Chile Criticized for Using Anti-Terror Law Against Indians

In its bid to quash a land rights movement among the restive Mapuche Indians, the Chilean government is making improper use of anti-terrorism laws crafted two decades ago by the regime of former dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet, according to a report released Wednesday by Human Rights Watch.

Drafted by Pinochet’s government for use against a violent Marxist insurgency that nearly assassinated him, the laws are now being used against a much different foe: Mapuche activists armed with slingshots whose most dramatic form of protest is the burning of corporate tree farms.

Dozens of Mapuches have been arrested under laws that grant the government the right to hold prisoners several months without trial, allow prosecutors to withhold evidence from defense attorneys and permit the testimony of anonymous witnesses.

Washington-based Human Rights Watch said the special courts were being used to try defendants for crimes, such as arson, that are better dealt with in Chile’s criminal justice system. No one has been killed by the Mapuche rebels.

“The anti-terrorist legislation is inappropriate for punishing behavior which may be illegal but is not of a terrorist nature,” Jose Miguel Vivanco, executive director of the Americas Division of Human Rights Watch, said at a Santiago news conference.

The report says that although there is no universally recognized definition of what constitutes terrorism, the alleged actions of the defendants in no way pose the grave threat that might justify the application of laws that curtail civil liberties.

In response to the report, Interior Undersecretary Jorge Correa Sutil said Wednesday that the government would continue to use the powers granted by the laws because the Mapuches’ actions constituted terrorism.

The arson fires attributed to the activists, he said, were “designed to make a certain group of people fear that they too might be the object of similar attacks.”

The Mapuche movement in southern Chile has been fueled by decades of land seizures, which date to the government’s entry into the Indian-controlled territory south of the Bio Bio River in the late 19th century. In recent years, Mapuche farmers have argued that the spread of corporate tree plantations is wreaking environmental havoc on their crops.

The most militant activists have set fire to logging trucks and chased tree farm workers away at gunpoint.

Perhaps the best-known Mapuche leader, Victor Ancalaf, was sentenced in January to 10 years in prison. He was convicted on terrorism charges for setting fire to four trucks and a machine digger that belonged to a utility company involved in a controversial dam project. The sentence was later reduced to five years.

In a prison interview with the Los Angeles Times last year, Ancalaf promised to continue his struggle for the “sovereignty of the Mapuche people” and said violent acts against the state were justified, though he did not admit to engaging in any himself.

“In no case can the actions of the Mapuches be considered terrorism,” said Roberto Celedon, an attorney for Ancalaf. “The violence is against things and not people, and there is no desire to cause fear.”

In the past, the Chilean government has responded to criticism of its aggressive prosecution of the activists with statements that seek to reconcile use of the anti-terrorism laws with the image it tries to project abroad as a peaceful country where violent social conflict is a thing of the past.

“In Chile there’s no terrorism, but in Chile terrorist crimes have been committed,” Jorge Vives, a senior Interior Ministry official said in an August hearing for one Mapuche defendant.

The Human Rights Watch report cites the case of Jorge Huiaquin, 29, who was arrested in April 2002 for cutting down trees and damaging property during an attack on a private estate. Charged with “terrorist conspiracy,” Huiaquin spent two years in jail until he was acquitted of all charges and released.

The report also criticizes the use of military tribunals to try those accused of attacking Chile’s carabinero police during protests. The same tribunals have exonerated police charged with abuse against protesters.

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Times staff writer Tobar reported from Buenos Aires and special correspondent Vergara from Santiago.