Antigovernment protesters accused of torching a baseball stadium and looting businesses, including a provincial airport, have been declared in western Bocas del Toro province, according to Panama’s declaration of state of emergency.
According to police, clashes with police that erupted two months ago in Bocas del Toro, a major banana-producing region, resulted in one fatality and the injury of several officers.
In a press conference on Friday, presidential minister Juan Carlos Orillac stated that the government would be able to reestablish order and “rescue” the province from “radical groups” by declaring that the damage done to public properties was “unacceptable and did not represent a legitimate protest.”
The state will carry out its constitutional duty to ensure peace, he said, “in the event of disturbance of order and systematic violence.”
He claimed that the procedure will last five days.
The protesters have clashed with authorities over a March pension reform law, supported by unions and indigenous groups nationwide.
In Bocas del Toro, where workers at a nearby Chiquita banana plantation have largely led the fights, have been particularly violent. The multinational banana company, Chiquita, sacked thousands of workers after calling the workers’ strike an “unjustified abandonment of work.”
After being able to negotiate the reinstatement of some benefits that had been removed as part of the March pension reform, those workers eventually withdrew from the protests.
The government has not yet stated why the Chiquita workers were directly to blame for the roadblocks in Bocas del Toro, despite the fact that it did not say for them.
Authorities said on Thursday that groups of hooded people partially set fire to a baseball stadium and looted businesses in the city of Changuinola, Bocas del Toro’s main city, with police officers inside, at a peak.
According to police, “vandals took over” the neighborhood airport, snatched cars from rental car companies, and looted offices and warehouses filled with supplies from Chiquita. On Friday, flights at the airport were still being canceled.
In recent months, right-wing President Jose Raul Mulino in Panama has been the target of numerous protests.
Panamanians have protested a deal Mulino and US President Donald Trump reached in April that allowed US troops to station along the Panama Canal.
After Trump repeatedly threatened to “take back” the US-built waterway, Mulino made the concession to Trump.
Source: Aljazeera
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