From the Wall Street Journal:

A schoolboy held a sign in protest of the canal’s construction during a February demonstration in El Tule town. Reuters photo.

A schoolboy held a sign in protest of the canal’s construction during a February demonstration in El Tule town. Reuters photo.

Nicaraguan government officials justify the pending expropriations, which would uproot 27,000 people, saying the canal will transform this impoverished Central American nation by creating 50,000 jobs and doubling the economy.

Though the government has yet to seize a single acre, HKND Group says it will pay market prices for confiscated acreage. However, a 2013 law authorizing the government to expropriate any land needed for the canal says payments will be based on each property’s assessed tax value, figures that are usually much lower.

Fearing they will be displaced and shortchanged, throngs of farmers have staged about 50 protests in the past year, some of them violent.

Comtinue at the WSJ