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La Prensa photographer Bernardino Friere and reporters Jean Marcél Chéry, Julio Aizprúa and Alcibiades Cortés were arrested by the Institutional Protection Service (SPI, the presidential guard) on April 14 and initially charged with trespassing onto the grounds of the presidential beach house at Punta Mala, and "attacking the juridical personality of the state" (treason). The journalists were on the beach outside the presidential compound --- which is public property --- and were then ordered by the SPI into the beach house's security perimeter, where they were arrested for being where the presidential guards forced them to go. Friere's photographic equipment was confiscated and he was strip searched for digital photo memory discs. After 26 hours in custody, the four journalists were released by a Las Tablas circuit judge after both the SPI and prosecutors denied having ordered the detentions and the government failed to provide any evidence to support any of the elements of a treason charge. The arrests provoked a storm of protests from Panamanian and international journalists' and human rights groups. In response, President Moscoso invited a select group of pro-Arnulfista journalists and publicity flacks to see the house --- not including The Panama News, and pointedly not including anyone from La Prensa or El Panama America --- and protested that she has a right to privacy and that La Prensa is rude. The responses didn't go over well, which in turn led Comptroller General Alvin Weeden to reiterate the administration's promise to sell Punta Mala. That, however, generated more news stories about how the presidency has been attempting to acquire more land near the embellished former US military building, which in turn led Moscoso to protest that the property had been expropriated from her grandfather in 1938 in the first place.

The United Nations High Commission for Refugees says that Panama improperly forced 109 Colombian refugees, most of them children, to return to Colombia. The people in question were displaced by an offensive by the AUC paramilitary and fled to the area around Punusa in the Darien. In a joint Panamanian-Colombian police operation, they were returned to Colombia against their will, the UN agency says. The Moscoso administration denies that the expulsion was forcible. Generally the Moscoso administration tolerates Colombians fleeing offensives by leftist FARC guerrillas but expels those running from the rightist AUC paramilitary.

As this issue was uploaded protests by students and parents at the Colegio Estella Serra continued into their third week. The school was shut down by protests after acting principal Manolís Samaniego, who has been working for four years in an acting capacity and receiving only a regular teacher's salary, turned the keys to the school over to the Education Ministry and attempted to return to teaching duties. The students and parents are demanding that Samaniego be hired as the current principal, with corresponding pay. Education Minister Doris Rosas de Mata, who likes to fill as many positions as possible with her relatives or supporters of the Rosas family's faction of the MOLIRENA party, sent in Arraijan Mayor Jaime Barroso rather than a ministry representative to transmit an "offer" that would have Samaniego resume administrative duties at teacher's pay with a "promise" that a permanent principal would be named later and that Samaniego might be chosen "if he qualifies." Samaniego rejected this call to return to the old arrangement and protests escalated from a school closure to an April 22 partial blockade of the Pan-American Highway, which brought out the riot police and resulted in pitched battle with police using clubs and tear gas and students and parents throwing stones and bottles. Five students and two parents were arrested.

The Legislative Assembly has passed a law on third and final reading to increase the maximum prison terms for juveniles who commit murder, rape or drug trafficking to seven years and the maximum penalties for voluntary manslaughter, kidnapping or robbery to five years. The law's proponent, Arnulfista legislator and taxi syndicate leader Marcos González, cited "statistics" about an increase in juvenile crime since reforms to the juvenile court system were enacted in the late 1990s, but there is no record of any such increase in crime. Still, several well publicized cases of juveniles who committed multiple homicides aroused public indignation despite penologists' and sociologists' arguments that increased penalties rarely deter kids from committing crimes.

Part of the US government's desire to make its diplomatic facilities less vulnerable to terrorist attack will be realized through the conversion of the former Fort Clayton's Building 519 into the new US consulate. The building was built as a hospital in World War II and was transferred to the Social Security Fund when it reverted to Panama, but the cost of converting it back into a health care facility makes it useless for Seguro. In its last years of use by the US Army, the building was used for offices. It's on a hill without any roads close by, and thus far more easily defended from truck bombs than is the present consulate.

Immigration Director Ilka de Barés, annoyed with frequent incidents of phony lawyers and imitation public officials hanging around Migracion offices on Avenida Cuba, defrauding foreigners of payments for legal services that they won't and can't deliver, has restricted entry to the building to licensed lawyers, Immigration officials and individuals who need to appear at the offices for their own cases. There are a number of individuals who have made a living for years posing as Immigration officials and extorting payments from foreigners who are threatened with deportation, or who pretend to be lawyers and tell people who are here illegally that for a few hundred dollars they can fix the problem. These fraud artists are almost never arrested, but now at least they can't get into the building. The new system, however, may eventually mean that certain officials will be in a position to extort payments from genuine attorneys and people with real business with Migracion.

