By
DAVE TODD
Southam News
SAN JOSE, Costa Rica--Guerrillas opposed to the Nicaraguan government have launched a series of vicious attacks on foreign aid workers whom they regard as supporters of the Sandinistas.
The main targets have been Europeans working on projects funded from within their own countries or through international non-government agencies.
But Canadians working for domestic and
foreign-funded agencies are not considered immune. Many Canadian
aid groups have cultivated close ties with the Sandinista
government.
The sudden targeting of foreign aid workers, though, seems inexplicable.
It comes as the main guerrilla and
expatriate political organizations opposed to the Sandinistas
are trying desperately to cover up differences, put on a
democratic face and build a common front against the Sandinista
government.
Despite these objectives, bloody attacks that defy the
apparent principles behind them continue.
These include operations in recent weeks against foreign medical workers and agricultural experts helping in northern and southern Nicaragua.
Unfortunately, for their sakes, they seem to be helping too close to the main bases of the anti-Sandinista guerrillas.
-Late last month, in the northern town of El Cua, a Spanish doctor and nine Nicaraguan peasants were murdered by Contra guerrillas while vaccinating children for polio.
-The week before, on May 17, guerrillas from the Nicaraguan Democratic Front (FDN), the main anti-Sandinista army, kidnapped eight West German foreign aid workers near the Costa Rican frontier, claiming they had been training with Soviet AK-47 rifles.
This kidnapping so outraged other foreign aid workers that they occupied the West German embassy in Managua, demanding an official protest from their government.
The FDN's top spokesman in San Jose, Frank Arana, said the Germans, seized about 80 kilometres north of the Costa Rican border, are "prisoners of war."
But their capture has been an embarrassment to political leaders of the anti-Sandinista front, who met last week in Miami in the latest attempt to build a front capable of disguising deep political differences.
In the meantime, embarrassing human rights issues accumulate.
The Nicaraguan defence department announced Sunday that Contra guerrillas attacked three state farm cooperatives about 120 kilometres north of Managua, killing 15 people, wounding 20 others and setting fire to nine houses.
(text of June 3, 1986 Vancouver
Sun article)