 

Three hundred indigenous communities legally own approximately one-third of Nicaragua’s national territory. 

Within four years of his return to government in January 2007, the Sandinista government of President Daniel Ortega had granted Nicaragua’s indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples land titles over 15 territories spanning more than two million hectares.

But the complex situation has led to the illegal sale of land and intra-indigenous conflict, including violent attacks and killings.

The NGOs however present a simplistic picture of all indigenous people as human rights defenders of the land.

“We demand that all these organisations desist from making exaggerated, ill-informed and categorically false criticisms of Nicaragua’s treatment of its indigenous peoples,” the letter concluded, asking the UN to reject the baseless allegations.

Washington has long sought the overthrow of the Sandinista government in Nicaragua, backing an failed armed coup attempt in 2018.

It has invested millions of dollars in NGOs, opposition organisations and media outlets as part of its attempt to oust President Daniel Ortega.

In 2020 USAid was found to have established a new unit — Responsive Assistance in Nicaragua — tasked with regime change in the Central American country.