2023-11-07 23:32:00
A man shot dead this Tuesday two protesters who were participating in the blockade of a route in Panama, in the third week of demonstrations against a controversial mining contract, images showed on social networks and the police reported.
“The National Police apprehends an older adult allegedly linked to an incident where two people lost their lives recorded in the district of Chame,” 80 km west of the capital, the institution said on X, formerly Twitter.
Videos circulated on social networks in which a man is seen shooting at a protester in the middle of the Inter-American Highway, which connects Panama with the rest of Central America.
These are the first fatalities left by the protests that began on October 20 against the contract with the Canadian company First Quantum Minerals (FQM), which operates the largest open pit copper mine in Central America in the Panamanian Caribbean.
The police also published a photo where the detainee, an older man with gray hair, with glasses and a gray shirt, appears sitting and handcuffed by one hand to a pipe, apparently inside a police station or truck.
The Prosecutor’s Office said that it began “investigations for a crime against the life and personal integrity to the detriment of two people who were in a road closure”, for which “one person remains apprehended.”
Several avenues in the capital were closed this Tuesday by small groups of protesters, while various sections of the Inter-American route have remained blocked for days, affecting the transportation of food, medicine and fuel.
To calm citizen unrest, the Congress of Panama approved a moratorium on metal mining last week and agreed to leave the decision on the controversial contract with FQM, which allows the mine to operate for 40 years, in the hands of the Supreme Court of Justice. .
Environmentalists were satisfied with the decision of Congress, as they consider that instead of the contract being annulled by law, it should be the Court that declares it unconstitutional to give the country defense arguments against a future multimillion-dollar lawsuit from the company.
But the powerful construction union, Suntracs, teachers unions and other organizations insist that the contract must be voided by law, so they continued with protests and road blockades.
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