International
Migrant women, victims of theft, rape and with their children in tow for the Darién
Migration has long ceased to be a thing for men. Women alone, with children or with their partners leave their homes behind having to go through a “hell” like the Darién jungle, where they are victims of rape or robberies while carrying their children: “come on, there is little left.”
At the checkpoint of Bajo Chiquito, the first indigenous town that migrants arrive at after crossing the Darién jungle, the natural border between Panama and Colombia, the Panamanian authorities take the data of the hundreds of newcomers who, exhausted, are waiting for patients in their turn. Behind the officials, apart, sits a girl. Suddenly, it seems that he has identified someone in the queue.
“Do you know this girl?” the officer tells a woman. “Are you 12 years old?” she replies. They ask the girl and she nods. The officer then asks him if he knows where his mother is. “Yes, it’s coming further back.”
Venezuelan Karely Salazar, 31, travels with her daughters, 7, 10 and 12 years old. They have gone to the village outpatient clinic. The older girl smiles, protective with one of her sisters. The mother holds the other in her arms. “Right now I have this smaller one with a fever, with a cold fever, a two-day-old girl stuck in the river,” the woman explains to EFE, exhausted. “The father of them is in Venezuela,” he clarifies, without giving details.
“Thank God we crossed the jungle, but it really wasn’t easy, very difficult for the children,” he says. Children have to be climbed by stones, if you slip they can fall into the void, into the river, “and they go hungry, and they get cold,” and they can get ahead or stay behind.
“Did your eldest daughter get lost?” “Yes,” the mother nods, and her face changes. She says that the second day of walking she felt very bad on one leg, she couldn’t move, and the little girl walked among the people and “lost her way.”
“I didn’t sleep last night, because the girl got ahead of me and reached a part of the river that had to stop and she woke up there and I still woke up inside the jungle. Last night I cried and cried because I didn’t know where I was,” says the mother.
Try to explain yourself, to make it understood: “I came alone and with three girls, imagine, pull here, pending this one, take care that you fall, but no, the jungle is really not recommended, really not.”
Hundreds of migrants, or thousands, pass through that jungle every day when the flow is highest.
According to data from the Panamanian authorities, after the historical record of more than 520,000 migrants who crossed the Darién in 2023, so far this year more than 130,000 have already done so, including about 104,000 adults, of which about 35% are women. And among the more than 28,600 minors, 47% are girls.
The Panamanian authorities generally maintain a harsh speech against migration, remembering that on the Colombian side the control is held by the criminal group of the Gulf Clan, which in 2023 received about 68 million dollars for the passage of the migrants, in addition to other gangs that steal and attack those who pass by.
The director of Migration of Panama, Samira Gozaine, goes further: “There are stories of people who say that mothers put the children to drown in the river because it weighs heavily on them, when (…) the hills become very dense and they can’t continue, they simply abandon them to their fate,” she told EFE a year ago.
For the internationalist lawyer and human rights activist Iván Chanis, this type of speech “dehumanizes” and moves away from reality, because, as he explains to EFE, “what mother wants to leave her daughter behind?”
Luisannys Mundaraín, 22 years old, carries her baby in her arms. It gives him breastfeed. He tells EFE that when he crossed one of the cliffs with the baby, he slipped, but he was able to hold on at the last moment. To which were added the snakes, spiders, rivers, and “the thieves who steal one, also rape women.”
Mundaraín then recounts how his group was intercepted in “a ridge” by a group of armed hooded people, who asked him for “100 dollars for each, and the one who did not give him the money had to deliver the phone, if it was not an iPhone no, or if it was a woman he had to stay there, you know what for.”
Doctors Without Borders (MSF) assured, before the Panamanian authorities vetoed them from continuing to provide medical care in the country, that they treated more than 1,300 people for sexual violence in the Darién between April 2021 and January 2024.
“What you live in is a total hell,” says the young woman, but the crisis in Venezuela gave her no other option, with 12-hour work in a supermarket for 20 dollars a week, when “a pack of diapers was that if at 5 dollars and the most expensive food.”
Thus, when in the election campaign some Panamanian politicians were heard saying that they wanted to close the 266 kilometers of border in Darién, the young woman sighed.
“Something impossible to close it, because that way there are thousands of dangers, migrants will always continue to go through what they suffer in those countries, we are poor. They will always keep happening, risking their lives, the children, everything,” he concludes.
International
Floods in Central Vietnam leave 28 dead, thousands displaced
The death toll from heavy rains and flooding in central Vietnam has risen to 28, with six people reported missing and 43 injured, local newspaper VnExpress reported Friday night.
More than 22,100 homes remain flooded, primarily in the cities of Hue and Da Nang. Floods and landslides have destroyed or swept away 91 houses and damaged another 181, the report added.
Around 245,000 households are still without electricity, particularly in Da Nang, where over 225,000 homes are affected.
Additionally, 80 stretches of national highways are blocked or disrupted due to landslides. Authorities expect the flooding to continue for another day or two in the region.
International
FBI foils ISIS-Inspired attack in Michigan, arrests five teens
Kash Patel did not provide further details, but police sources told CBS News that the potential attack was “inspired” by the Islamic State (ISIS).
“This morning, the FBI thwarted a potential terrorist attack and arrested several individuals in Michigan who were allegedly planning a violent attack during the Halloween weekend,” Patel wrote on X.
“Thanks to swift action and close coordination with our local partners, a possible terrorist act was prevented before it could be carried out,” he added.
CBS reported that five people between the ages of 16 and 20 were arrested on Friday. At least one of them was reportedly acquainted with a former member of the Michigan National Guard, who was arrested in May for plotting an ISIS-inspired attack on a U.S. military facility in the Detroit suburbs.
International
U.S. warns China over Taiwan during high-level defense talks in Kuala Lumpur
U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth expressed concerns over China’s growing military activity near Taiwan during a meeting on Friday with Chinese Defense Minister Dong Jun in Kuala Lumpur.
“It was a constructive and positive meeting,” Hegseth wrote on X. “I emphasized the importance of maintaining a balance of power in the Indo-Pacific and raised U.S. concerns about China’s actions around Taiwan,” the self-governed island that Beijing claims and does not rule out invading.
The meeting took place on the sidelines of the ASEAN Defense Ministers Meeting-Plus, one day after U.S. President Donald Trump met Chinese President Xi Jinping in Busan, South Korea. According to Trump, Taiwan was not discussed during their talks.
“The United States does not seek conflict and will continue to firmly defend its interests, ensuring it maintains the capability to do so in the region,” Hegseth added in his message.
Friday’s encounter followed a September 9 video call between Hegseth and Dong. Their previously planned meeting at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore was canceled due to Dong’s absence from the event.
Trump’s sit-down with Xi — their first since 2019 — resulted in some trade agreements but avoided addressing the issue of Taiwan, a long-standing source of tension between the world’s two largest powers.
Trump has taken a more ambiguous stance on Taiwan’s future compared with former President Joe Biden, who repeatedly stated that Washington would support Taipei if China launched an invasion. The Republican president has also criticized Taiwan for “stealing” the U.S. semiconductor industry.
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