The Panamanian public has been outraged at the recent award of a rumoured $400 billion contract with a Canadian mining company to exploit three square miles of Panamanian rainforest to extract copper. Protesters have been on the streets throughout the country chanting and waving banners with slogans such as “Panama is not for sale”. In Panama City itself, crowds of 30,000 protesters have clashed with the Police and Army using tear gas and what the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office travel advice page calls “riot control munition”.
There are ongoing protests and demonstrations in Panama City and across the country. These can include roadblocks and the suspension of public transport. Protests can be unpredictable and may escalate quickly. Clashes between protestors and security authorities have resulted in injuries. The authorities use tear gas and riot control munition to control protests.
The WHO has had a run of extraordinarily bad luck with COP meetings in recent years. Prior to COP6, there was an Ebola outbreak in Africa and the Russians shot down a passenger plane just before Director General Margaret Chan travelled to Moscow to talk about tobacco with Putin. New Delhi saw the worst smog in living memory which closed 20,000 schools in the week the WHO turned up in the city to talk about the dangers of vaping at COP7. The pandemic wrecked plans for COP9 which had to be delayed by a year and held virtually. Now this for COP10.
Copwatch would like to say we have sympathy for such bad luck but, unlike the WHO, we don’t want to mislead you.
No comments:
Post a Comment