Noam Chomsky - Turning the Tide U.S. intervention in

The Fifth Freedom
Classics in Politics: Turning the Tide Noam Chomsky
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committee in March 1982—at a time when thousands of Indians were
being slaughtered in Guatemala, and some 13,000 civilians had been
murdered in El Salvador by US clients in the preceding year alone, not to
speak of torture, mutilation, starvation, semi-slave labor and other
standard Free World amenities. The President chimed in with the news
that the Sandinistas are conducting a “campaign of virtual genocide
against the Miskito Indians” (June 6, 1985). In fact, some 10% of the
Miskito population had been removed from war zones under a “policy
[that] was clearly prompted by military considerations” and compares
quite favorably with US treatment of Japanese-Americans during World
War II, an Americas Watch report comments, and 21 to 24 Miskitos
had been killed three years earlier by government forces along with 69
unresolved cases of “disappearance”; major atrocities, no doubt, but
undetectable in the context of the behavior of the US and its clients in
the region. 78
Reviewing the human rights situation in Nicaragua, the Americas
Watch report finds that Nicaraguan government atrocities, which it
believes it was able to review in full, are far slighter than those of the
US-organized terrorist army, and have sharply declined since 1982 in
contrast to those of the contras, which can only be sampled given their
scale and the lack of sources. Even in the case of the Miskitos, not the
prime target of the US-sponsored terrorists, Americas Watch finds that
“the most serious abuses of Miskitos’ rights have been committed by the
contra groups,” and “the contras’ treatment of Miskitos and other
Indians has become increasingly more violent” while that of the
government has notably improved. Miskito leader Brooklyn Rivera
comments that the FDN “has been very hostile and aggressive toward
us. They consider us an enemy because we maintain our independent
positions and will not become soldiers in someone else’s army.” He
alleges further “that the Reagan Administration was blocking Miskito