Panama’s border police agency does not specify the nationalities of the people who drowned or how they entered the country.
Ten people drowned in a river near Panama’s border with Colombia, Panamanian border police said, as the rainy season increases the risks migrants and asylum seekers face along a popular migration route.
The bodies were found in riverside tributaries near the remote community of Carreto, the National Border Service, known as SENAFRONT, reported on Wednesday.
The village is on the shores of the Caribbean Sea and is part of the Guna Yala autonomous indigenous territory.
SENAFRONT did not specify the nationalities of the people who drowned or whether they crossed into Panama through the Darien Gap jungle or by boat.
“Transnational organized crime through local collaborators in these Caribbean coastal communities insists on using unauthorized crossings, putting these people’s lives at serious risk,” the agency added in a statement.
Connecting South and Central America, the Darien Gap is a dangerous route filled with natural hazards, including insects, snakes and unpredictable terrain.
Its landscape varies from steep mountains to dense jungles and rushing rivers, and risks increase during the rainy season due to rising river levels.
Criminal groups also operate in the area and robberies, extortion and other forms of violence are widespread.
Despite these dangers, it has become a popular route for migrants and asylum seekers fleeing violence, socio-economic crises and other hardships in their home countries. Many hope to travel north to reach the United States.
More than 520,000 migrants and asylum seekers crossed the Darien Gap last year – more than double the 2022 total, according to Panamanian government data.
Of those crossing the border in 2023, more than 60 percent were from Venezuela, which has suffered a mass exodus after years of socioeconomic and political upheaval. Others were from countries in South America, the Caribbean, Asia and Africa.
In April, Human Rights Watch said Colombia and Panama had failed to protect people who pass through the Darien Gap or have adequately investigated the abuses that occurred there, including sexual violence.
“Colombian and Panamanian authorities can and should do more to guarantee the rights of migrants and asylum seekers crossing their countries, as well as local communities who have experienced years of neglect,” said Juanita Goebertus, director of the group for the Americas.
Panamanian President José Raul Mulino said this month that migrants entering the country through the Darién Gap will only be sent back to their countries if they agree.
Mulino, who took office on July 1, has promised to stem the growing flow of migrants entering Panama from Colombia and has reached an agreement for the U.S. government to pay for repatriation flights.
“This is an American problem that we are managing. People don’t want to live here in Panama. They want to go to the United States,” he said at his first weekly press conference on July 18.
If migrants do not want to return to their countries, “then they will [to the US]. I can’t arrest them. We cannot repatriate them by force,” said the president.
This story originally appeared on Aljazeera.com read the full story
