| July 12, 2010 Chile: Mapuche Indigenous People Starts Hunger Strike Reclaiming Ancestral Land Concepcion. |
We, Mapuche political prisoners currently detained at Concepción’s (Chile) Penitentiary Centre, El Manzano, come to inform the Mapuche Nation and the national and international public opinion: That from today, MONDAY 12 JULY 2010, we are starting a hunger strike (with fluid intake only) which we will conduct to its ultimate consequences. The reasons for this drastic and extreme determination are linked to a number of situations that we have frequently reported. These are the unjust, politically biased and judicial prosecutions that we are object by the State. They contravene all our inherent rights as Mapuche political prisoners. Just to summarize, we are subjected to mockery open trials conducted by the Public Ministry. These are imposed upon us by anti Mapuche prosecutors and corrupt police officers. Thus, the Chilean State, defending corporate sectors’ interests who are involved in the confrontation with our people and whose desire is to harass and annihilate the Mapuche movement, has criminalized the just struggle of our communities, imprisoning and preying against us. They are imposing harsh and dictatorial fascists laws seeking to repress our legitimate social leaders. At the same time we denounce that there is a strong and grotesque anti-Mapuche orchestrated campaign by the corporate sectors of the economic and political right of this country. They use their media, their prosecutors and their police forces in order to obtain public’s acceptance of severe pre-trial convictions. For these reasons we declare that our hunger strike will only be stopped if our just demands are appropriately fulfilled: 1. To stop the implementation of the anti-terrorist law in all Mapuche cases. This implies and end of the antiterrorist law made by Pinochet. 2. No more prosecution by the Military Justice in all Mapuche cases. This implies an End of the use of Military Justice in Chile. 3. The release all Mapuche political prisoners from all different jails of the Chilean State. To achieve this it is necessary: a. "To accept our demand for the right to have due process or fair trials. b. The end to political and judicial mockery trials, which involve the use of external prosecutors and entirely flawed process. We must end the use of faceless witnesses and of practices that violate basic human rights such as extortion, threats, physical and psychological torture and degrading conditions in the detention centres. 4. Demilitarization in all Mapuche areas and to allow the communities to assert their political and territorial rights. Finally, we call upon our people to mobilize, to protest and struggle for what we consider a just cause. And, to all other social and political organizations we request to remain vigilant. Return our territories and autonomy to the Mapuche Nation. "Weuwain" (We shall overcome) Mapuche Political Prisoners – Concepcion (Chile) 12 July 2010 http://ovl.indymedia.org/news/2010/07/30479.php |