 Cleotilde Cárdenas, community leader of Escobal, near Piña Range. Photo: FOR.
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* Call the State Department's Panama Desk and politely but firmly urge that the United States agree to continue cleanup of explosive ranges after they are transferred back to Panama later this year. Call Panama Desk Officer Karen Gallegos at (202) 647-4986. If she is not there, ask to leave a message. * If your Representative signed the letter, please write to thank her or him. Please help to educate Senators' staff by writing to them about this problem. We hope that a similar letter will circulate in the Senate in the next month or so. The TFLAC office can give you the names of aides, as well as materials to send to Senate offices. Keep an ear tuned for National Public Radio's story on the U.S. chemical weapons legacy in Panama, expected to air in May. |
Meanwhile, twenty-five Congressional Representatives wrote to Secretary of Defense William Cohen on March 12 urging release of documents and greater cleanup efforts by the U.S. military at explosive and chemical weapons sites in Panama.
Initiated by Sam Farr and Barbara Lee (both Democrats of California), the Congressional letter said: "We fear that the U.S. government is preparing to walk away from its responsibilities to adequately clean up U.S. military bases and firing ranges in Panama that were used to test conventional and chemical weapons." A February letter to President Clinton from more than 75 religious and human rights leaders expressed similar sentiments.
"Inadequate and Inefficient"
Although political campaigns dominate Panamanian news, nationalists have been harshly critical of the Panamanian government's failure to stir up a fuss about the problem. By allowing the United States to proceed with its inadequate cleanup plan, "the government [of Panama] has indulged the United States," former president Jorge Illueca told a crowd at the University of Panama on March 16. He urged the government to take its case to international fora such as the United Nations and Organization of American States, as an earlier generation of Panamanians did to win back the Canal Zone.
Human rights activist Jacinto González, a coordinator of Organizations Against the Military Bases, said that the Torrijos-Carter Treaties require the United States to completely clean up lands used for military exercises, and that Panama should not simply "ask" for cleanup, but demand that the treaty be fulfilled.
Communities of Panamanians living on the edge of the explosive ranges are also worried. "They say they're bringing specialists to do a surface cleanup, but they don't know the area," says Cleotilde Cardenas, justice of the peace of Escobal, a village that borders Piña range. "Why don't they look for people from here and pay them, even if it's just as guides?"
Cardenas tells how four different Panamanians have been killed by munitions from the nearby range in the last eight years. Two were children, aged nine and six, who three years ago found a munition and hit it against a concrete stairway. "There were pieces of the children on the sidewalk and on the roof. The explosion was so big people thought it was a gas tank exploding," she said. The U.S. military has never accepted that the munition came from the range, Cardenas added. Another man died inside Piña range, but wasn't found until five days later.
The Health Ministry and U.S. military are sponsoring community seminars to teach people from the area how to recognize dangerous munitions. Cardenas points out that most of those entering the ranges are not locals, who know the dangers, but people from other provinces who come and see good land for planting or harvesting wood.
Lt. Col. Reynold Hoover, who coordinates the military's cleanup operations, acknowledges the problems. "Institutional controls -- barriers, signs, education -- work really well in the United States," he says. "But we're in a different environment here."
The ranges will not be fenced in, according to the military's plan. Instead, there will be warning signs on the roads around the most dangerous impact areas. Yet on the west side of Piña range there will be neither signs nor fence, so that hunters or others entering through the forest will have no warning of the explosives. Even on areas where there are signs, Cardenas notes that many people cannot read. "When there are documents they sign with a thumb print," she says.
On Balboa West, a range used by the Air Force, the lines traced by the warning signs will not even enclose the impact area, according to the plan. Fernando Manfredo, head of a Panamanian inter-agency group addressing the ranges, called the U.S. transfer plan for the ranges "inadequate and inefficient."
The State Department had no ambassador in Panama from October until February 26, when Simon Ferro assumed the post, an absence which contributed to a stall in diplomatic talks for a post-1999 cleanup plan. Ferro reportedly has asked Pentagon officials to come up with a post-1999 proposal.
