More than a month after changes to Nicaragua's social security system triggered student-led protests, demonstrations have morphed into a daily challenge to the rule of President Ortega, a former Marxist guerrilla. On 18 April 2018, demonstrators in several cities of Nicaragua began protests against President Daniel Ortega's decree of social security reforms that increased taxes and decreased benefits. After five days of unrest in which nearly 30 people were killed, Ortega announced the cancellation of the reforms. However, the opposition has grown - also through years of repressed protests - to denounce Ortega and demand his resignation, becoming one of the largest protests in his government's history and the deadliest civil conflict since the end of the Nicaraguan Revolution. As a result of the unrest, the Nicaraguan public and international governments alike have called for the next presidential elections to be moved ahead, with the European Union supporting this move.
The protests initiated in June 2013, when elder people, with little contribution (less than 750 weeks) demanded from the Nicaraguan Social Security Institute a reduced pension. Soon, students and young people joint their protests . After a week of demonstration, the peaceful protest was violently beaten up by paramilitary government mobs, associated to the Sandinista Youth , while police moved back only moments before . Later, to calm down the protests, concessions to the pensioners have been made by the president Daniel Ortega to supply a reduced pension
Over a year later protests started again, this time opposing the construction of a proposed Chinese-funded inter-oceanic canal through Nicaragua, with environmental impact, land use and indigenous rights, as well as Nicaraguan sovereignty among the chief concerns of demonstrators. By February 2018, the project was widely viewed as defunct, though absent a 60% vote to revoke the 2013 legislation creating the project, the Chinese company (HKND) granted the concession to develop the canal maintains legal rights to it as well as to ancillary infrastructure projects.
In early April 2018, demonstrators marched in Managua, the country's capital, to protest what they regarded as an insufficient government response to forest fires that burned 13,500 acres (5,500 hectares) of the Indio Maiz Biological Reserve, a tropical nature preserve that is home to Rama and Kriol indigenous people, as well as significant biodiversity and endangered species. It was suspected that the government had an interest in the fire, as it is the biggest natural reserve, the Nicaraguan Canal is planned to cut through. Counterprotests also occurred at the time in support of the Sandinista Front government.
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