Thousands of impoverished senior citizens demanding partial pensions from the government were attacked by alleged supporters of President Daniel Ortega on Saturday in Managua.
The Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights (CENIDH) reported that a gang of masked thugs wearing Sandinista t-shirts arrived at the offices of the Nicaraguan Social Security Institute (NSSI), where the protest was taking place since last Tuesday, to violently oust the protesters.
About 300 people arrived on motorcycles and aboard government trucks, allegedly working in tandem with the National Police, to injure protesters and disperse the group of youth supporters that had joined the seniors. Demonstrators sought refuge in neighboring homes that helped hide people from the police and paramilitary group, CENIDH's legal director Gonzalo Carrión told reporters.
"They appeared suddenly, running and shouting they would kill us", said youth organizer Luciana Chamorro, 22, who was at the scene of the violence. "They were beating up some old men with bats and kicking them", she added.
The attackers, both men and women, destroyed the makeshift camp and smashed the windows of nearby cars, Chamorro said, while the police "laughed" and blocked demonstrations from running away.
Other witnesses say the Sandinista paramilitary group ordered everyone on the ground, and then robbed them of their cellphones, cameras and other personal effects. "This was a criminal operation of state terrorism", Carrión told The Nicaragua Dispatch. "The terrorist gang was wearing masks and armed with weapons and told the group: 'You have 10 seconds to run. Run! Run!' Then they started to beat people."
For the past four years, the group of senior citizens has been demanding a legal reform that would allow them to receive a partial pension for their years of payment into the system.
According to the National Group of Senior Citizens, an organization of elderly, there are at least 15,000 senior citizens who paid into Nicaragua's social security system for a minimum of five years but weren't able to complete the mandatory 750 weeks of payments to collect a check in retirement.
The president of the INSS said Friday the agency does not have the money to pay reduced pensions, which would cost about 95 million dollars annually.
Violence was condemned by opposition politicians, business groups and Catholic leaders, who accused the government of using "paramilitary groups" against the elderly in a move called "state terrorism".
The police and government have remained silent about the attack.