Ammunition used against protestors, which led to the death of a young girl, Michelle Becker, from the large amount of tear gas that filled her home. Photo: Claridad Panamá
The demonstrations, which have lasted more than 70 days, have been firmly repressed by the Mulino government, which has affirmed that it will not repeal the social security law that has caused so much controversy.
On July 5, nearly 800 people from 17 countries signed a letter addressed to the president of Panama, José Raúl Mulino, calling for international observation due to the increasing repression of protests in Panama. The document, signed by academics, artists, activists, workers, and trade unionists, also points out that the Central American country is witnessing growing criminalization of political dissent, which, according to the document, is reminiscent of the darkest years in its national history. Furthermore, the letter adds that the government is demonstrating an “authoritarian drift”.
The letter states: “President Mulino leads a legally legitimate government, but with minimal support. And he has responded to a wave of legitimate and democratic protests most violently and systematically ever recorded in the country’s history since 1903.”
For more than 70 days, thousands of Panamanians have taken to the streets, closed roads, and staged strikes against the neoliberal policies of the Mulino government. The demonstrators are demanding the repeal of:
A law reforming Social Security – reducing pensions and opening the door for the privatization of the system.
Growing US interference – according to the demonstrators, the US intends to install several military bases in Panama.
The reopening of a copper mine – the largest and most controversial in the country, already closed by the Panamanian justice system.
In this regard, the letter states: “The step taken by the Executive to suspend constitutional guarantees in the province of Bocas del Toro makes it, de facto, an authoritarian government willing to suspend the Constitution when it is unable to negotiate, dialogue or listen to its people… The abuse of power of the State through the security forces and the arguments used to justify the violation of human rights, repression, and the prosecution of leaders are not acceptable in any way.”
Therefore, the letter denounces that the country is “going backwards in terms of human rights” and requests the immediate intervention of international human rights agencies to address the Panamanian situation and thus guarantee the fundamental freedoms of demonstrators and citizens alike.
For this and other cases, the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) and the Indigenous Peasant Movement of the Ngäbe Buglé region requested that the legislature establish a commission specialized in studying cases of human rights violations to monitor the protests. The CNDH presented more than 100 alleged cases of human rights violations, including alleged arbitrary detentions, humiliating treatment, deaths, etc. The legislature has not yet offered a response to the request.
Thus, the Panamanian political dispute has led to a massive confrontation between protesters and the forces of law and order, which is still not over.
However, as the days go by, more and more denunciations are surfacing in the media, increasing the discomfort for moderate Panamanians (former allies of Mulino), and raising concerns among international actors about partnering with a government that is widely seen as repressive.
A mobile “Newton Room” classroom operating in Scotland. Credit: Scott O’Hara
Critics fear that Equinor’s latest UK education deal is aimed at quelling opposition to North Sea drilling.
This story was published in partnership with Norway’s E24.
Norwegian oil company Equinor is spending more than £200,000 to sponsor science classrooms in the Shetland Islands, as it seeks approval for plans to develop the vast Rosebank oilfield 80 miles off the coast.
Opponents of Rosebank — the largest new oil and gas field in the North Sea — have accused Equinor of using its deep pockets to dilute concerns over further drilling. Developing the project would result the release of millions of tonnes of planet-heating carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions when the oil it pumps is burned.
Ariane Burgess, a Scottish Green Member of the Scottish Parliament, said Equinor’s backing for the classrooms was “concerning.”
“The timing and location of these investments raise questions about the motives behind them, particularly in light of Equinor’s broader strategy to secure social license to operate in sensitive areas,” said Burgess, one of seven Scottish Green law-makers in the 129-seat assembly in Edinburgh.
The pop-up classroom — known as a “Newton Room” — launched in March and aims to reach 1,000 children aged 10 to 14 across the archipelago of 20,000 people over the next two years, said Highlands and Islands Enterprise, a Scottish agency partnering on the project.
The classroom will be set up in community centres near primary and secondary schools on several of Shetland’s 16 inhabited islands, taking in the Shetland mainland, Unst, Foula, Yell and Fair Isle.
