Mapuche Hunger Striker Force-Fed by Chilean Authorities
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Mapuche International Link has received information from various sources regarding the case of the hunger striker Patricia Troncoso Robles and recent protests in support of the Mapuche cause.
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Since January 21, Patricia has been force-fed against her will by a team of doctors set up by the Ministry of Home Affairs. According to a witness from the Catholic Church, she has been tied up and sedated in order to quell her resistance. The witness, Father Jose Luis Ysern, is the only person who has been allowed to see Patricia recently and told a reporter that she had asked him to give her the last rites. Her own family has been denied visiting rights and this has led to much concern about her real state of health. |
Patricia has been on hunger strike since 10 October 2007, in protest against the violation of her due process. She had been accused of an arson attack against a pine plantation owned by the Mininco Forestry Company, situated in ancestral Mapuche land. The case against Patricia was widely known throughout Chile to have been manufactured, and she was unjustly sentenced to ten years' imprisonment after an unfair trial. Her aims are to establish a re-trial, to secure the release of other Mapuche political prisoners and end the ongoing persecution against Mapuche activists.
According to information provided by Radio Bio-Bio, Patricia has now been moved from Chillan Prison to the special unit of the Martin Herminda hospital in Chillan to receive intravenous feeding.
Her personal doctor, Berne Castro, said she fears that Patricia's life is in imminent danger and stated: "After 106 days of this hunger strike, with a serious immunity deficiency, with renal failure and cardiovascular damage, it is important that the procedure of intravenous feeding is performed in careful conditions. If it is not, they put Patricia at risk of death or irreparable neurological damage."
Dr Castro further alleged that: "the procedure is being carried out in a unit without cardiovascular or respiratory monitoring, without sufficient equipment if Patricia enters into a cardiac arrest, and without the necessary monitoring equipment to observe her dangerous condition, which could lead to her suffering comprehensive neurological damage."
Dr Castro also states that Patricia's doctors are professional prison doctors. "No prison doctors have clinical experience in this field. One of them has had no clinical practice for a long time and another, who is directly involved, is a general practitioner without much experience in procedures like this."
The Declaration of Malta on Hunger Strike adopted by the World Medical Association (AMM), in November 1991, and revised by the General Assembly of the AMM, Pilanesberg, South Africa, in October 2006, states that:
"the doctor must respect the autonomy of the individual and should not force people on hunger strike to be treated if they reject. Force-feeding against an informed and voluntary rejection is unjustifiable..
Force-feeding is never ethically acceptable, even with the intention of benefiting. Food threats, pressure, use of force or physical restraint are forms of inhuman and degrading treatment."
Mapuches and other supporters throughout Chile have reacted with anger to the news that Patricia is now being force-fed, as they consider this a further violation of her human rights. In Chillan groups of supporters have been holding night-long vigils in tents outside the hospital where she is being held. The police have intervened, destroying tents and dispersing a crowd that included women and children, who were holding a religious ceremony at the time.
There have also been demonstrations every day in Santiago since the killing of a young Mapuche man, Matias Catrileo, who was shot in the back by Chilean police on 3 January this year on the outskirts of Vilcun, IX Region of Araucanía. On 22 January five protestors were detained by police in La Moneda Palace in Santiago.
Mapuche International Link