By BRIAN BECKER and ESMERELDA BROWN The Pentagon has acknowledged that two U.S. soldiers are being investigated for murdering Panamanian prisoners captured during the December invasion. The military is treating these as isolated acts committed by undisciplined individual Gls. But cold- blooded murder of Panamanian. Defence Forces (PDF) soldiers, as well as civilians, was a hall mark of the entire Pentagon battle plan. The New York-based I[ndependent Commission of Inquiry on the U.S. Inva- sion of Panama has collected hundreds of statements from Panamanians who wit- nessed the onslaught of the 30,000 invading troops. From these accounts the commis- sion concludes that U.S. strategy included the use of military terror to eliminate or intimidate those sectors of the Panamanian population thought to be most likely to resist. This included not only PDF, but civ- ilians living in Panama’s Black working- class neighbourhoods. El Chorrillo, a poor neighbourhood located next to PDF headquarters, was one such area. U.S. troops bombed this com- munity, shelled it with heavy artillery, strafed it and finally burned it to the ground. Carl Glenn, a commission investi- gator, spoke to one of Chorrillo’s now homeless residents. A young mother who was in her apart- ment with her sister and her seven-year-old son at the time of the invasion, told Glenn: “I was ironing when I first heard the sound of machine guns firing ... It was around 11:30. We went out to the balcony where you could see little red lights that my neighbours said were projectiles. Thirty or 40 minutes later four helicopters appeared heading toward the central barracks. The helicopters were firing all kind of weapons because you,could hear the. bursts and explosions were of different intensities. “The lights in the neighbourhood went out and houses began to burn,” she recounted. “It was chaos. People tried to leave their burning homes but found them- selves between two fires ... tanks and armoured cars and U.S. soldiers on foot were advancing, firing. We could hardly believe it; my son was crying, terrified. The best my sister and I could do was to try to protect him with our bodies. With every bomb blast the building shook and the win- dows shattered.” Another El Chorillo resident told Glenn that on Dec. 21, the morning after the inva- sion, a group of 18 U.S. soldiers came down his street and “entered each house. We saw the people — the residents — coming out, followed by the soldiers, and then we saw the houses, one by one, go up in smoke. The U.S. soldiers were burning the houses.” It is in Panama’s poor and working-class areas that nationalist, anti-U.S. sentiment is the strongest and it was in those areas that the U.S. carried out mass murder, accord- ing to the commission. In the province of Cocle, the local Red Cross estimates that between 700-800 peo- ple were killed. A document given to Glenn by the National Human Rights Commis- sion, based on a report of the Cocle Red Cross, reveals that a number of dead PDF soldiers, especially those from the Machos de Monte, a unit known for its loyalty to the Noriega government, had been badly tor- tured. The Cocle Red Cross report also con- firms an allegation that is widely discussed in Panama but never mentioned in the U.S. press, that the Pentagon used the invasion as an opportunity to test some of its new high-tech weapons in real battlefield situa- tions. 8 e Pacific Tribune, May 7, 1990 itnesses before inquiry bare .S. terror in Panama invasion os . hundreds of statements link them to military terror. U.S. SOLDIER IN PANAMA... The U.S. military acknowledges using two Stealth fighter-bombers to drop 2,000 pound bombs. But Washington has not admitted using new types of anti-personnel weapons, although evidence indicates that it did so. The Cocle Red Cross reports: “Personnel who provided medical attention to the wounded discovered that weapons of a new and experimental character were used. Some of the wounded,” the report says, “had holes in their bodies that produced extreme hemorrhaging, like a sieve. Medi- cal personnel were unprepared and had nothing to deal with the bleeding and many of these people died.” The report also notes that laser weapons had been used. The commission has testimony from sur- geons who report wearing armoured masks after they learned that some of those suffer- ing from gunshot wounds were found to have been wounded with re-exploding bullets. Many of the medical personnel in Panama City hospitals were fired, arrested or disappeared in the days following the invasion. Ten doctors on duty at Santo Tomas hospital in Panama City were arrested by U.S. troops who claimed that gunfire had come from the hospital. Arresting doctors, medical personnel and cemetery and morgue workers was a tactic designed to block an accurate reporting of the number of dead and wounded during the invasion, the commission asserts. Cremating bodies and using mass graves was another method used to conceal the numbers killed. A report from the Pana- manian Human Rights Commission claims that in Cocle province “hundreds of bodies were cremated” by U.S. troops using flame- throwers.’ The Commission of Inquiry has many eyewitness accounts of U.S. troops using flamethrowers to incinerate corpses. A newly-formed Association of Family Members of the PDF Who Fell on Dec. 20, is pressing the U.S.