Chile

No repression! Free the Mapuche political prisoners!

09/08/2010

DOWN WITH THE REPRESSION AND PERSECUTION OF THE MAPUCHE PEOPLE!

RELEASE THE MAPUCHE POLITICAL PRISONERS!

31 Mapuche political prisoners have now been on a hunger strike for 3
weeks, demanding the repeal of the Anti-terrorist Law and the return
of ancestral lands by the government. Next to that, these days we have
seen mobilizations and seizures of large farms in the south in
solidarity with the political prisoners on hunger strike and for the
historic demand for lands, in view of the usurpation by businessmen
and the government.

The Anti-terrorist Law, enacted by the Pinochet dictatorship, permits
holding in preventive detention for 2 years those who are considered
to be "dangers to society and the internal security of the state,"
prevents defense attorneys from having access to the investigation,
permits the public prosecutor to present "concealed witnesses," who
constitute a real fraud against the Mapuche people, and allows not
only civilian, but also military courts to reach a verdict. The use of
the Anti-terrorist Law functions as an instrument of government
repression and bosses’ "justice," to arrest and imprison all the
militants who could attack government impunity, and it forms one of
the main enclaves of Pinochet’s dictatorship to maintain the
repression against the movement of workers, students and the Mapuche
people. In addition, the 31 political prisoners of Angol, Concepción,
Valdivia and Lebu are demanding the release of all Mapuche political
prisoners and the return of the ancestral lands to the Mapuche people.
Lands that were seized by the government through the forces of
repression and were handed over to agricultural businessmen and
multinational corporations, that profit from acquiring the land
cheaply.

From Clase contra Clase we support the struggle of the political
prisoners and the Mapuche people against the dictatorship’s
Anti-terrorist Law, and we back the struggle for territory that they
are carrying out in the south. We repudiate and condemn the enormous
repression and criminalization of the Mapuche people by the right-wing
government and the employers, that are asking for more repression to
defend their private property, obtained by plundering the Mapuche
people. We likewise condemn the repression by the right-wing
government, that it is carrying out systematically against the
struggle of the workers and the student movement, as it did with the
high school students. Nor have we forgotten that it was the
governments of the Concertación that kept in force this law from the
dictatorship that criminalizes Mapuche militants, that continued the
plundering of their lands and carried out an enormous repression in
Araucanía with murders, as was done to Alex Lemún or Matías Catrileo.
We believe that it is only the alliance of the workers’ movement, with
the student movement, those who are poor, and the Mapuche people, led
by the organizations of the working class and fighting to win a
Workers Republic, which will be able to solve the historic problem of
the Mapuche people. In the south, in Temuco and Araucanía, union
organizations and the CUT must take the lead, by supporting this
struggle.