CHILE:
Government Unleashes
Anti-Terror Law on Mapuche Activist
By Pamela Sepúlveda
SANTIAGO (IPS) - "They burst in aiming machine guns at us.
They found him in the hallway, they grabbed him by the hair, they
threw him on the floor and they beat him up," Ida Huenulef told IPS,
describing the arrest of her son Miguel, the first indigenous
Mapuche activist to be charged under the Anti-Terrorist Law by the
government of Chilean President Michelle Bachelet.
Members of his family said that 11 members of the special forces and
"carabineros" (national police) raided their home in the district of
Lo Prado in the west of Santiago, without showing any identification
or producing a search warrant.
Miguel Tapia Huenulef was arrested in front of his entire family,
who were held at gunpoint and intimidated during the violent
operation in the middle of the night of Feb. 11.
"I went to get my daughter and they pointed a machinegun at her
head, and when she picked up her little daughter, another carabinero
came and pointed his weapon at her little head," said Ida Huenulef,
describing how the police treated her 20-day-old baby granddaughter.
Miguel Tapia Huenulef, 45, was arrested as a suspect in an arson
attempt perpetrated in January on an estate called San Leandro near
the town of Lautaro, in the region of Araucanía, over 600 kilometres
south of Santiago.
He was also wanted for his alleged involvement in an attack on the
Public Defender's Office in Temuco, the capital of Araucanía, in
December 2008.
Rural Araucanía is the heartland of the territory claimed by the
Mapuche as their traditional land and is the centre of indigenous
activism. (The word Mapuche itself translates as "the People of the
Land.")
The police reported finding weapons, including a nine-millimetre
submachine gun with two ammunition clips, as well as ingredients for
making bombs and several marihuana plants.
The Tapia Huenulef family and Mapuche organisations say Huenulef is
being harassed, and the weapons discovery was a staged event
designed to incriminate him, just because he is an indigenous
person.
"No, nothing at all, nothing of the sort. They say my children had
assault weapons, what do you think, who would do such a thing,
living with their family and with children in the house, and keep
weapons in the home!" Miguel's mother exclaimed.
She added that the police did not find anything in the bedroom,
"because they left, the carabineros went away without having found a
thing. And later on I saw people passing by carrying backpacks and
other luggage."
Enrique Antileo, a spokesman for the indigenous organisation Meli
Wixán Mapu ("The Four Corners of the Earth" in the Mapuche language,
Mapuzungun), told IPS that the raid on the house is an example of
the repressive policies of the authorities.
"It was a set-up, they planted the weapons, we can swear to that. We
will support the family through thick and thin. This is the
continuation of a policy to repress the Mapuche social movement,"
Antileo said.
THE ANTI-TERRORIST LAW
Interior Minister Edmundo Pérez Yoma told the press that the case
had all the hallmarks of a terrorist organisation, "consequently we
are going to apply all the appropriate measures; in fact, we are
going to invoke the Anti-Terrorist Law."
A week after his arrest, the Tapia Huenulef family had still not
seen Miguel, who was being held incommunicado and had been
transferred to the Araucania region, they were told by the
authorities. They were not aware of the Interior Minister's
statements.
The Under-Secretariat of the Interior and the regional government of
Araucanía told IPS that a criminal prosecution under the
Anti-Terrorist Law, signed by Under-Secretary Patricio Rosende, had
indeed been presented in court, but they declined to comment
further.
This is the first time the administration of socialist President
Bachelet has used the Anti-Terrorist Law against a Mapuche. The
controversial law was created during the military dictatorship under
Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990) in order to hound political opponents.
It extends the powers of the police and the justice system.
"During her electoral campaign, (Bachelet) promised not to use this
law in cases involving members of the Mapuche people," said Rodolfo
Valdivia, the co-director of the Observatory on the Rights of
Indigenous Peoples (ODPI).
The Mapuche people's struggle in support of their demands is not an
act of terrorism, Valdivia told IPS. "In actual fact, there is no
organisation for the purpose of sowing fear among the population,
there is no organisation that would commit those crimes defined in
law as terrorist crimes," he said.
"We are not surprised that the Bachelet administration, in collusion
with powerful economic interests, should resort to arbitrary laws to
try to contain the Mapuche protest movement," Antileo said.
The Anti-Terrorist Law is one of the legacies of the dictatorship
drawing the heaviest criticism from indigenous organisations and
human rights groups.
In recent years, the Chilean state has received recommendations for
reviewing its legislation and policies in relation to the demands of
the Mapuche people from a number of bodies, such as Amnesty
International, ODPI, and the United Nations Special Rapporteur on
the situation of human rights and fundamental freedoms of Indigenous
People, Rodolfo Stavenhagen.
PERSECUTION AND HARASSMENT
"There is a growing trend to criminalise Mapuche protests in
general. The Mapuche people, when they protest, have historically
been silenced in the most violent ways imaginable," Valdivia said.
The government denies harassment, and does not acknowledge the
existence of Mapuche political prisoners, as indigenous
organisations allege. Human rights observers take the opposite view.
"From the point of view of human rights, of course there are
(political prisoners). They are in jail because of their way of
thinking, because they want autonomy and want the autonomy of the
Mapuche people to be recognised," Valdivia said.
Activists recognise and appreciate the steps Bachelet has taken
toward securing constitutional recognition of Chile as a
multicultural state, and the many education and health initiatives
that benefit original peoples.
But the government's response to the historical demands of the
Mapuche people, including their territorial claims, remains
lukewarm. Their demand for autonomy - recognition not only as a
particular culture within the country, but as a Mapuche nation with
political and territorial rights - is disregarded, and when
conflicts arise they are treated by the justice system as criminals.
According to the Meli Wixán Mapu organisation, more than 40
indigenous people are imprisoned, either pending trial or following
conviction in cases related to their collective demands. About 500
Mapuche have been prosecuted since the country's return to democracy
in 1990. In the organisation's eyes, they are political prisoners.
"They are not criminals, they have not committed armed robbery or
rape or anything like that. All they have done is take action within
the framework of our people's movement to reclaim our rights,"
Antileo said.
In Valdivia's view, the recent acquittal by a court of Avelino
Meñaco, a "lonko" (traditional Mapuche authority) from the Pascual
Koña community, illustrates the flimsy grounds of the practice of
bringing criminal charges against Mapuche activists.
After eight months in jail, Meñaco was acquitted of the charge of
attempting to set fire to a lakeside cabin, thanks to expert defence
by lawyer and former judge Juan Guzmán, famed as the first judge to
prosecute Pinochet on human rights charges upon the former
dictator's return to Chile after over a year of house arrest in
London.
"There is evidence of a certain amount of persecution, because the
authorities are seeking criminal convictions against Mapuche 'lonkos'
and leaders. But as soon as the criminal justice system takes over,
it finds that there is no proof on which to convict them, and so in
several cases they have been declared innocent," said Valdivia.
According to the 2006 National Socio-Economic Characterisation
Survey, 1,060,786 people, equivalent to 6.6 percent of the Chilean
population, identified themselves as indigenous people. Of these, 19
percent had incomes below the poverty line, that is, they were
officially regarded as poor or extremely poor. The Mapuche make up
87 percent of the country's indigenous people. |
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