News stories by Pamela Sepúlveda

'It's extremely serious, a full-blown environmental catastrophe,' environmentalist Sara Larrain told IPS, describing the impact of the fire that has been raging through the Torres del Paine National Park in Chilean Patagonia since Dec. 27.

As students and teachers continue their massive protests in the streets of Chile's cities, one of the most extreme methods of demanding higher-quality, free public education is the hunger strike being undertaken by 28 youngsters at secondary schools across the country, four of whom have not taken food for nearly 40 days.

The problems plaguing Chile's education system are not unknown in the rest of Latin America, but are especially complex in this long, narrow country sandwiched between the Andes mountains and the Pacific ocean.

Fear is growing among environmental and indigenous organisations in Chile over the possible appropriation of native seeds by foreign companies, opening the doors to transgenic crops and their negative impact on biodiversity.

'Today we need structural changes; we need to move towards a new model of education in Chile and to sit down to talks that include all of the concerned parties,' said Camila Vallejo, one of the leaders of the student movement that has the right-wing government of Sebastián Piñera up against the wall.

'What is happening in Chile isn't justice; it's a pantomime, because under the anti-terrorism law, there is absolutely no way justice can be done,' José Venturelli, spokesman for the European Secretariat of the Ethics Commission against Torture, said on a recent visit to this South American country.

Fisherfolk and indigenous people in southern Chile have petitioned the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in their 15-year conflict with Celulosa Arauco y Constitución (CELCO), a paper pulp company which plans to dump toxic waste in the ocean, and with the Chilean state for alleged human rights violations.

As tensions mount in Chile's Mapuche territories, the indigenous people have created a new legal defence body for cases involving resistance against the state, as they put little stock in the justice system for working out cases such as land disputes.

Trade unions and non-governmental organisations in Chile are worried that rightwing billionaire Sebastián Piñera's election as president will mean setbacks in terms of social policy and respect for labour and social rights.

The Chilean parliament has approved the creation of a national institute for human rights, another step towards fulfilling the human rights agenda of the government of socialist President Michelle Bachelet.