Equinor, which is majority-owned by the Norwegian state, said the project would deliver “pioneering, face-to-face” programmes to develop science, technology, engineering and mathematics skills. The decision to fund the initiative had “no link” to Equinor’s plan to develop Rosebank, and it had declined an opportunity to include its corporate logo, the company said.
“We are proud to support the first Shetland mobile Newton Room and to assist its core operations in the Highlands and Islands,” said Alice Baxter, Equinor’s UK spokesperson. “We look forward to seeing how the mobile Newton Room benefits the wider Shetland community and are delighted to be a key partner in this great programme for the region.”
Credit: Sabrina Bedford
‘Brainwash Children’
Equinor spent a total of $82.7 million on sponsorships between 2020 and 2024, with science, education and research as the main focus, according to a government response to a parliamentary question submitted by Lars Haltbrekken, an MP for the Socialist Left Party, on June 16.
Haltbrekken, a long-time critic of Equinor’s 30-year history of sponsoring education in Norway, had submitted the question in response to reports in Norwegian media detailing the company’s backing for a computer game aimed at UK schoolchildren. The game, called EnergyTown, was developed in partnership with London-based marketing agency We Are Futures and the Association for Science Education, a professional teachers’ body.
Climate campaigners said the game crossed the line between education and promoting fossil fuels because it portrayed renewable energy as “less reliable.”
EnergyTown was part of a two-year-old science education initiative called Wonderverse which has reached over 80,000 schoolchildren in the UK, according to Equinor’s website. Website copy that has since been deleted described Wonderverse as designed to “build future talent pipelines and secure permission to operate at a time of sensitivity around fossil fuels, particularly in light of approval for the Rosebank development.” We Are Futures did not respond to a request for comment.
“[Equinor] is trying to brainwash children into thinking it has the solution to the climate crisis, when in reality, fossil fuels are the reason we are struggling with the climate crisis today,” Haltbrekken told DeSmog.
Equinor, formerly known as Statoil, was the founding partner of the Newton Rooms mobile classroom programme developed by the nonprofit FIRST Scandinavia in Norway in 2003.
“It’s interesting to see how Equinor has developed a playbook for influencing children in Norway and then copy-pasted it to other countries like Scotland,” said Julie Forchhammer, co-founder of Norwegian climate advocacy group Klimakultur.
In Scotland, Equinor’s current education partnerships include a deal with the Aberdeen Science Centre, a museum near the Norwegian company’s UK headquarters in Aberdeen, and another with the city’s TechFest annual science festival.
Equinor committed £208,500 for the Shetland Islands mobile classroom project as part of a total package of £385,000 to support the Science Skills Academy education initiative run by Highlands and Islands Enterprise, said Morven Fancey, the agency’s head of housing, skills and population.
“Our core content and supporting educational materials for Newton Room activities were developed at the beginning of the Highland operation and are branded by [Science Skills Academy] independently of any industry involvement,” Fancey said.
Island Opinion Divided
The sponsorship deal with Highlands and Islands Enterprise was agreed in 2023, Fancey said. That was the same year that Equinor won approval for Rosebank from the UK’s former Conservative government, sparking outcry among climate campaigners.
Equinor is now seeking re-approval for Rosebank after Scotland’s highest court dealt a blow to the project in January by ruling the original decision unlawful because it had failed to consider the environmental impacts of burning the fossil fuels extracted from the oilfield.
Opening any new oil and gas fields in the North Sea is incompatible with achieving 2015 Paris Agreement goals of avoiding catastrophic climate change by limiting global warming to 1.5°C, according to a June report by academics at University College London. Burning Rosebank’s oil and gas would produce up to 200 million tonnes of CO2 over the project’s lifetime, which is more than the combined annual emissions of 28-low income countries, wrote one of the report’s authors in an article for The Conversation.
Opinion over Equinor’s role in sponsoring the classrooms is divided on the Shetland Islands, which have historically benefitted from oil and gas money.
“In Shetland, the fact that our kids have amazing leisure facilities, the roads have no potholes, and the care homes are good is all because of fossil fuels,” said Margaret Goddard, a doctor who lives on the islands of Burra, and who has daughters aged 11 and 14.
But she expressed concerns over the climate crisis, and Equinor’s motives, acknowledging, “These things are very difficult.”
