100 Students Hurt in Panama Protests

Classes were suspended Friday at the University of Panama following anti-government demonstrations that left at least 100 students injured, and the Chamber of Commerce called a two-day strike to demand an investigation into corruption allegations.

The actions were part of the escalating crisis in Panama with protests aimed at both military strongman Gen. Manuel A. Noriega and the United States.

Many businesses shut down at noon Friday to protest attacks by armed men on privately owned companies during the latest wave of demonstrations to rack the country, but the protest appeared only partly effective.

A tour of the city showed a number of gasoline stations, supermarkets, shops and service establishments closed, but a seemingly equal number open for business.

Traffic also was less than normal at the start of the two-day work shutdown called by the Chamber of Commerce “in repudiation and protest” of the damage to privately owned businesses that it blamed on the military-controlled government.

The noon hour was marked, as it has been for days, by thousands of motorists honking their horns, pedestrians waving white handkerchiefs and housewives beating on tin pans to signal their displeasure with the government.

University spokesman Victor Avila said classes were suspended Friday until Monday after demonstrations that included students barricading themselves in university buildings.

Police surrounded the campus and fired buckshot and bullets into the buildings. At least 100 students were injured in the confrontation. Authorities said four were hit by bullets and the others by buckshot. The protesters were removed from the campus in buses.

Two Businesses Destroyed

The strike call by the Chamber of Commerce came after a group of 25 to 30 men on Thursday attacked a four-store complex owned by opposition leader Robert Eisenmann, who is in self-imposed exile in Miami. The men, dressed in civilian clothing and carrying Molotov cocktails and submachine guns, destroyed the luxury department store La Mansion Dante and a Jaguar car dealership.

Witnesses said riot police were stationed outside the complex most of the day but withdrew just before the group arrived and returned after the attack. There also were reports a prominent member of the governing Democratic Revolutionary Party participated in the attack.

“This was a paramilitary action . . . by people who knew what they were doing,” said Chamber of Commerce spokesman Roberto Brenas.

The opposition newspaper La Prensa condemned the attacks and accused Noriega of sponsoring “state terrorism” by using violence to intimidate his opponents. Eisenmann is a top executive of the newspaper.

Anti-government protests erupted in June after Panama’s second-ranking military man, Col. Roberto Diaz Herrera, accused Noriega of rigging the 1984 presidential elections and linked him to the deaths of an opposition leader and former president Gen. Omar Torrijos.

Noriega, the power behind the civilian government, has accused the United States of fomenting the unrest to undermine agreements that will turn the Panama Canal over to this country in the year 2000.

Anti-American protests have included “Yankee, Go Home” graffiti, the toppling of a statue of Franklin D. Roosevelt and an attack Tuesday on the U.S. Embassy by 5,000 demonstrators.