Featured Photo: March Against The Nicaragua Canal
From: Jorge Mejia Peralta
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"¡Nicaragua no se vende!" protesters in the central city of Juigalpa exclaimed during the most recent demonstration opposing the proposed Nicaraguan Canal.[1] This rallying cry, Nicaragua is not for sale, reverberates throughout the country in momentous opposition to the construction of the canal-a $50 billion USD project spearheaded by Chinese venture capitalist billionaire, Wang Jing, and enthusiastically approved by the Nicaraguan president, Daniel Ortega.[2] The pair intend to slice Central America's largest country in half with a canal three times the size of Panama's, displaced communities and environmental degradation be damned.
A SECRET DEAL; A PUBLIC OUTCRY
In a characteristically clandestine arrangement, the Ortega administration approved the operation during a seven-day Congressional session in 2013, without parliamentary debate, public consultation, or prior feasibility/environmental impact studies.[3] The approval granted a 100-year concession to Wang Jing's Cayman Island-based firm, the Hong Kong Nicaraguan Canal Development Investment Company (HKND). The parameters expropriated land rights to the 172 miles long by an average 1,000 feet wide stretch of Nicaraguan land on which the proposed project will be built, giving HKND carte blanche authority, without having to pay taxes, for the ensuing century.[4] Subsequently, the concession goes so far as to grant HKND the unqualified rights to construct "two deep sea ports, a free trade zone, an airport, cement and explosive factories, an electricity plant and upmarket hotels," the Daily Beast reports, at the expense of land-owning Nicaraguans.[5]
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