caught between threats of layoffs and an increase in the rate of exploitation, repression and attacked by stymied by unions managed by the company, after decades of attempts to establish a representative organization of workers in 1960, led by a committee of It goes underground, the banana workers stopped work Bocas del Toro, with colleagues in the Pacific, finally breaking the siege of union formation, achieving its action starting a better life in the enclaves of the United Fruit Company, established since the separation of Panama from Colombia (1).
Almost 6 months before that separation was the only leader killed honestly connected to the claims of the most exploited of the Isthmus, Victoriano Lorenzo, the necessary background of all our struggles and who in their blood had the dignity of those in the vast most never gave up and opted to venture into the mountains or die, since that first meeting in 1503 which then led to genocide throughout the continent and the current reality of over 5 centuries of cultural exclusion, economic and political.
arrived centuries during which African blacks under slavery, mainly in the earliest forms of the route between the 2 seas, where stories are born feral and fences, construction of the Canal and plantations. You have to add a military invasion in 1989 and the progressive reduction of economic and social rights for decades.
Antonio Smith and Virgilio Castillo, at least, are the latest names to be added to the list significantly, victims of authoritarianism and arrogance of a government. Iromi accompany Al Smith, Osvaldo Lorenzo and Luigi Arguelles, killed in the previous government, the Naso people fighting for their territory, the Kuna people defend their autonomy, the Ngäbe, environmentalists who defend the nature and the right to a healthy environment, communities affected by mining, hydroelectric or residential tourism.
is not intended to start with an historical or claim specifically about perpetrators (although it must be done: more than irresponsibly by not being a victim, ask for "forgetting to turn the page and look ahead.") The intention is to prevent from the start against the danger of approaching the issue of rights strictly on the human situation: the current authoritarian government hub of power, violator of rights, abusive, discriminatory and murderer, acting around one or more laws or decrees, losing sight of the structural nature of the violations of human rights in our country's more, building the model of country we have from systematic violations of human rights.
The human rights issue does not arise directly from the concerns expressed in previous forums, but also finds it strange. Stems directly from the situation, and therein lies both its virtue and his danger, of the events in July 2010 in Changuinola, with persecutions social leaders throughout the country following the conflict over the existence, content and implementation of Law No. 30 on labor, environmental and criminal procedure to members of the security forces, and Decree 537 amending the charter of the Shire Ngäbe Bugle, symptoms of a transition from democratic forms into democratic bottomless violent ways to maintain a model historically violent and undemocratic. The underlying problem is not the law, the problem is the model to which the law serves.
But why address the issue of human rights in an area called ideological forum, is it not contaminated with a policy statement of good wishes for humanity?
Definitely not, because human rights are not just a wish list, not the exclusive preserve of national or international bureaucracies, or of those porcelain NGOs do not dare or not you should get into the center of the hurricane, to confront directly where it is decided to violate a right.
Human rights are the product, led the legal world of the social struggles that accompanied a vision of man, society, nature, have led us to good and bad in this moment we are and which we have to take the best forward.
human rights we belong, are the gift of any government, no president, who do have the obligation to respect and protect those rights, where it enters the question of the quality of the performance of government (Executive, Legislative, Judicial) and institutions (Ombudsman People's specific ministries and courts) to comply with such legal obligations to all citizens, to say we live in a true rule of law, which is more than that in which the government makes the laws at will and interest to prove that he fulfills the law that it is tailored more to say we have a constitution that meets or fails depending of who benefits more formally democratic, because not every choice is an overall majority and the minority can not impose on the majority, they can not submit to those with the simple argument of quantity.
A true rule of law is that which enshrines respect and protect human rights of people. Thing we ever had and we are on track to be essential for human beings are not compelled to appeal to the supreme rebellion against tyranny and oppression, as noted by the preamble of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Other
many different elements of political discourse need to demystify dominant: that democracy is a choice, that democracy is possible with citizens without rights, which are all state where laws and institutions are used for the benefit of some, that progress is 6 kilometers Bonyik that equivalent to hydroelectric development and mining, we are something different or superior to the river, the woods or mountains, that law is equal justice which the law is just and we must obey while others lose out to win, we're free because we can move even though we have the freedom to freely exercise our freedoms, rights and duties.
Why speak of human rights in a space called the Forum ideological openly invited to consider the political dimension? Because human dignity has always been out of politics in the country: do not forget also that blacks, Indians, Asians and other breeds banned, were victims of discrimination in political discourse and practice of Arnulfo Arias Madrid. That ideological intolerance was present in Jose Antonio Remon Cantera and takes its strength from the current time. That were enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings during the government of Omar Torrijos and Manuel Antonio Noriega.
The problem of human rights is not a law is a law that facilitates the dispossession as part of a model based to use the power to divest social sectors of their environmental rights, labor, their land rights and protest, its resilience to the plunder in the interests of small groups.
A model also worked on other peoples of the area, and will witness the co-Honduras and Costa Rica, from different realities, but we show the regional and general disregard for human dignity, the possibility of incorporating our struggles a human rights perspective in the political, juridical, in the streets, the courts, in the mountains and in the media and the need to recognize each separately in plots within our countries and between our countries, we can not win in a fight against a greater enemy to each of our individualities. Within
ideological forums have addressed the issue of youth participation in politics and the relationship between it and ecology, both confined to the national level, in the form of dialogue between the public and members of social movements political parties, groups, student groups, organizations, topics, aiming to establish an area of \u200b\u200brelationship between sectors with contradictions and commonalities own social and political dynamics the country, without the desire to proclaim the unity and uniformity, but just knowing the other to lay the foundations of bridges possible. Welcome
s tod @ s, thank you very much.
