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[Translation of an article from El Mostrador of Santiago, Chile, for June 9. See original here and related articles here and here.]

Natividad Llanquileo on Thursday confirmed the end of the hunger strike that four Mapuche prisoners in the Angol Prison began on March 15 to protest the application of the anti-terrorist law to their sentencing.

After losing between 20 and 25 kilograms because of the prolonged fast, the comuneros had been transferred to different facilities for medical reasons, according to authorities, but for that day they were brought together at the Victoria hospital.

“We had a conversation and they have decided to end this hunger strike, creating a committee for the defense of the rights of the Mapuche people,” spokeswoman Natividad Llanquileo told Radio Cooperativa.

Ramón Llanquileo, José Huenuche, Héctor Llaitul and Jonathan Huillical decided to end the strike after agreeing to form a work council in which the archbishop of Concepción, Fernando Chomali, and the director of the Instituto de Derechos Humanos, Lorena Fries, will participate.

[Translation of an article from El Mostrador of Santiago, Chile, for February 24. See original article here and related article here. The Chilean anti-terrorism law was originally enacted during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet as a brutal means of silencing dissent.]

By Ricardo Brodsky

The Cañete tribunal has absolved the Mapuche activists of charges of the crime of illegal terrorist association. The ruling confirms what many of us have argued in the debate that began with a hunger strike that the Mapuche defendants carried on for close to 100 days in 2010: there is no basis for applying the anti-terrorism law against members of the Coordinadora Arauco-Malleco or members of other Mapuche organizations.

There is none now nor has there ever been. A serious error in assessment and political management moved previous administrations to apply the anti-terrorist law. The public ministry in turn, encouraged by this misjudgment and bringing its own, utilized to a repugnant degree the corrupt procedures established by the anti-terrorism law: secret testimony paid for by the prosecutor, the tapping of telephones, mistreatment of detainees, the presumption of the defendants’ guilt, the seeking of disproportionate punishment, publicity campaigns – remember, for example, the Colombian “witnesses” – and widely spread accusations with broad resonance in the rightist press. (more…)

[Translation of an article from El Mostrador of Santiago de Chile for October 9. See original article here and related article here.]

The last ten Mapuches who had been on hunger strike in the Angol prison decided last night to end their fast, the Secretary General of the Presidency, Cristián Larroulet, and representatives of the comuneros have announced.

The measure was taken after intense negotiations carried out in the past hours by representatives of the executive and of the strikers. (more…)

Three articles

UN urged to take action on Mapuche hunger strike
National Human Rights Commission concerned with health of comuneros

[Translation of an article from El Mercurio of Valparaíso, Chile, for September 22. Comuneros are residents of traditional communal lands and activists for communal rights. See original article here.]

The Chilean Human Rights Commission yesterday urged UN Secretary General Ban ki-Moon to take “urgent personal action” against the government of Chile, which it holds responsible for the “serious condition” of 35 Mapuche prisoners on hunger strike since last July 12.

In a letter sent to Ban ki-Moon through the UN High Commission on Human Rights, the Commission urges the secretary general to form a committee to visit Chile to pressure national authorities to respect international norms and to contribute to the search for solutions. (more…)

After Supreme Court confirms dismissal

[Translation of an article from Tiempo of San Pedro Sula, Honduras, for June 1, from an Agence France Presse dispatch. See also “In Honduras, hunger strike over fired judges continues” posted here on May 28.]

Tegucigalpa – Two judges and two other participants who had been on hunger strike in Honduras for 17 days quit the protest on Tuesday after the magistrates of the Supreme Court declined to reinstate the four judges who had been dismissed.

“The hunger strike is suspended but we are going to begin other actions on an international level, in the International Criminal Court (ICC), the Organization of American States and other bodies, to make it known that the coup d’état in Honduras has not been reversed,” one of the strikers, Guillermo López, told AFP. (more…)

[Translations of two articles from Revistazo.com of Honduras, the first from May 24, the second from May 27, on the dismissal of four judges who had been critical of the coup d’état and the de facto governments in power since it occurred. See also “Honduran judges dismissed for condemning corruption in judicial branch” posted here on May 7.]

Campesinos from Bajo Aguán join hunger strike

By Eleana Borjas Coello

Despite the persistent rain that has fallen in the past few hours and the exposure to contaminants flourishing around the Plaza de la Merced, the judges on hunger strike are still waging their struggle for an independent and impartial supreme court. Eight more people joined the strike today.

“When it first began to rain we had it a little hard but two or three days ago, with the support of other organizations, we managed to get some platforms and attach the canvas better, and now we don’t get as wet as before,” commented Luis Chévez de la Rocha, one of the judges on hunger strike. (more…)