Chile: Freedom for imprisoned Mapuche human rights activists!

Göttingen
"Today all Mapuche are terrorists, unless we can argue the converse. This is the new justice”, says the farmer Victor Ancalaf Llaupe bitterly. On January 2nd, 2004, the Mapuche Indian was sentenced to 10 years in prison for ‘terrorist activity’. As he filed an appeal, the sentence was reduced to 5 years and one day. The 37-year-old father of five children had founded a Mapuche civil rights movement in Chile in 1997. Back then he was arrested on several occasions and accused of timber theft. In addition to that, he was accused of having abducted a minister and setting fire to three agricultural vehicles after he had been involved in a brief sit-in of a courthouse. In the revision of Llaupe’s case, he was charged with "terrorist arson”. All other charges were dropped. However, the sentence that he received for a crime he may not even have committed is as high as if he were a dangerous criminal.

Those who defend the Mapuche land rights movement or participate in peaceful demonstrations, blockades, land occupations or other non-violent campaigns against great land owners face harsh accusation in the young democracy of Chile. "Membership in an illegal terrorist ring”, "terrorist threat”, or "terrorist arson” are the standard charges that are designed to intimidate and muzzle the members of legitimate Indian human rights movements. Numerous Mapuche had been accused and released before being captured again and sentenced to long prison terms or unpayable fines.

Human rights activists convicted on the basis of "Anti-terror law”

When it comes to initiating legal actions against Mapuche Indians, they are convicted on the basis of the so-called anti-terror law No. 18.314. The installation of this law took place during the Pinochet dictatorship. However, rather than condemning this law when democracy was reintroduced in Chile, it was expanded. The Society for Threatened Peoples (GfbV) considers this development as a scandal for a state that claims to be democratic. The anti-terror law is also applied those who are guilty of mere damage of property or who could potentially be in contact with a "terrorist ring”. Witnesses remain anonymous. Since suspects can be legally held in custody for several months, their relatives are at risk of no longer being able to sustain themselves as they are dependent on the money that the heads of the family earn. Hiring expensive lawyers who can defend the accused Mapuche is a futitle enterprise. Once they are released many Mapuche human rights activists go into hiding as they continue to be persecuted by the state.

1.3 million Mapuche, who amount to 10 percent of Chile’s total population of 15.8 million citizens, fight for their ancestral lands. Before their traditional territory was fragmented into more than 3000 small reservations when the states Chile and Argentinia were created, the Mapuche had collectively used the rain forest in an ecologically sound fashion. In the process of land reforms that were initiated by the government of Salvador Allende (1970-1973) 700.000 hectares were returned to the Mapuche. This decision was undone when Augusto Pinochet usurped and seized power. Rather than returning the land to the Mapuche, it was given to great land owners. This did not only put an abrupt end to their traditional system of collective property, but also shattered their social and cultural roots.

Environmental damages caused by the timber industry

The great land owners began to plant fast-growing monocultures like pine trees and eucalyptus for the pulp industry. The market leaders are Arauco and CMPC who collectively own 47% of all plantations. A lowered ground-water table and depleted soil stem from the cultivation of monocultures. Only barren grounds are sold to to the board for Indian affairs CONADI who return them to the Mapuche.

"Return our land!”

Peaceful demonstrations of the Mapuche land rights movement were brutally broken up on several occasions. The the course subsequent riots, Alex Lemun, 17, and Zenon Díaz Necul, 17, were killed in November 2002 and May 2005. Most of the time it cannot be determined who set fire to vehicles, machines or woodpiles. It remains unknown whether these cases of willful damage to property were committed by frustrated Mapuche who acted on their anger and helplessness in the face of the destruction of their culture or by workers of the companies themselves who then blame the Indians. As a democratic nation Chile must protect the Mapuche from being portrayed and persecuted as ‘terrorists’. It is unacceptable that the largest indigenous group of the country is being criminalized simply because it defends its own culture, traditions and identity.

Actions taken by the Society for Threatened Peoples:

The Society for Threatened Peoples supports the Mapuche movement in its legitimate request to retrieve its ancestral land and will draw attention to Chile’s human rights abuses against its indigenous population on an international level. Only the pressure asserted from outside would move the Chilean government to keep the promise it made in April 2004, said the Chilean representative of the Society for Threatened Peoples Vincente Mariqueo in Temuco. Back then, Chile announced that it would ratify Convention 169 of the International Labour Organisation ILO and thus officially recognize the rights and cultural diversity of the country’s indigenous peoples. In order to initiate the promised change of the constitution, we will send hundreds of letters, emails, and faxes to the Chilean government, members of parliament, NGOs, trade unions, political parties, churches and the media.

This is what you can do:

Please send the email protest that you will find below to the Chilean government and demand the immediate discharge of the eight known Mapuche inmates, who were sentenced to long prison terms on the basis of the ‘anti-terror law’. By doing so, you will also promote the dismissal of all ongoing legal actions against Mapuche Indians, the abolition of the anti-terror law, and the acquittal of convicted indigenous human rights activists, who went into hiding in order to escape imprisonment.