The Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) declared this Thursday the Chilean State responsible for human rights violations committed during a criminal process against 135 people of the Mapuche ethnic group accused of land usurpation and illicit association in the context of peaceful protests in 1992.
“Chile is internationally responsible for the violation of different rights within the framework of the criminal process followed against members of the Mapuche people who carried out acts of peaceful protest,” he announced in a statement released through his X social network account.
The IACHR determined that the ruling handed down in March 1993 against the Council of All Lands, the organization that launched the demonstrations, “was guided by a discriminatory bias, prejudices and the preconceived idea about its illegitimate and illegal nature.”
In particular, the IACHR explains in its resolution, the disclosure of information about the criminal case was prohibited, a translator or interpreter was not provided to one of the accused, who did not speak Spanish, two people not included in the accusation were convicted and “the criminal offense of illicit association was applied”, whose regulations in force at the time of the events did not clearly and precisely define the criminally reprehensible conduct.
Furthermore, according to the court, “the criminal process constituted the criminalization of the acts of peaceful social protest undertaken by the victims.”
Thus, the Court considers that the Chilean State violated the rights “to the presumption of innocence, freedom of thought and expression, and the rights of assembly, freedom of association, equality and non-discrimination, and “free determination of peoples indigenous and tribal”.
In its resolution, the IACHR ordered the State to implement different reparation measures, among them “adopt the necessary mechanisms to annul the conviction and eliminate from public records the criminal, police and any other records that, to date, have been found recorded in relation to the criminal case that is the subject of the process”.
The Council of All Lands, an organization that brings together indigenous Mapuche authorities, led a series of protests between June 16 and 20, 1992 in the southern regions of Biobío and La Araucanía, where the largest indigenous communities in the country are located.
The alleged victims were sentenced for the crimes of usurpation, illicit association, contempt, theft, concealment of theft and injuries to sentences that ranged from the payment of six living wages to sentences of three years and nine months in prison.
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