U.S. compares Nicaragua to Syria, warns of potential regional crisis

[Swordsmyth]

The United States on Wednesday declared Nicaragua’s civil unrest a threat to the region’s security, saying government repression of protests risked creating an overwhelming displacement of people akin to Venezuela or Syria.

More than 300 people have been killed and 2,000 injured in crackdowns by Nicaraguan police and armed groups in protests that began in April over an abortive plan by leftist President Daniel Ortega’s government to reduce welfare benefits.
The protests soon escalated into broader opposition against Ortega, who has been in office since 2007. He also served a term as president during the 1980s when he was a notable Cold War antagonist of the United States during Nicaragua’s civil war.
In a speech before the United Nations Security Council, U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley said that if the situation in Nicaragua continued to worsen, it could cause a spike in migrants fleeing into neighboring countries.
“When human rights are denied, the violence and instability that follow spill over borders,” she said, comparing Nicaragua to Venezuela, which has seen more than 1.6 million people leave since 2015, according to the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR.

“With each passing day, Nicaragua travels further down a familiar path,” Haley said. “It is a path that Syria has taken. It is a path that Venezuela has taken.”

More at: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-n...-idUSKCN1LL33G

[RonZeplin]

FUKUS ISIS will never take over the cigar business' in Nicaragua & Syria. Bring the troops home. Syria, Russia & Iran will fight to the last tobacco leaf.

Syria launches cigar business as war rolls on

Published: 04:25 EDT, 30 March 2015 | Updated: 04:25 EDT, 30 March 2015

In Syria's northwestern province of Latakia, workers roll the country's first locally made cigars, a new product being launched despite the devastating civil conflict now in its fifth year.

The workers are employed by the state-run General Tobacco Company, which has decided to branch out into cigars in a bid to create desperately needed jobs and boost revenue.

At the end of February, the company's director general said the initiative would create some 1,000 new jobs in the country, which has seen its economy ravaged by the conflict.

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Employee Um Ali takes a smoke break at a factory producing Syria's first locally made cigars in the northwestern province of Latakia ©Youseff Karwashan (AFP)


"The company will start selling the products on the local market very soon and then begin trying to export to friendly countries," says deputy director-general Salman al-Abbas.

Syria's conflict, which began with anti-government protests in March 2011 before spiralling into a brutal civil war, has taken a massive toll on the economy and killed more than 215,000 people.

Before the war, the General Tobacco Company was among the country's most prosperous state-run enterprises, generating millions of dollars.
But, like many state companies, it has been under European Union sanctions since 2012, its assets frozen after accusations that it helped finance the government's bloody crackdown against unrest.

The company has decided to press ahead anyway with production of the first locally made cigars.
"We decided to develop a new product without foreign expertise with the hope of supporting the economy," says Shadi Mualla, the plant manager, criticising what he termed "the economic war waged against Syria" by the West.

- '100 percent Syrian' -

The project has been three years in the making, with workers learning to hand-roll cigars "in accordance with international standards" at the factory in coastal Latakia.
The province is a stronghold of the government of President Bashar al-Assad, whose father was born in the region, and is a heartland for the Alawite minority sect to which the president belongs.

It has been largely insulated from the conflict and is where the tobacco for the cigars is grown.

[kpitcher]

Did the gov oppression of protests start out with free speech zones?