After nearly a decade, Nicaragua’s Congress finally canceled a controversial canal concession awarded to a Chinese businessman that critics said endangered the environment and threatened to displace rural communities.
Managua Nicaragua– After nearly a decade, Nicaragua’s Congress finally canceled on Wednesday a controversial canal concession awarded to a Chinese businessman that critics said endangered the environment and threatened to displace rural communities.
Despite a symbolic “innovation” in 2014, no work was carried out on the canal that would link the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of Nicaragua. At one point, crews began construction of access roads near the canal, but excavation of the canal never began.
Thousands of Nicaraguan farmers had protested land confiscations intended to create a route for the government-backed project.
In 2019, a Nicaraguan judge sentenced three peasant leaders who participated in the protests to 216 years, 210 years, and 159 years in prison. They were accused of promoting a “failed coup” against the government. Nicaraguan law limits the prison sentence actually served to 30 years.
The proposed $50 billion, 172-mile (278-kilometer) canal through this Central American nation was long seen as a joke that later turned deadly serious. The canal and its possible effect on the environment became a symbol of the strange and arbitrary nature of President Daniel Ortega’s increasingly repressive regime.
Ortega’s government claimed the canal would create tens of thousands of jobs and stimulate the poor Central American nation’s economy.
Critics argued that it posed serious environmental risks, would displace thousands of families from the countryside and was financially unviable.
The canal concession was awarded to the Hong Kong-based company HK Nicaragua Canal Development Investment Co. Limited, owned by Chinese businessman Wang Jing.