Bishop Lacunza mediates between the Government and the natives in order to resolve the conflict and avoid deaths
Last February 5 a person died and 46 others have been wounded on account of the encounters between the police and the natives, in a nearby mission of the Augustinian Recollects in Boca del Toro. The conflict between the Government and the ethnics Ngäbe Buglé, is due to the fact that the latter demand legal guarantee that in their ancestral territories be prohibited, other than the mining, the exploitation of their water resources.
Msgr. José Luis Lacunza, bishop of David (Panama)In a statement to the EFE Agency, the Chancellor of Panama Roberto Henríquez assured that the Army is open to dialogue with the natives -headed by a cacique Silvia Carrera and the director Rogelio Montezuma- and he proposes that the mediation of the President of the Episcopal Conference of Panama, an Augustinian Recollect Jose Luis Lacunza, be maintained. However, he clarified that he was not able to communicate with the Bishop because he was in a conflicting area, at almost 400 kilometers west of the capital of Panama, where, “for security reason”, the communications through cell phones have been suspended by the Government for the past days.
The President of the Coordinator for the Defense of the Natural Recourses and Rights of the People of Ngäbe Buglé, Rogelio Montezuma, asked the end of the “repression and persecution” to which, according to him, the authorities subject the members of the Coordinator, and also the “immediate liberation” of all the detained persons during the encounters between the natives and the Police.
Although the protests have sparked in different parts of the country, Chancellor Henriquez informed that the Government “by no means” is going to tolerate that the medium of communication be interrupted again, as it occurred for six days between San Felix, in the Province of Chiriquí, and Viguí, in the Province of Veraguas.
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Documents
Historia de la Prelatura de Bocas del Toro
Autor: Martínez Cuesta, Á. (295 Kb)
Picture Galleries
DECEMBER 2008. SPAIN.
Encounter of Augustinian Recollect Bishops