Bocas banana workers threaten return to the streets

Delegates from Bocas del Toro have threatened to return to the streets where two died and hundreds were injured in clashes with the police if the controversial Act 30  is not repealed.
"Without a repeal of, we will go back the streets," said Alberto Abrego, one of the indigenous people who participated in the fighting and the strike by banana workers in Bocas del Toro.
Abrego’s statements weremade at a session of the Working Committee of the National Assembly during the consultations over draft law suspending three articles of Law 30. "I said that if I have to die for Bocas del Toro and Panama, I will," he said.
Relatives of banana workers who lost one or both eyes from lead shot due used by police during demonstrations in Bocas del Toro earlier this month, have joined the voices calling for the repeal of the law.
A group of Indigenous people, mostly wives of the wounded in the riots two weeks ago, Abrego said they wanted justice for their comrades who were killed.
Rufina Mendoza, wife of Arsenio Rodriguez (who has lost his sight in both eyes), also called on the president, Ricardo Martinelli, the repeal of the law. "I asked peopleto vote for Martinelli because I thought it would change. But I wonder, is this change? " she said angrily.
She said that her husband did not participate in the demonstrations, but was injured last Thursday July 8 when he was in the house of a relative in Changuinola.
Representatives of the Democratic Revolutionary Women of Changuinola, and the Kuna Congress, also took part in the discussion at the commission, which demanded the resignation of ministers Alma Cortes and Jose Raul Mulino, and the elimination of the law.
At least 15 representatives from various labor unions and environmentalists also made use of the word “elimination.”
Raisa Banfield of the group Sustainable Panama, training, said the project should also include the suspension of the reforms to environmental norms.