Panama postponed a bi-national technical meeting scheduled to discuss its objections to the transfer plan, purportedly to allow time for Panama to assemble its own technical case. However, several Panamanian officials told Panamá Update that cleanup negotiations are on hold until after the elections on May 2, which could result in the appointment of a new cabinet.
The dispute deepened as 80 Army and National Guard troops commenced cleanup operations at the end of January, when Panama's dry season began. The military's Southern Command took advantage of the operation to assert that it is completely fulfilling its obligations under the Panama Canal Treaties. Panamanian technical staff were allowed to observe the cleanup operations, albeit under rules laid down by the military about where to go and what to do.
Colonel David Hunt, the military's lead on treaty implementation in Panama, took the occasion to say that "there have been no chemical weapons used or tested... in Panama." Military documents and even a film made by the Army's Signal Corps show clearly how false the statement is. The United States tested chemical weapons in Panama from the 1940s through the 1960s.
'Make Release of Records a Priority'
The Congressional Representatives' letter reviewed U.S. obligations under both the Canal Treaties and the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) to share information on dangers created by U.S military activities in Panama, and condemned "the military's non-disclosure of U.S. documents regarding the history of chemical weapons activities in Panama." The Representatives urged Secretary of Defense Cohen "to make prompt and full release of these records a priority in the coming months."
Besides urging disclosure, the letter also asked some pointed questions about cleanup after the military leaves this year. "At domestic ranges, the DoD retains liability for unexploded ordnance (UXO) that may be encountered after the range is closed," the Representatives noted. "Does DoD plan to assume responsibility for clean-up of UXO that may be found after December 31, 1999?" The legislators implicitly criticize the Pentagon for rejecting a Panamanian proposal to study long-term cleanup methods that could mitigate any environmental impacts caused by detection of underground ordnance.
The letter was signed by: Barbara Lee (D-CA), Sam Farr (D-CA), George Brown (D-CA), Tom Campbell (R-CA), William Clay (D-MO), John Conyers (D-MI), Lloyd Doggett (D-TX), Robert Ehrlich (R-TX), Lane Evans (D-IL), Barney Frank (D-MA), Luis Gutierrez (D-IL), James McGovern (D-MA), Cynthia McKinney (D-GA), Michael McNulty (D-NY), James Oberstar (D-MN), John Olver (D-MA), Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Lynn Rivers (D-MI), Bernard Sanders (I-VT), Jose Serrano (D-NY), Fortney Peter Stark (D-CA), Adam Smith (D-WA), Ted Strickland (D-OH), Robert Underwood (D-Guam), and Maxine Waters (D-CA).
Religious Leaders Emphatic
The letter from religious and human rights leaders pointed out that explosive accidents have killed Panamanian civilians on U.S. artillery ranges, and that more than 60,000 people live in communities adjacent to the ranges. Pentagon studies indicate that the ranges harbor more than 120,000 unexploded munitions, the letter said.
"The Defense Department has ignored requests from the Panamanian government to disclose many key records that are critical to Panama's public safety and land use plans," the leaders said.
"Panamanians deserve no less than U.S. citizens living near military bases," said Bishop James H. Ottley, the Anglican Observer at the United Nations and a signer of the letter. "We are urging the United States to leave a positive legacy in Panama."
Thirteen bishops of the Catholic, Episcopal and Methodist churches and twenty-six other religious leaders signed the letter to President Clinton. Other endorsers of the letter included leaders representing Friends of the Earth, Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund and Greenpeace, Ambassador Robert White, the director of the Carter Center's Latin America program Jennifer McCoy, Dr. Robert Pastor (former aide to President Carter), former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, the directors of twenty national human rights and peace organizations, and several academic specialists on Panama.
The New York Times also editorialized for better overseas cleanup of U.S. bases. "American forces are withdrawing from military bases around the world," the Times wrote on December 25, "but in many cases what they are leaving behind is dangerous to the local population and environment." The Times concluded that "The risks do not stop at the border, and neither should American accountability."
Together with several other groups, the Fellowship of Reconciliation is helping to plan an international conference in Washington in late October on environmental cleanup of overseas U.S. military bases. The FOR also continues to pursue Freedom of Information Act requests for documents on chemical weapons tests. Finally, we are planning a presence in Panama at year's end, when the canal is turned over.