•  santiago
• Saturday, October 30, 2010
• Inter Press Service

As concern grows for the health and lives of 38 Mapuche prisoners on a hunger strike in different prisons in southern Chile, IPS consulted academics about the problems underlying the conflict. None of the attempts by the government of right-wing President Sebastián Piñera to persuade the fasters to call off their protest, launched by the original group of hunger strikers 80 days ago, have been successful.

'Two completely different languages are being spoken here,' José Bengoa, an anthropology professor at the private Universidad Academia de Humanismo Cristiano, told IPS. 'On one hand, the young Mapuche activists are talking about politics and rights, while the government, in a huge step backwards, is talking about poverty, development and building roads.

'These are two very different conceptions, which lead to a failure to find a solution to this hunger strike,' said Bengoa, who is a member of the United Nations Human Rights Council Advisory Committee. Of the nearly one million Mapuche Indians in this South American country of 17 million people, around half live in the south of the country, in the regions of Bíobío and Araucanía, and half in the capital.

A group of imprisoned Mapuche activists who identify themselves as political prisoners began a hunger strike on Jul. 12, and were gradually joined by others, who brought the total to 38. They are being held in several prisons in the south. Most of them are in a delicate state of health, and there are fears that some are near death.

The hunger strikers, who are in prison on charges of terrorist arson, invasion of property and attempted homicide and bodily injury against a public prosecutor and a passenger bus, are demanding that their cases no longer be tried under the controversial counter-terrorism law passed by the 1973-1990 dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet.

The law, which has been widely criticised by rights groups and experts within and outside of Chile, not only makes it possible for witnesses to conceal their identity, but allows secret judicial investigations, longer periods of arrest on remand, and heavy sentences. There are also allegations that unidentified witnesses have been paid to testify against the Mapuche defendants.

Another of the hunger strikers' demands is an end to the practice by which some Mapuche activists are tried in the same case by both the civil and military courts when members of the armed forces are involved, and the resultant sentences are served consecutively.

© Inter Press Service (2010) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service

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