- Border authorities said they are trying to channel irregular migration through a humanitarian corridor
Panamanian border police have found the lifeless bodies of 10 migrants who drowned in riverside tributaries in Panama, where they had arrived from Colombia to supposedly avoid a longer route through the Darien jungle on their migratory journey to the United States.
Water head:
It is an event characterized by the sudden appearance of a large mass of water in a river basin.
“The National Border Service (Senafront) makes it public that, according to information received in the riverside tributaries near the community of Carreto, 10 bodies of migrants who died from drowning due to a high water level were observed,” the border police force reported in a statement.
Senafront believes it is likely that these bodies had previously been “buried to cover up their criminal links to migrant trafficking” and that they must have been unearthed.
Panamanian authorities insisted that they are trying to “channel irregular migration through the humanitarian corridor that offers greater protection to the migrant population,” but regretted that organized crime, through local collaborators in these Caribbean coastal communities, insists on using unauthorized crossings, “putting the lives of these people at serious risk.”
“SENAFRONT reiterated that the authorized passage for irregular migration is the one that leads to Cañas Blancas, where specialized patrols are available for protection and humanitarian assistance,” he stressed.
Migratory routes
The Carreto route, in the Panamanian Caribbean, is the most expensive. You have to pay up to $550 to take a boat from Capurganá (in Colombia) to that community and then walk for two or four days through the jungle to reach the indigenous community of Canaán Membrillo, according to information from 2023 from the humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders (MSF), which was providing services in Darién until its operating permit was renewed this year.
Since the new administration of President José Raúl Mulino began on July 1, several measures have been taken to try to reduce the flow of migrants through the Darién jungle, which has already been crossed so far this year by more than 216,000 migrants, most of them Venezuelans, while in all of 2023 there were more than 520,000, according to official data from Panama.
Among these measures, since July 3, Panama has progressively fenced off with perimeter barriers (barbed wire fences) some 4.7 kilometers in Darien, where there were at least five unauthorized crossings or trails, to channel the flow of migrants through a “humanitarian corridor.”
While awaiting comparative data for the entire month of July compared to the previous month, Panamanian authorities say that following these measures, a reduction in the number of pedestrians has already been noticed.
Transit through the Darien jungle is not safe
The director general of the National Migration Service, Roger Mojica Rivera, recently assured that his migration policy is guided by the main international standards of safe, orderly and regular migration.
It is clear that the transit of migrants through the Darien jungle is neither safe, nor orderly, nor regular,” he added.
Darién is a jungle that forms a natural border between Panama and Colombia, with a length of 266 kilometers. Migrants cross it on their way to the United States, where they often face dangers such as sudden flooding of rivers or attacks by wild animals or armed groups, who charge migrants for passage or rob them, and sometimes they are also victims of sexual abuse.
With information from EFE
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2024-07-25 08:28:06