Alex Armitage, a Scottish Green councillor for Shetland Islands Council said he found Equinor’s role “quite dystopian.”
“An oil company that’s making very little effort to reduce carbon emissions and is greenwashing all of its operations is seeking to show that it’s trying to help the next generation,” Armitage said. “Everything it’s doing goes against that.”
Like other oil companies, Equinor has rowed back on its climate commitments in the past year, having announced in February that it would slash planned investment in renewables and low-carbon solutions by around 50 percent between 2024 and 2027. By 2026, Equinor plans to maintain over 95 percent of its energy production from fossil fuels, according to analysis by the environmental law nonprofit ClientEarth.
Equinor holds an 80 percent stake in Rosebank in a joint venture with Ithaca Energy, which is owned by Israel’s Delek Group. In 2023, Delek Group appeared on a UN list of 97 companies whose activities in the West Bank “raised particular human rights concerns.”
‘Extensive Influence’
Oil companies view educational and cultural sponsorships as crucial tools for deflecting pressure from climate activists, influencing legislation, and portraying themselves as gatekeepers to climate solutions, according to a previous DeSmog review of internal industry documents subpoenaed by the U.S Congress as part of an investigation into oil industry disinformation that concluded last year.
Equinor was not a direct target of the investigation, which focused on the U.S. businesses of ExxonMobil , Chevron, Shell USA Inc. and BP America. The Norwegian company is, however, a member of the American Petroleum Institute lobby group, which described sponsored community groups as among the “best and most influential voices with targeted policymakers on industry issues,” according to a subpoenaed document from October 2017.
The findings built on previous research showing how the fossil fuel industry has spent nearly a century using educational sponsorships to shape public opinion about energy and the environment. As early as 1928, Standard Oil of California (which became Chevron) was sponsoring educational radio broadcasts that reached millions of American students over decades. Recent programmes include BP’s Science Explorers, a series of free online resources that now reaches over half of UK secondary schools.
In the latest sign of the oil and gas industry seeking to influence young people, DeSmog reported on June 30 that a group of six Canadian fossil fuel companies known as Pathways Alliance had been sponsoring science fairs for children. The finding followed a report issued by the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment earlier this year that documented the sector’s “extensive influence on climate education for elementary and secondary school students.”
‘Cynical Tactic’
Equinor has been a sponsor of the Aberdeen Science Centre since 2019, funding the facility and supporting its partnership with Norway’s Vitenfabrikken (The Science Factory), a children’s science museum in the city of Bergen. The two institutions are linked via an initiative called the North Sea Collaboration Project, which develops science and technology activities aimed at children, focused on “carbon emissions reduction solutions” and climate awareness, according to the Aberdeen Science Centre’s website.
Aberdeen Science Centre did not respond to a request for comment.
The TechFest event, which Equinor sponsors alongside BP and Shell, includes Equinor branding in its 2025 programme directory next to listings for workshops aimed at children as young as four. TechFest did not respond to a request for comment.
Through its Hywind floating wind project, Equinor provided £60,000 to transform a disused classroom at Peterhead Academy into what the school called an “ultra-modern” renewables space, complete with screens, break-out areas and turbine models, which opened in 2018, according to trade publication Energy Voice.
Peterhead is also the site of a planned Equinor carbon capture and storage project, which is facing questions over its likely economic viability and climate impact. DeSmog revealed in June that UK Chancellor Rachel Reeves had told Equinor last year that the industry would receive a “quid pro quo” in return for higher taxes on its windfall profits in the form of carbon capture subsidies.
Such programmes reflect a broader oil industry strategy to preserve its reputation among future generations, said Klimakultur’s Forchhammer. “It’s a cynical tactic, but they wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t working.”
Additional reporting by Daniel Shailer, Shetland Times
Four Youth Demand supporters have blocked Cisco’s float at London Pride to expose the US based company’s involvement in the Israeli genocide of the Palestinian people. They are demanding that the UK government impose a total trade embargo on Israel and prosecute the corporate enablers of the genocide like Cisco for violations of international law.
Four Youth Demand supporters threw red paint over the Cisco float as it passed along Piccadilly, before sitting down in the road and gluing themselves to it, chanting “we charge you with genocide”. The Parade was delayed for about an hour while the group were removed. There were five arrests.
