According to a statement by the coordinator, the IACHR granted the government of the isthmus country four months to respond to violations of the human rights of this original people regarding their ancestral lands in Bocas del Toro province bordering with Costa Rica.
King Bulú of the Bri Brí, Joaquín González, stated that the arduous struggle for recognition of his people’s ancestral rights of occupation was beginning to bear fruit and he hoped that justice would finally be served.
For his part, the President of Coonapip, Marcelo Guerra, said it was time for the Panamanian government to bring order to the situation of the Bri Brí people, for justice to be done and their human rights to be respected, otherwise they would be doomed to disappear.
In recent statements to La Estrella de Panamá newspaper, Guerra argued that it was not possible to deny the Bri Brí the right to collectively allocate their lands to foreigners with political, economic and other powerful interests, and would happily grant them titles.
He stated that the struggle for the recognition of the rights of indigenous peoples in Panama does not stop and that Coonapip remains firm in this struggle.
The lawsuit came after the Executive Branch ordered the filing of the application file for the collective title through the National Land Authority on April 12, 2019, as it was deemed incomplete.
While the Bri Brí women’s leader denounced that since then, dozens of individual titles have been processed overnight and new owners appeared in their territories who had never lived in that area and began following tracks and cutting down trees without control.
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