New York Times, 18 April 1985 (display advertisement)

— An Urgent Message from Europeans to Congress:
Support the Nicaraguan Resistance —

Democracy itself is at stake in Nicaragua. After four years of dictatorship, the FSLN, the totalitarian ruling party, has not succeeded in breaking the resistance of the Nicaraguan people.

After the relative liberalization represented by the elections, the government’s imposition of a “state of emergency” shows that its political agenda remains a totalitarian one.

We believe that United States aid to all sections of the opposition is indispensable in enabling the Nicaraguans to overthrow the present dictatorship and freely choose their own political future—which they thought they had already done when they overthrew Somoza.

Therefore, we appeal to the Congress off the United States, in the spirit of democratic solidarity, to resume aid to the Nicaraguan resistance.

Such aid is necessary strategically. The Sandinista junta has from the beginning declared its aim to be the incorporation of all Central America into a single Marxist-Leninist entity. Should it succeed, the United States would be forced to withdraw from one of its major overseas treaty commitments. This is precisely the objective of Soviet policy: to force the withdrawal of the United States from those areas of the world which are of vital interest to it and the entire Free World. That is why die problem of Central America is also a European problem. Central America is Europe’s “Fifth Frontier.”

American aid to the resistance is also necessary morally. The West must be forthright in its support for those who straggle to obtain the rights declared inalienable for all men by your own Declaration of Independence.

We say to the United States Congress: For you to deny aid to people who are seeking to exercise the rights of free men Is to deny the meaning off your own country. Even worse than the strategic situation in which the United States would find itself if it were to fail in Nicaragua would be the betrayal off the principles upon which the country was founded.

The freedom of Nicaraguans is also your freedom. As it is ours. Freedom is indivisible. If you fail in Nicaragua, we must ask, where will you fail next? If freedom and democracy are not worth defending in your own hemisphere, where are they worth defending? The Free World awaits your answer. Its enemies are waiting too.

Vladimir Bukovsky (President)
Resistance International
102, Avenue des Champs Elysées
75008 Paris

With 80 other signatories from 12 European countries and Australia