A policeman was beaten by rioters in Nicaragua as the death toll in the wave of anti-government protests has reached 121.
The bloodied officer was pictured in the town of Masaya, which has been a flashpoint for the demonstrations against Daniel Ortega’s government, which began on April 18.
He was held by anti-government protesters, who have been fighting running battles with the pro-government vigilantes and the police.
The officer, wearing a blood soaked vest, is paraded for the cameras by the anti-government protesters in Masaya
The Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights (CENIDH) said people were also killed in running battles over the weekend in the city, which is near the capital Managua.
The latest death toll also includes a young boy killed by gunfire during clashes in the resort city of Granada between anti-government protesters and riot police on Tuesday, the human rights group said.
A parish priest, Wilmer Perez, earlier told the 100% news channel that the boy was killed in a confrontation between demonstrators and government supporters trying to clear a barricade in the city, 28 miles south of Managua.
Another 1,300 people have been wounded in the protests, which have met with a violent crackdown from the government.
‘This is now a massacre, a human tragedy where the goal is to exterminate all those young people who think differently than or are critical of the government,’ the CENIDH executive secretary, Marlin Sierra, told AFP.
Masaya has been the flashpoint for clashes between anti-government protesters, armed with home made mortars, and pro-government vigilantes
Ant-government demonstrators manning a barricade in Masaya, where ten people were killed in clashes at the weekend
‘It amounts to state terrorism.’
Town hall and the local office of the ruling Sandinista party in Granada were burned down by protesters, and several electrical appliance stores were looted and burned, a local businessman said on condition he not be named.
He said the police did not show up at any of these places.
In Masaya residents armed with homemade mortars and slingshots faced off in clashes with what they said were riot police and vigilante groups loyal to Ortega, who has dominated the Central American country’s politics for four decades.
Locals say several nights of attacks against residents were led by riot police.
‘Yesterday we buried one person, the day before we buried another,’ said 83-year-old Ramona Garcia, speaking beside one of the myriad barricades residents have erected in the streets.
‘One was a 15-year-old boy. He begged for his life. He told the policewoman, “Don’t kill me, don’t kill me.” But bam, bam, she shot him.
‘We’re sick and tired of it. We want that son of a bitch Ortega to go. The people want him to go, all Nicaragua wants him to go.’
Built with cobblestones, furniture, sheet metal and whatever else is at hand, the barricades are meant to keep out pro-Ortega gangs, whom residents accuse of pillaging the city of 100,000 people.
Bullets fire by riot police in the hand of an anti-government protester in Masaya. Riot police have been accused by residents of carrying out atrocities
The death toll in the wave of demonstrations that has gripped Nicaragua has now reached 121. As well as hand held mortars, anti-government protesters have been deploying larger weapons
Two masked anti-government demonstrators carrying large mortars
Barricades have been set up around Masaya (pictured) as well as in the capital Managua and key highways in the central American country
The government blames criminals for the pillaging, and says it sent in riot police at the request of small-business owners.
In Managua, there is a virtual curfew in place after dark, with motorcycle gangs terrorizing those who venture out, according to the CENIDH.
Barricades set up on key highways have meanwhile ground transportation to a halt.
Some parts of the country are beginning to run out of fuel and other essentials.
The country’s business elite, long close to Ortega, have broken with him over the crackdown.
The Catholic Church, also once close to Ortega, initially tried to mediate the conflict.
But it called off the talks after attacks on a march led by victims’ mothers last Wednesday left 16 people dead.
The crackdown on what started as relatively small protests against pension cuts has fueled demands for the ouster of Ortega and Murillo.
Ortega blames the violence on right-wing opposition groups he says are conspiring to ‘terrorize’ the country.
The former guerrilla leader first came to power in 1979, at the head of a communist junta installed by the Sandinista rebels after they ousted dictator Anastasio Somoza.
He lost power at the ballot box in 1990, then led the opposition until winning a 2006 election that again returned him to the presidency.
He is now serving his third consecutive term, due to end in 2022.