Aldo Anfossi

Correspondent

The newspaper La Jornada
Sunday, August 25, 2024, p. 22

Santiago. Hector Llaitul Carrillanca, leader of the Mapuche insurgent organization Coordinadora Arauco Malleco (CAM), sentenced to 23 years in prison and on hunger strike for 83 days, of which he has not taken any liquids for the last three, was rushed to a hospital on Friday evening for tests, but indigenous media reported that on Saturday he was returned to the prison where he is serving his sentence.

“During the afternoon (on Friday), the work (messenger) Héctor Llaitul was taken to the emergency room of the Regional Hospital of Concepción (500 kilometers south of Santiago), due to a decompensation and cardiac arrhythmia. Despite the medical indication to leave him hospitalized due to his delicate state of health, the Gendarmerie decided to take him back to the penal hospital of the Penitentiary Center.

Biobío. We call on everyone to be alert for any situation that may arise during the next few hours.public Werkén News.

Seeks annulment of conviction

Llaitul began the hunger strike on June 3 to denounce his condition political prisoner and demand the annulment of the conviction handed down on May 22 for crimes of violent usurpation of property, simple theft and attack on authority. At the end of July, the Supreme Court rejected an appeal for annulment filed by Llaitul’s defense, confirming the sentence and ordering it to be enforced.

Llaitul’s lawyer, Victoria Bórquez Concha, denounced irregularities in the transfer to the hospital and a lack of information from the Gendarmerie regarding his health, explaining that they had repeatedly and unsuccessfully requested medical reports from the court and also from the Regional Gendarmerie Directorate.

It is a very serious situation, even more so when he has been on a hunger strike for more than 80 days and at least three days of a dry strike.a period during which he lost more than 20 kilos of his weight.

Founded 25 years ago by Llaitul, CAM is one of five indigenous rebel organisations that have opted for armed struggle to recover the ancestral territories of the Mapuche in south-central Chile, seized at the end of the 19th century by the Chilean state following a war of occupation.

These lands, several million hectares, are exploited mainly by two large forestry conglomerates that replaced the native forest with pine and eucalyptus plantations; there are also agricultural farms on the land.

For decades, the insurgents have waged a campaign of sabotage against them, mainly by setting fire to sawmills and trucks that transport felled wood from the forests to processing plants, destroying forestry and agricultural machinery, as well as crops, harvests and farm houses.