Panama: Protester killed, 100 people hurt in clash between striking banana workers and police

[Judi Lynn]

Panama: Protester killed, 100 people hurt in clash between striking banana workers and police
By Associated Press
11:51 p.m. EDT, July 8, 2010



An unidentified man is aid after being injured during
clashes with police in Changuinola, western Panama,
Thursday, July 8, 2010. One man died and dozens were
injured as banana union workers clashed with police
during a protest to repeal recently tax laws. (AP Photo)
(AP / July 8, 2010)

CITY (AP) — Striking banana plantation workers and police clashed in western Panama on Thursday, leaving one man dead and 100 people hurt.

Eighteen of the injured in Bocas del Toro province, on the border with Costa Rica, were in critical condition, the national emergency agency said in a statement.

The National Front for the Defense of Economic and Social Rights, a non-governmental labor umbrella group, identified the dead man as banana union leader Antonio Smith.

Striking banana plantation workers began protesting last week against a new law that critics say weakens unions.

More:
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/nationworld/sns-ap-lt-panama-banana-protest,0,7671693.story

[rabs]

1. The AP story does not mention (no surprise)

That the strikers work at the Bocas Fruit Company, a subsidiary of Chiquita. About 4,500 banana plantation workers are striking.

U.S. citizens in the area have been warned to stay off the roads.

(Also posted in LBN thread)

------------------

Edit to add:

-- Two strikers now reported dead.

-- 20 roads leading to Bocas del Toro are permanently blocked, electricity and water services have been cut, there is a shortage of food and gasoline in the entire province. The strike began five days ago.

-- The strike began with the banana workers, but teachers, construction workers and indigenous groups have joined the stoppage.

-- In the province of Colon, workers improving the Panama Canal have been on strike since Saturday.

-- The new president Martinelli called an emergency Cabinet meeting and sent one of his top aides to Bocas del Toro to try to defuse the situation. On Thursday night there were new clashes.

[Judi Lynn]

2. It's downright dishonest for AP to leave the GUTS of the story out in their version. It's criminal.

They misrepresent things all the time, and it's a shame nothing can be done to check them on it.

The world is losing ground when people today who go on strike for better conditions are no better off at all than they were in Guatemala in 1954, when the U.S. sent in troops to overthrow the elected President Jacobo Arbenz who was trying to improve conditions for Guatemalan workers. Very same corporation ran that country, too.

Chiquita's power is so great it can get the food, and fuel, and power turned off to the strikers, to apply pressure to blackmail them, force them to give up striking.

You are very kind to put IN the information AP clearly threw OUT of the story for US American consumption. We would have been so misled without a true picture.