Declaration of support with Hunger Strikers

bolivia / peru / ecuador / chile | repression / prisoners | press release Wednesday May 25, 2005 18:45 by OCL-Chile - Organización Comunista Libertaria

Chile: Hunger and thirst strike at the Santiago High Security Prison

With this public statement we wish to show our fraternal support and solidarity with the new movement initiatied by the Political Prisoners, jailed thanks to the Anti-Terrorist Law, an inheritance of the criminal Dictatorship and an extremely useful tool for current governments who indiscriminately use it as a tool not only to criminalize the just social struggles but also to hit the people of the Mapuche Nation in their just demand for land, freedom and autonomy.

With this statement, we also show our energetic rejection of the current order which socially excludes the vast majority of workers, students and communities.

We also lend our form support to the proposals and objectives of the Political Prisoners in their struggle to end their imprisonment and their struggle for freedom.

We call on all social and political organizations who are involved in the struggle against the current order to join together in the various support initiatives to struggle for the freedom of all political prisoners, Chilean, Mapuche or internationalists and an end to the Anti-Terrorist Law.

Long live those who struggle! No struggle without solidarity!

Organización Comunista Libertaria
OCL - Chile

Santiago, 19 May 2005

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PUBLIC STATEMENT

The Political Prison still exists as it is a useful tool for the capitalist system and its social order. In Chile, there are still six Political Prisoners who were not covered by the August 2004 amnesty for various "technical, legal" reasons. Already almost a year has passed since that political event and, after several administrations we now have a New Bill, dated 4th May, being discussed by the Chamber of Deputies, a bill that seeks to resolve the situation of Political Prisoners sentenced under the Anti-Terrorist Law which was created to criminalize the social and popular struggles.

The bill, sponsored by ten deputies of the national coalition with the guarantee of the Catholic Church, human rights organizations and various collectives and organizations from the popular world, is at present before the Commission of Human Rights, where it is to be discussed prior to being voted on and passed.

Our struggle for freedom is rooted in a legitimacy involving different actors and sectors of Chilean society and in a chain of aberrations that have been directed at us over the years: an average of thirteen years in prison, eleven in the harsh conditions of the High Security Prison; without an acceptable and effective defence; tortured in our detention and confinement; judged by the rubbish heap of Chilean justice, the military justice system, which is both prosecutor and judge, violating the principles of international law.

We have never denied our work as subversives and revolutionaries. We are combatants who face up to the murderous dictatorship and its neo-liberal successor, resolutely seeking to build a society where the different people and communities can live in fullness and happiness. WE ARE NOT TERRORISTS and we are living out our prison terms with dignity and dreams. Here, the only terrorism that exists is the terrorism of State.

We Political Prisoners in the High Security Prison, considering what we have said in this statement, have decided to begin a HUNGER AND THIRST STRIKE which will go on indefinitely, as an extreme measure to obtain OUR FREEDOM NOW. Our mobilization is an attempt to accelerate the parliamentary measures and to ensure that its effective resolution is not diluted in time, and that the government finally closes this 15-year-long chapter of political prison, fulfilling its public political commitment. The conditions for the approval of the project do exist, what is lacking is only a decision and the political will to make it.

Finally, we want to point out, with the clarity that has always been our attitude, that we are and we will remain to be consistent fighters against impunity, and we will never be apologists for the murderers and torturers of our people.

FIGHTING FOR FREEDOM!! AN END TO THE ANTI-TERRORIST LAW!! FREE ALL THE POLITICAL PRISONERS NOW!!

Pablo Vargas Hardy Peña Claudio Melgarejo

"CONVERGENCIA POR LA LIBERTAD" COLLECTIVE OF POLITICAL PRISIONERS

Santiago, Cárcel de Alta Seguridad, 16 May 2005.