-installed Entire govern- ment to reveal the actual number of deaths caused by the invasion. The association is demanding that the bodies in six mass graves be exhumed. On March 10, U.S. forces swept into the neighbourhood of Curundu in Panama city under the pretext of looking for drug deal- ers. Panamanian opponents of the Dec. 20 invasion say the real purpose of the opera- tion, which involved helicopter gunships and armoured vehicles, was to intimidate a newly-emerging movement of Panama’s poor. Prof. Cecilio Simon, a Black Panaman- ian who is Dean of the School of Public Administration at the University of Panama, described the March 10 military action as a “second invasion” because of the large number of troops and military hardware employed. Simon linked the U.S. action in Curundu to the demonstration of 5,000 poor people ° on March 8 in the area of San Miguelito, another poor area demolished during the invasion. The demonstration came just after the seizure of a luxury apartment building by 500 homeless people. Troops from the new U.S.-controlled Public Forces, which were created by the Pentagon after the destruction of the PDF, brutally attacked the protesters of San Miguelito. Why do USS. troops continue to occupy Panama nearly three months after President George Bush proclaimed that the invasion had accomplished all of its objectives? The Commission of Inquiry charges that the goal is to abrogate the 1977 Panama Canal Treaties. To do this, Washington needs a puppet government that will allow 14 U.S. bases to remain open long after the year 2000, when the treaty takes effect. The Commission of Inquiry has learned that the U.S. carried out at leat three com- plex sets of negotiations with representa- tives of the Noriega government in Washington in the first five months of 1989. During the negotiations the Bush adminis- tration reportedly promised to drop the indictment of Noriega, and even wrote outa draft court order dismissing the charges. In return, the U.S. wanted assurance that it would be allowed to leave its bases in Panama after the year 2000. According to sources close to the negotiating process the talks broke apart in May 1989 when the Panama side made it clear that the bases would be shut down as permitted in the 1977 treaties. The authors are members of the iiilenend- ent U.S. Commission of Inquiry on the U.S. Invasion of Panama. This report appeared in a recent issue of New York-based Guardian newspaper. negotiate details for the monetary, ecor | - announcement that the GDR’s wages, q World News _————— July2date set © for unification BONN — July 2 was set as the date for the unification of the two Germanies following a: meeting April 23 between FRG Chancellor Helmut Kohl and GDR Primé Minister Lothar de Mee :- ziere. Experts fein both sides will begin to nomic and social. union following KohFS pensions and savings up to 4,000 marks will be exchanged on a one-to-one baal | for the West German mark. : Signs that talks will be tough can be Seen in the fact that the GDR govern- ment will be asking for even better eco- nomic terms, while FRG public opinion polls show a’scant 19 per cent support exists for the one-to-one formula. + Aid to settlers draws U.S. fire WASHINGTON — The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac), an influential pro-Israel lobby group, has strongly criticized the behind-the-scenes support by the Shamir government of last week’s Jewish settlement in Jerusa- lem’s Christian quarter. It called on Shamir to repudiate the $1.8-million covert funding for the settlement at St. John’s Hospice. Aipac was joined in its protest by the American Jewish Congress whose presi- dent, Robert Lifton, said he was “appalled” by the Israeli government's action. This response ‘appeared to be unani- mous by American Jewish groups who fear such provocations by the Israeli” government call into question its sincer- ity when it says American money is not being used to finance the settler nt activities. 10J protests banning of media | PRAGUE — The International Organ. ization of Journalists (IOJ) has sent a letter to Soviet president Mikhail Gorbe chev protesting the USSR’s ban on for eign journalists: covering events if Lithuania. = “This is a breach of the right of peopl to information and of journalists’ to carry out their profession duty t inform,” the letter says. “It is also af infringement of human rights sets forth in the General Declaration of Humat Rights and the Helsinki Final Act .. This action runs counter to the cal glasnost proclaimed by yourself a which has gained the USSR the i inte tional prestige it currently enjoys.” China-USSR 10-year pact ine China have signed a 10-year agreeme’ economic and scientific co-operatio ing in such areas as nuclear en space, the fuel and power industri . transport and communications, fore: the chemical industry and environ protection. Agreements on governm credits for consumer goods were included. The pact was signed dut visit to the Soviet capital April ‘ Chinese Prime Minister Li Peng. A separate agreement signed by foreign ministers of both countries vides for further troops reductions ale their 9,000 kilometre common border.