Today’s actions come against a backdrop of ongoing atrocities in Gaza. Since dawn today, Israel has killed another 42 Palestinians as they directed shells at schools and displaced people in tents, aimed airstrikes at private houses and shot people waiting for food.
As one of the main providers of networking hardware for the Israeli military, Cisco is potentially implicated in the mass killing of tens of thousands of Palestinians, many of them unarmed civilians. Cisco, a US-based digital communications company also provides technologies to the Israeli police and prisons, and to illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory. Cisco’s networking, hardware, and servers form the backbone of the Israeli military’s surveillance and communications infrastructure which is used to track movements, map family connections, and facilitate mass surveillance and targeting of Palestinians for assasination.
This week the UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Francesca Albanese presented her latest report From economy of occupation to economy of genocide which presents detailed research revealing the complicity of private entities in international crimes connected to Israel’s genocide in Gaza and the unlawful occupation across the Occupied Palestinian Territory. In particular it names tech companies including Microsoft, Alphabet and Palatir. The report states ” While political leaders and governments shirk their obligations, far too many corporate entities have profited from Israel’s economy of illegal occupation, apartheid and now, genocide. The complicity exposed by this report is just the tip of the iceberg; ending it will not happen without holding the private sector accountable, including its executives”.
Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone obect to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities,mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.The original Fascists Mussolini and HitlerUK Labour Party government ministers Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves explain that they are partners complicit in Israel’s Gaza genocide. The UK has provided Israel with arms, military and air force support. They explain that they don’t do gas chambers but do do forced marches, starvation, destroy hospitals, mass-murders of journalists and healthcare workers.Keir “I support Zionism without Qualification” Starmer supporting genocide. NB: I did consider not posting this image any longer since Palestine Action has been proscribed but it would be very difficult to argue that it supports Palestine Action. “Genocide like this” refers to Starmer’s description of the genocidal actions that he’s taking “We’ve got a genocide to achieve …” It’s discussing ” … people … who oppose genocide like this …” not Palestine Action. I wouldn’t want anyone to think that I support Palestine Action because that’s illegal under current laws.
Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.
Israel’s attack on Iran overshadowed the ongoing carnage. Its allies are complicit in the horror; they must instead help to build a future for Palestinians
‘Each day Palestinians continue to be killed while attempting to collect aid for their families from food hubs in Gaza.’ Photograph: Mahmoud Issa/Reuters
“We cannot be asking civilians to go into a combat zone so that then they can be killed with the justification that they are in a combat zone.” It defies belief that the Unicef spokesperson, James Elder, should have needed to spell that out this week. And yet each day Palestinians continue to be killed while attempting to collect aid for their families from food hubs in Gaza, forced to make a lethal choice between risking being shot and letting their families slowly starve. More than 500 have died around the centres since the system was introduced – yet, with attention fixed on Israel’s attacks on Iran, there has been little to spare for recent deaths.
The Israeli military has given shifting accounts of events. But soldiers told the newspaper Haaretz that commanders ordered troops to shoot at crowds that posed no threat. The Israeli prime minister and defence minister attacked the allegations as “blood libels”. Médecins Sans Frontières has accurately described the system as “slaughter masquerading as humanitarian aid”. Meanwhile, Israel has closed crossings into the north.
Overall, Gaza’s health ministry says that 56,331 people have died in Israeli attacks since war began. Researchers who assess war casualties suggested this week that, far from being exaggerated, this undercounts the toll. They estimated that violent deaths had reached 75,000 by this January, with another 8,500 excess deaths due to the war. The toll of hunger has yet to be reckoned.
…
While the arms and trade still flow, Israel’s allies are complicit in the destruction of lives in Gaza. They must instead make themselves central to building a future for Palestinians in a state of their own.
Keir “I support Zionism without Qualification” Starmer supporting genocide.Vote Labour for Genocide.UK Labour Party government ministers Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves explain that they are partners complicit in Israel’s Gaza genocide. The UK has provided Israel with arms, military and air force support. They explain that they don’t do gas chambers but do do forced marches, starvation, destroy hospitals, mass-murders of journalists and healthcare workers.
