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Speech from Jorge Huenchullan, Werken of Temucuicui community, to the UN Human Rights Council

Human Rights Council
United Nations

18th session
Geneva, 12th  - 30th September 2011

Oral Intervention: interactive debate.

Item 3: Report of the Special Raporteur on the human rights situation and fundamental freedom of Indigenous peoples, James Anaya.

Dear Mr Anaya,

As spokesperson of the Mapuche Community of Temucuicui (Chile), I would like to refer to two matters that are emphasised in the previous report to this Council.

In the first instance, I would like to refer of the presence of extractive industries which are present in the ancestral Mapuche territory, especially the forestry industry that surround the communities in which we live. From the beginning of the 1980’s the Chilean state, in the context of the military dictatorship, without previous consultation with the Mapuche nation, subsidised large plantations of pine and eucalyptus all around our communities. After the end of military dictatorship, this situation has endured, even up until today, with two multinationals  benefitting from the plantations on our land, having in their hands more land than the entire Mapuche nation. With this situation of deep inequality we add the fact that the exploited lands by forestry are lands which were seized from the Mapuche nation from the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century.

Our demands of land have been systematically criminalised which we confirm through the police and judicial repression that our Temucuicui community has been persecuted since 1991 by a series of atrocities. In the year 2006 alone there were more that 20 forced entries by the police, this is clear evidence of the systematic persecution of our representatives and the Mapuche community. This leads me to my second point: the trials that eight brothers of my community will have to face under the antiterrorist law. In my community this is applied to two under age people, violating all of their rights as children. The application of the antiterrorist law in trials, have denied us the right to a fair hearings and has created absurd situations and injustices like mine.

I have been to 15 trials in civil courts and three trials in military courts all of which are always unresolved. However, there has never been any conviction by a Chilean court and I have spent three years of my life in prison.

In spite of the long hunger strike last year and the promises by the government, the antiterrorist law still continues to be applied through public administration to the representatives of Mapuche peoples who are doing no more than reclaiming their rights.

Sir, there is no Mapuche terrorism in Chile, I told this to the United States Ambassador in Chile in 2009, there are only wishes for justice and peace.

Mr Anaya, we ask for the presence of the Observers of the United Nations for the trials of our eight Mapuche brothers of my community that are going to face an oral trial under the Antiterrorist law in the city of Angol, in the south of Chile.

Thank you very much Sir.

Jorge Huenchullan Cayul
Werken (Special Envoy) of the Mapuche community of Temucuicui.

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