The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is down here to film a documentary on the building of the Panama Canal, and has put out the call for historical items to use i their production. They are especially looking for maps, postcards and magazine articles from the period, antique furniture and house decorations from both the French and US canal construction period, digging equipment especially from the French period, and seismographic instruments from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. If you have any of these items to lend, contact BBC's Sara Cropley by email at saracropley@yahoo.com.

US authorities in Houston are holding 23 mostly Chinese crew members of the Panama-flag freighter Well Pescadores on suspicion of murder and assault after three Dominican stowaways say they and two accomplices were beaten, robbed of the little money they had and thrown overboard off the coast of Texas. The three survivors were picked up by a Liberian ship and taken to Miami, where they were treated for exposure and injuries from having been beaten with steel bars and wooden planks. As it is unclear whether the crime took place in international or US territorial waters, Panamanian maritime authorities are participating in the investigation.

Dozens of prominent Panamanians from the worlds of politics, business, the media and the arts, the most prominent of whom are former President Guillermo Endara and former President Nicolás Ardito Barletta, have issued a statement condemning the government of Cuba for a wave of repression that has resulted in dozens of peaceful dissidents being sent to prison for long terms and three men who tried to commandeer a boat and take it to the United States being shot after a summary trial. "We call upon Cuba to faithfully comply with all the commitments it has solemnly made before the international community," the multi-partisan group said in its protest against "very negative" acts of "disproportionate violence." People who are not wealthy or powerful were not invited to sign the statement, so many labor, indigenous and community, cultural and academic figures who are also critical of Cuba's recent actions were not listed and the Castro government may be tempted to dismiss it as the sentiment of the bourgeois elite. The reality is, however, that the recent wave of repression in Cuba has alienated most people in this country, including many Panamanians who have for many years stood up for the Castro government in the face of US hostility.

The four-masted Chilean tall ship the Esmeralda, a navy training vessel upon which political prisoners were imprisoned and tortured in the wake of the 1973 US-backed coup in Chile, will be calling at Rodman on May 6 as part of Panama's centennial year celebrations. Former foreign minister and current Centennial Commission chief José Miguel Alemán, now a presidential candidate, has included the notorious ship's visit as part of the year-long celebration of Panama's independence. During the visit there will be open visitation for Chilean citizens and a reception for Moscoso administration dignitaries.

The Electoral Tribunal has ordered Roberto Ortíz, the representante for San Miguelito's Belisario Porras corregimiento, removed from office for offering municipal real estate to 15 people if they would join the Cambio Democratico party. Cambio Democratico, whose founder and leader is supermarket baron Ricardo Martinelli, is essentially run as a private for-profit business for politicians. While it was part of Mireya Moscoso's governing coalition, it imposed a party dues deduction scheme on workers at the IDAAN water and sewer utility. Sergio Gálves, Cambio Democratico's one legislator who has since switched to the Arnulfista Party in hopes of becoming its Panama City mayoral candidate, has the worst attendance record in the assembly and is best known as a deputy for a photograph taken of him counting cash at his desk.

Opponents of a series of dams that would create a new lake for the Panama Canal in western Colon and northern Cocle provinces say that a construction company website is evidence for their claim that despite the Panama Canal Authority's assurances that a final decision about the project has not been made, in fact it has. Caritas, a Catholic social ministry and the Farmers Against the Reservoirs Coordinator (CCCE) say that the Constructora Urbana SA (CUSA ) website's claim that "Panama plans large scale investments in... new dams for the improvement of the canal's functioning...." is a telling admission, given that CUSA is owned by the Alemán Zubieta family and canal administrator Alberto Alemán Zubieta came to his current job from his prior post as CEO of CUSA.

Sebastián Nereida, a 26-year-old tour guide, died on April 24 in Gatun Lake in what may have been a rare attack by a cayman. While escorting some tourists on the lake, he dropped his keys in the water, dove for them and never came up. The SINAPROC disaster relief and rescue agency was also unsuccessful at recovering the body, and noted that the area where the incident happened is infested with caymen. The reptiles rarely bother people, but often kill their prey by dragging it underwater until it drowns. Panama also has alligators and crocodiles, both of which are rare here and the latter of which can be quite dangerous to people.

Also in this section:
Panama News Briefs
Nuevos Horizontes 2003
Conservative group gets different reception this year
A former political prisoner's tale

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