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.
On Feb. 15 some 5,000 members of Panama’s Ngöbe-Buglé Indigenous group held
a day of national protests against changes to the Mining Resources Code that
they said would encourage open-pit mining for metals by foreign companies.
The protests, organized by the People’s Total Struggle (ULIP), started at 10
am in San Félix, in the Ngöbe-Buglé territory in the western province of
Chiriquí.
More than 1,000 Ngöbe people – men, women, and children – took to the streets in different parts of Panama this week to protest a proposed change in the country’s mining law. Nine Ngöbe people were reported wounded and 22 jailed, including three children. Environmental and human rights organizations and students carried out parallel protests against the mining law reform at the National Assembly.
It’s one down and two to go in our campaign to revoke repressive laws in Panama that threaten the environment and violate the rights of Indigenous Peoples. If you sent letters or emails for this campaign, you’ve already helped bring about this first victory – thank you! But there’s more to do, so let’s keep up the pressure.
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.
