MANAGUA —The National Assembly of Nicaragua repealed on Wednesday the law of the great canal interoceanic and annulled the concession granted to a Chinese businessman to build that megaproject that never came to fruition.
In a plenary session, the 91 deputies of the ruling Sandinista Front and its allies voted unanimously to repeal the “special law for the development of Nicaraguan infrastructure and transportation related to the canal, free trade zones and associated infrastructure” approved in 2013.
The pro-government legislators also reformed articles of the law that established a concession agreement and implementation of the megaproject. This work, as announced at the time by Daniel’s Sandinista regime Ortega, It would be executed with a total investment of 50,000 million dollars.
With this reform, the concession granted to the company HK Nicaragua Canal Development Investment Co. Limited, based in Hong Kong and owned by Chinese businessman Wang Jing, was annulled.
Lawsuit in the Inter-American Court
The issue of the Nicaraguan interoceanic canal, which at the time aroused great interest, was brought to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IDH Court) in 2021 by environmental groups that accused the government of “violating the rights of indigenous communities” Rama and Creole , by not consulting them about the approval of the law.
In the complaint before the Inter-American Court, the Nicaraguan State is accused of violating the rights to property, political rights, equal protection before the law, judicial guarantees, judicial protection and the right to a healthy environment of nine indigenous communities that live in the area chosen for the construction of the interoceanic highway.
According to María Luisa Acosta, a lawyer at the Center for Legal Assistance to Indigenous Peoples, the court is expected to rule on the case in the coming weeks. It is estimated that at least half of the extension of the canal project affected indigenous territories in the southern Caribbean of Nicaragua.
Source: With information from AP
