Nicaraguan activists flee their country, but not the fight
Clara and Jorge met manning community-run barricades in Nicaragua last spring, at the onset of anti-government protests. They had fled bullets from armed forces and jumped from one safe-house to the next, but neither imagined that just three months later they’d find themselves sitting in a fluorescent-lit food court in neighboring Costa Rica, waiting for refugee work permits.
Today, nervously laughing and sipping cappuccinos together in the city-center, the friends are unsure if – or when – they can return home. President Daniel Ortega, a Sandinista revolutionary who helped unseat dictator Anastasio Somoza in 1979, is under fire for crackdowns on civilian protests in Nicaragua. Human rights organizations estimate more than 400 people have died since protests began in
Getting the word out
