District attorney under fire from Chile’s Mapuche

SATURDAY, 08 JUNE 2013 16:32 | WRITTEN BY GRAM SLATTERY

Indigenous activists slam DA candidate Christian Paredes’ past involvement with anti-terrorist law.

Chile’s native Mapuche population in the Araucanía Region may have a new reason to distrust their district attorney.

mapuche
Indigenous activists are currently challenging Chile’s application of the Antiterrorist Law at the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. Photo by Diego Martin / Flickr

The term of current DA Francisco Ljubetic is set to expire in two months and on June 3 a regional court named prosecutor Christian Paredes one of his three potential successors. Ultimately, Justice Minister Sabas Chuhuan will choose between the finalists.

Paredes, a widely disliked figure within the indigenous community, was one of many prosecutors in the heated Poluco Pidenco trial, in which four Mapuche were found guilty of burning down a tree farm owned by logging giant Forestal Mininco. The defendants were charged with arson under Chile’s controversial Anti-Terrorist Law, which makes criminal penalties significantly more severe.

Human Rights Watch denounced the sentence at the time, noting that Chile’s “legal regime” equated the defendants with “those that commit the worst crimes, like mass murder.”

With Paredes in the running for DA, the Mapuche community is re-airing its frustration with the hearings.

“As Mapuche, we express our strongest protest that there exists even the possibility that this public official could become the district attorney of the Araucanía Region, in light of the fact that he has embraced a racist and discriminatory application of the law,” wrote the advocacy group Meli Wixan Mapu in a press release. “Appointing Paredes would not only be rewarding racist acts, it would add to the list of privileged state officials… who have dirtied their hands with the blood and suffering of the Mapuche people.”

Indigenous law expert Hernando Silva pointed out in an interview with The Santiago Times that Chile’s application of the Antiterrorist Laws has recently been taken to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, a point Mapuche activists have seized upon.

“Overall,” Silva claimed, “it wouldn’t be a good signal [to the Mapuche people] to designate Paredes as the district attorney.”

Source: The Santiago Times

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