Ngöbe-Bugle leaders and Panama government officials reached an agreement last week that bans all mining in the Ngöbe-Bugle territory and requires community approval for any hydro-electric projects. The agreements were formed into the Special Law 415 and was debated at the National Assembly and approved during its second reading, yesterday.
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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.