Nicaragua indigenous groups challenge Hong Kong-built canal

Nicaraguan civil society groups have challenged plans by a Hong Kong company to build an interoceanic canal through the Central American country, arguing that they have not been sufficiently involved in the decision-making process.

On Monday, representatives of indigenous and creole community groups of Nicaragua's eastern Autonomous Region of the Southern Atlantic said they had called on the country's Supreme Court to repeal the law allowing the construction of the canal.

HKND Group recently won a US$40 billion contract to build and operate a canal through Nicaragua that would dwarf the Panama Canal and would have major geopolitical implications.

The Nicaraguan parliament approved a law on the canal on June 13, providing a legal framework for an earlier memorandum of understanding signed after a meeting between President Manuel Ortega and HKND chairman Wang Jing.

"The passing means that the state accepts and approves in advance [a project] that will affect peoples of indigenous and of African descent, who had been excluded from the decision-making process," the Nicaragua Centre for Human Rights said in a statement on Tuesday.

The centre is sponsoring the complaint with the Supreme Court, calling for a repeal of the law, which gives the operator the right to determine the canal's technical, economic and environmental viability.