WORLD
12 | Thursday, August 22, 2019 CHINA DAILY
Panama Canal is
‘innocent passage’
Passageway will continue servicing
Venezuelan ships despite US sanctions
By SERGIO HELD
in Bogota, Colombia
For China Daily
Famously neutral Panama is
resisting pressure from the United
States to stop allowing Venezuelan
vessels to traverse the Panama
Canal, the key link between the
Atlantic and Pacific oceans and
one of the most important pas-
sageways for global trade.
The US has been building fences
around the Venezuelan govern-
ment since the US administration
moved on Aug 5 to impose sanc-
tions on the government of Venez-
uelan President Nicolas Maduro,
which the US opposes. The sanc-
tions aim to cover Venezuelan
ships moving through the Panama
Canal.
But those fences have some big
holes and none bigger than the
Panama Canal, an 82-kilometer
passageway through which about
5 percent of global trade moves
and which links Venezuela with
Asia-Pacific markets.
Panama has said it will continue
servicing Venezuelan vessels
despite the US sanctions, accord-
ing to Panama Canal Authority
chief Jorge Quijano. He said in a
statement that Panama is signato-
ry to a treaty of neutrality and that
the canal is “an innocent passage”.
Asked about possible sanc-
tions against Venezuelan vessels,
Humberto Jiron, a Panamanian
lawyer and former ambassador
to the European Union and to the
International Maritime Organi-
zation, said his country has no
reason to accept the internal pol-
icies of the US government.
“There is a constitutional chap-
ter that allows the administration
of the Panama Canal to be abso-
lutely independent,” he said. “The
canal works at the margin of poli-
tics, and that is the reason why it is
so successful, and why it works so
well, or even better than when it
was managed by the Americans.”
The Panama Canal has remained
neutral since its inauguration in- Even during World War I and
World War II, when the canal was
administered by the US, its safe-
passage status was sustained and
no transits were prohibited.
Politically neutral
In 1977, Panama and the US
signed a treaty concerning the per-
manent neutrality and operation
of the Panama Canal. Panama has
continued to remain politically
neutral during the years since the
canal was handed over to the Latin
American country.
Daniel Di Martino, a Venezuelan
economic analyst, said Panama
under Laurentino Cortizo, who
was sworn in as the country’s pres-
ident on July 1, is not likely to stop
any ships from making their way
through the canal. The Panamani-
an authorities know the US needs
the canal, but they were willing to
go ahead despite US threats of
sanctions, Di Martino said.
Panama’s decision not to
enforce US sanctions on vessels
moving through the canal is doing
little to reassure humanitarian
organizations who fear the sanc-
tions will push Venezuela deeper
into economic crisis.“The economic impact of these
sanctions will be to reduce overall
imports in a context in which mil-
lions of ordinary Venezuelan peo-
ple are already highly vulnerable,”
said a joint statement signed by 16
NGOs from all over the Americas
and shared by the Washington
Office on Latin America. “The
Trump administration’s announce-
ment is premised on the idea that
imposing broad economic sanc-
tions will force regime change in
the short term.”
The US backs Venezuelan
opposition leader Juan Guaido
and is betting that sanctions will
put more pressure on Maduro’s
government.
However, analysts like Richard
Nephew, a senior research scholar
at the Center on Global Energy
Policy at Columbia University’ in
New York and author of the book
The Art of Sanctions: A View from
the Field, do not agree that sanc-
tions that destroying Venezuela’s
economy.
“The primary damage being
done to Venezuela’s economy
stems from the poor policies of the
government rather than sanc-
tions,” Nephew said.
“Sanctions are further under-
mining his (Maduro’s) flexibility
and options to address those poli-
cies, creating pressure.”
Nephew said he is not surprised
that Panama’s authorities have
decided to allow goods to transit
through the canal.
“The Panamanians believe they
have legal obligations that require
them to act this way,” he said. “I do
not see the US sanctioning the
Panama Canal over it.”The author is a freelancer for
China Daily.Briefly
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