opinion

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Communique to the country and the world
by the Kuna General Congress of Madungandi

We denounce the current administration of Martín Torrijos and his cohorts with militarist tendencies who were part of Manuel Noriega's dictatorship, today as Minister and Vice Minister of Government and Justice, Daniel Delgado and Severino Mejía respectively, for their violent repression on October 24, 2007, in which they used more than 200 police officers to assault the indigenous community of Akua Yala, shooting firearms and tear gas bombs at defenseless men, women and children and taking away nearly 100 indigenous people, including minors, as prisoners to the Chepo jail.

We demand the rights justly due to us for having been dislodged without our prior consent from our traditional places to make way for the Bayano hydroelectric dam, from which we have seen no benefits. Thirty years have passed since our best lands, our houses, the cemeteries where our fathers and mothers rest, the trees and the animals were flooded, so that now more than 30 percent of the electrical energy in Panama is generated.

All the governments of every political tendency have maintained their silence since the government of Omar Torrijos in 1976 promised to indemnify our loss. Until now all of these governments have mocked those commitments to our people, whom they have delivered sadness, pain and illnesses, putting our very survival in doubt. Nor does the son of Omar Torrijos and his military ministers promote any serious dialogue whatsoever --- just violence, discrimination and illegal detentions.

We denounce the cowardly and vile disinformation by the current administration, which wants to discredit our indigenous movement with alleged arms, munitions and drugs, which have no relationship of any sort with our demands.

We demand the immediate liberation of those prisoners and withdrawal of the riot police who illegally occupy our territory, and we are open to a dignified dialogue, but one with responses.

We call upon the human rights organizations, such as the Inter-American Human Rights Commission and especially the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Indigenous Rights, as well as the Organization of American States, to conduct an investigation here and to take precautions to protect our defenseless communities.

We call upon the people and organizations, indigenous and non-indigenous, national and international, to sent protest messages to President Martín Torrijos Espino aimed at getting him to comply with his obligations to the indigenous Kuna and Embera people of Madugandi and Alto Bayano.

Kuna Comarca of Madungandi, October 24, 2007

Editor's note: Since this was written, all 97 people who were arrested in the confrontation at Akua Yala have been freed by a judge. The National Police issued a communique alleging that all of those wounded by shotgun pellets, including a journalist from La Prensa, were shot by the Kuna protesters and sometime later arrested a Kuna man with a hunting weapon at another place. However, eyewitnesses say that the police did all the shooting and the police have been unable to furnish evidence linking the man they arrested or his shotgun to the incident at Akua Yala and he, too, has been released.

Also in this section:

Sirias, A Wounaan journey
Kuna General Congress of Madugandi, Our just claims and the government's repression
Avnery, 12 years after Rabin's assassination
Amnesty International, Making a diplomatic issue of violence against women
Weisbrot, A bank of Latin America's own
Carpio, Disaster reduction and the media

Pilgrim, The Trinidad-Tobago election

Sánchez, Lula's yellow submarine

Jackson, Republicans and Democrats and Latin America

Bernal, Setting up a presidential re-election?

Leis, Who watches the watchers?