While the US and Europe have invaded and colonized countries around the world, China and Russia have helped the Global South develop and resist Western imperialism, argues Nicaragua’s President Daniel Ortega, leader of the Sandinista Revolution.
“The People’s Republic of China has brought progress, benefits, development to peoples who were colonized, and later they were becoming independent, but they remained suppressed under the boot of the interests of the powers that had colonized them”, stated Ortega.
For “people in poverty, people in misery, people suffering from hunger, people suffering from illiteracy, with infant mortality, in Africa, in Asia, the People’s Republic of China has come developing a policy that brings benefits to developing countries, without imposing any conditions”, he added.
The Nicaraguan president said this in a speech in Managua honoring the 45th anniversary of the Sandinista Revolution on July 19.
“And now, the powers grouped together in NATO already have a war, a war that is in the phase of preparing their own people for what they call a ‘threat’, that Russia and China are a ‘threat’”, Ortega continued.
“Then, there is the BRICS. There is India. And they [NATO] say that they [BRICS] are a ‘threat’. That is to say, everything that has to do with a meeting of nations, of countries where sovereignty is respected, and where they make agreements to achieve better conditions for their peoples, they see that as a ‘threat’. Because imperialists are used to occupying by force, and then dominate and kill”, he said.
Ortega also recalled how the former USSR had helped the people of Nicaragua, after the Sandinista National Liberation Front overthrew the US-backed military dictatorship of the brutal Somoza dynasty in 1979.
“The Soviet Union, led by Russia, did not come here to take our riches. Rather, it came here to give a hand to the Nicaraguan people, so we could develop and grow”, he said.
“That was the big difference between the powers that have been colonialists and neocolonialists, like the US, like Europe”, he continued. “They have not stopped being colonialists. They still are neocolonialists. They have not stopped being criminals. They still are criminals. They still are killers”.
Nicaragua’s President Ortega: “The Soviet Union, led by Russia, did not come here to take our riches. Rather, it came here to give a hand to the Nicaraguan people, so we could develop and grow”.
“That was the big difference between the powers that have been colonialists and… pic.twitter.com/8pX6vaMBqC
— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) July 27, 2024