Cultural Survival Executive Director Ellen Lutz was in Washington November 2 for a hearing at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights regarding Panama's violation of the rights of Ngobe people by constructing a dam on their territory. The hearing was held at the request of Panama, which apparently hoped to justify its support of the dam project. The country has so far ignored the commission's precautionary measures, which called on Panama and the company building the dam, AES-Changuinola, to halt construction while the commission considers the petition Cultural Survival submitted with the Ngobe people. The petition sites a wide range of human rights violations on the part of the government and its corporate contractor. The violations include planning and beginning the project without any participation in or consultation with the Ngobe; beating and arresting Ngobe villagers when they protested the dam; cordoning off the Ngobe villages with police to keep outsiders from seeing the devastation the construction was causting; and destroying peoples homes and property.
Also attending the hearing were two delegations of Ngobe, who testified before the commission about the behavior of the government and the rights violations they have suffered. If the government hoped to sway the commission, they were disappointed. "The commission was furious with Panama," Lutz said afterward.
The commission's final decision on the petition is still some months away, and the work is progressing at a tremendous pace, presumably in the hope of finishing the dam before being ordered to stop. Lutz, who was in Panama in September, says that the dam construction is largely in place already. But the commission's reaction at the hearing suggests that they will pass the case on to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which has legal authority to order Panama to address the Ngobe's concerns and honor their rights.
