Santiago (EFE).- Four Mapuche Indians convicted of carrying out a terrorist act in southern Chile on Saturday resumed the hunger strike they had suspended a week ago and accused the government of betrayal.
The spokesman for the jailed Indians, Jose Cariqueo, informed EFE of their decision and called on President Michelle Bachelet and Congress to comply with the agreement that had resulted in the suspension of the inmates’ 63-day hunger strike last Sunday.
Brothers Juan Marileo and Jaime Marileo, as well as Juan Carlos Huenulao and Patricia Troncoso, were convicted on terrorism charges in 2004 and sentenced to 10 years in prison for setting fire to 100 hectares (250 acres) of forest belonging to logging company Forestal Mininco in 2001.
The Indians are leaders of the Mapuche communities in Ercilla, some 560 kilometers (about 348 miles) south of Santiago in the Araucania region.
The four, who were taken to a hospital in the southern city of Temuco due to their delicate state of health, want authorities to overturn their sentence, which they say is the result of discrimination against indigenous people.
On Sunday, the Indians agreed to temporarily suspend the hunger strike they began March 13 while a law that would make possible their release on parole was being debated.
Such a proposal was introduced before Congress by Socialist Sen. Alejandro Navarro and approved Wednesday by the upper chamber’s Human Rights committee, but lawmakers will not take up the bill until next month.
The government had previously called on Congress to urgently study legislation that would allow the granting of parole, which is not allowed under the country’s anti-terrorism laws.
In exchange, the four Mapuche hunger strikers were to suspend their protest.
“We’re tired of banging on doors and the president has not wanted to receive the real spokesmen of these four Mapuche political prisoners, especially me,” Cariqueo said.
The hunger strikers accused the Bachelet administration of “turning its back” on the inmates and failing to comply with the agreement reached through negotiations.
In addition to their 10-year sentence, the four Mapuches, who have declared their innocence since the beginning of their legal battle, were ordered to pay 425 million pesos ($825,000) to the logging company.
According to a counter-terrorism statute enacted during Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s 1973-1990 military dictatorship and amended by President Patricio Aylwin in 1991, setting fire to fields, woods and buildings with the purpose of inciting fear in the population is a form of terrorism.
The Mapuche Indians, like other indigenous communities from the country’s southern Araucania region, demand rights to lands they consider ancestral.
According to a 2002 census, Chile – which has a population of a about 16 million – has some 700,000 Indians, of which 87 percent are Mapuche. EFE
