Sir, I read your excellent article on Nicaragua (Feature, April 21) with great interest because I and other members of Abingdon Amnesty Group have campaigned on Central America for ten years.
Yes, Nicaragua is poor and Hurricane Mitch did huge damage. But its condition is in some ways less dire than that of nearby countries, where environmentalists have been jailed on trumped-up charges; secret detention; torture and "disappearances" are frequent; 400 young women have been killed (often after rape) in just two Mexican cities. The many murdered human rights defenders included an Archbishop, and Guatemala lost 200,000 dead in a civil war.
By comparison Nicaragua, though not free of abuses, has given us far less to protest about. And unlike the United States, it has abolished the death penalty.
John Killick, Abingdon
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