Sincere thanks to everyone who sent urgent email
Sincere thanks to everyone who sent urgent email
The Ngöbe people issued an urgent appeal for solidarity from the international community yesterday after Panama police forces launched a violent attack on protesters, killing at least one person and injuring many more. Ngöbe protesters have blockaded the Pan-American highway since last Monday in opposition to a proposed mining law that would open their traditional lands to mining and hydroelectric development.
The Ngöbe-Buglé Indigenous people took to the streets once more during the week of October 24th as a result of President Martinelli's failure to take their demands into account regarding changes to the country's mining code.
The Ngöbe (also spelled Ngabe-Bukle) people of Panama held a series of peaceful demonstrations in Chiriqui,Veraguas, in the autonomous Indigenous region of the Ngöbe in Panama on September 1st to protest the hydroelectric project known as CHAN-75 on the Changuinola River as well as others planned within Ngobe territory.
The Ngöbe Indigenous People, environmentalists, and human rights advocates in Panama are celebrating a decision by Panama’s National Public Service Authority (ASEP) that will prevent US-based AES Corporation from building a second dam on the Changuinola River.
After six years of protests against construction of the Chan-75 dam, including a case before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the American engineering company AES and the Panamanian government closed the dam’s floodgates on the Changuinola river.
Cultural Survival partners took the fight over a Panamanian dam to the company responsible in April, challenging executives of the AES Corporation over Indigenous rights and environmental violations at the company’s annual shareholders’ meeting. Ngöbe community member Bernardino Morales joined representatives of the Center for Biological Diversity and the Harvard International Human Rights Clinic in condemning the company for its failure to follow through on promised compensation plans for Ngöbe communities that will be flooded and destroyed by the dam being built on the Changuinola River.
After half a year of constant protests that were supported by Global Response campaigns, the Ngöbe people have proposed two bills to Panama’s National Assembly. One bill would revoke an executive decree that violates their right to freely choose their own political leadership. The other bill prohibits mining and dam construction that would negatively affect Ngöbe communities.
After the protests against mining reform in the Mining Code, the government of Ricardo Martinelli will retake dialogues this Wednesday with the Coordinator for the Defense of Natural Resources and the Rights of the Ngöbe Buglé Peoples.
The president of Panama, Ricardo Martinelli, promised that the new Mining Code will not affect the territories of indigenous communities.
Last week, while the rest of Panama was celebrating Carnival, Ngöbe people from across the country gathered to elect a new president of the Ngöbe Bugle Congress, Panama’s largest Indigenous organization.
First, let's celebrate a victory! For the second time in the last six months, last week Indigenous Ngöbe protesters forced Panama's president and legislature to revoke a law that threatened their lands and rights.
Panama’s president Ricardo Martinelli announced today that he would revoke a reform to the country’s mining law that provoked thousands of Ngöbe Indigenous people to protest by blocking major highways over the past weekend.
Reconocimiento de tierra
Reconocemos que nuestra sede está en la tierra de Massachusetts, en Cambridge, MA, y agradecemos a los administradores Indígenas pasados, actuales y futuros de este territorio.