Weekly Report - 01 August 2013 (WR-13-30)

CHILE | UN Mapuches report. Ben Emmerson, the United Nations special investigator on human rights and counter-terrorism, visited Chile in July and said the situation was ‘volatile’ in the southern region of Araucanía and Bío Bío, where nearly 1.0m Mapuche Indians live. Violence has increased in the region again since last year, as the Mapuche involved in a struggle to recover ancestral lands. The UN official urged the government to find a solution to the land issue. Emmerson said that the situation could turn into a major regional conflict unless the government took urgent action. He was particularly critical of the government’s use of anti-terrorist legislation against the Mapuche, dating back to the 1973-90 military dictatorship, which was applied in a “confusing and arbitrary way” and which discriminated against the indigenous people. A radical faction of the Mapuche have occupied and burned farms; on 29 July around 90 Mapuche attacked a police station in Alto Bío Bío.

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