Authorities and protesters were injured Wednesday in eastern Panama when border police tried to open a highway blocked in an Indigenous community as part of monthlong demonstrations against changes to the country’s social security system.
Border police in riot gear launched tear gas and fired rubber-coated metal balls to disperse balaclava-wearing protesters firing rocks from slingshots and throwing Molotov cocktails.
The National Border Service said in a statement that three of its members were taken for medical treatment. Among the protesters, at least one man’s back and arm were studded with a constellation of wounds from pellets fired by police and another appeared to suffer a serious injury to one eye.
An Associated Press journalist saw at least one home burned when police fired a tear gas canister onto its thatch roof.
The roadway was covered in felled trees.
A resident who requested anonymity because they feared retaliation, said they feared one protester was going to lose his eye after being struck in the melee.
The small community is in the Darien, the remote province that borders Colombia and that has seen hundreds of thousands of migrants pass through until the flow effectively stopped earlier this year.
Protests have persisted in parts of Panama for a month and a half. They’ve covered a range of issues including the changes to social security and opposition to a security agreement giving U.S. soldiers and contractors access to some facilities in Panama.
President José Raúl Mulino has said he will not reverse the social security changes, nor will he allow protesters to obstruct roads.
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AP journalist Alma Solís in Panama City contributed to this report.
