Chile: Mote in the neighbor’s eye

Chile: Mote in the neighbor’s eye

Nidia Diaz - Havana. August 6, 2010

A well-known and old saying warns, "Don’t marry or set sail on Tuesday the 13th," but it would seem that a large group of Chilean senators do not believe in such superstitions, given that, on July 13, they passed two motions which demonstrate present-day Chile’s unusual position, and both of them directed at pontificating on issues of democracy and human rights.

The first of them calls on President Sebastián Piñeira to demand a "more vigilant attitude" from the international agencies regarding the upcoming elections in Venezuela this September 26, as well as to back what they euphemistically and cynically describe as "the process of democratic consolidation in Honduras." In two words, to recognize the regime of Porfirio Lobo, who inherited the de facto dictatorship of Roberto Micheletti and, of course, to join ranks with the regional and pro-U.S. right in their dirty campaigns against Bolivarian Venezuela.

The concerned and enthusiastic legislators made no mention of two pressing problems on the current Chilean political scene, which speak for themselves of the double standards dominant in that country’s governing class: the hunger strike initiated on July 12 by more than 100 Mapuche political prisoners incarcerated in Concepción and Temuco who, with that action, are calling on the government of President Piñeira to give the same "impassioned" attention to their situation as to pro-yanki ultra-right actions in other parts of the region.

The other problem is related to high school students who, on July 31, once again took over Amunátegui College and held it for a number of hours, in a prelude to new mobilizations in defense of public education, free student travel passes, and the freezing of adult fares on public transport.

That action on one of the most emblematic buildings in the center of the capital was directed by 70 leaders of more than 30 colleges in the metropolitan area, who were arrested by special police forces with their customary brutality and taken to the 3rd Precinct. The student movement, who checkmated the government of Michelle Bachelet some months back, is once again speaking out against an education system that puts profit before the right to education and whose direction is eminently elitist.

The renewed student protests and the hunger strike by Mapuche political prisoners are taking place at a point when official sources have admitted that poverty in Chile has increased from 13.7% to 15.1% in recent years and is now affecting more than 2.5 million inhabitants. The 2009 Socioeconomic Survey (CASDEN) additionally reveals that the figure for people living in extreme poverty has risen from 516,000 to 634,000.

Meanwhile, the new government, whose cabinet centrally comprises pro-Pinochet technocrat graduates from the U.S. University of Harvard, is beginning to renege on the few and timid achievements of Bachelet’s mandate in relation to social justice and to give privileged place to the interests of the national oligarchy and foreign transnationals.

It is in that context, in which the struggle of the Mapuche people is intensifying and the official response to their demands is increasingly brutal, that Sebastián Piñeira’s government is clearly exposing itself as an open violator of human rights and civil liberties.

The anti-terrorist Law 18.314, drafted and passed by the fascist regime of Pinochet, is being systemically applied against the Mapuche people for action taken in the context of social demands to regain their ancestral lands, snatched from them with the full knowledge of the executive and legislative bodies in the interest of national and transnational monopoly capital in the agricultural and forestry sectors.

For some idea of the whys of the accusing finger pointed at Chilean government policy, it is enough to note that the very application of the Anti-Terrorist Act is in contradiction with the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. It also contravenes the International Conventionon theEliminationof Racial Discrimination, and Articles 2, 14 and 27 of the InternationalCovenant on Civil and Political Rights.

In effect, given its letter and spirit, the Anti-Terrorist Act does not adequately guarantee due process, because it allows secret investigations and, via its witness protection clause, gives rise to the existence of ‘faceless’ witnesses in trials based on that legislation. Likewise, it allows for preventive detention without communication rights.

The legislation has also been questioned for its heavy prison terms, in various cases double those established in ordinary legislation, and those charged under it can be jointly tried by civil and military courts, after having waited for years for their trials to begin.

As some press commentaries argue, it is contradictory that "sectors supporting hunger strikes for the release of common prisoners in other nations and the media power accompanying them in their travels are ignoring the fact that, in El Manzano prison in Concepción, south Chile, Mapuche prisoners have gone on hunger strike as the only way of responding to what they affirm is a campaign against them orchestrated by the political right, with the objective of securing anticipated convictions via public opinion."

On the Rebelión website, Lucía Sepúlveda Ruiz reveals that "seven of the prisoners in Concepción’s El Manzano jail are simultaneously being tried by civil and military courts, in clear breach of their rights. The decision of these prisoners is a call to visualize the montages to which they have been subjected, as they state, by the courts and the police with press collaboration. They allege that they have already been convicted by the media, which is presenting them as terrorists although none of them have been involved in acts of bloodshed. All of the detainees have taken part in action linked to recovering their ancestral lands."

At the present time, it is known that 57 Mapuche political prisoners, including two women and two minors, are demanding "an end to the anti-terrorist law created by Pinochet and of military tribunals, both pieces of legislation that are being used today against the Mapuches; the release of all Mapuche political prisoners incarcerated throughout Chile and the right to due process, with no faceless witnesses, no torture and no extortion." Their final demand is for the demilitarization of the Mapuche communities and areas constantly being raided for demanding their political and territorial rights.

comentario: que los detenidos puedan ser juzgados por la Justicia Civil y también por la Militar, por lo que corren el riesgo de ser condenados en dos diferentes fueros por los mismos delitos que supuestamente habrían cometido".

In a press commentary published in the context of the Mapuche political prisoners’ hunger strike, the eminent analyst Atilio Borón stated: "The state of law in Chile, so much praised by analysts and opinionologists in the service of the empire, is making possible a legal aberration which, nevertheless, is not provoking any commentary: the fact that detainees can be tried by both the civil and military courts, thus running the risk of being convicted in two different jurisdictions for the same crimes that they had allegedly committed."

And just when we believed that the Anti-Terrorist Act was everything, we discover that, in the Araucanía region, entire communities have been militarized by the special police forces, who have mounted security cameras, a military siege and the confinement of people living there, as well as the destruction of their homes. One case that should be no exception is that of a military post on the private farm of René Urban, accused of being a member of the Patria y Libertad paramilitary organization in the 1970s, with the objective of protecting the assets and estate of the proven terrorist turned lieutenant.

This is taking place in Chile, while in other nations of the region the indigenous peoples are ascending to the exercise of their rights and becoming the protagonists of political change.

The Chilean anomaly is what U.S. imperialism and the corrupt oligarchy want to impose on the entire continent.

Translated by Granma International