Repression of Chilean militants

bolivia / peru / ecuador / chile | repression / prisoners | press release Monday May 16, 2005 20:20 by Pepe - Organización Comunista Libertaria-Chile

Denunciation by OCL-Chile

The popular movement is being subjected to a growing daily wave of harassment by the oppressors. We anarchist communists are alert above all when the repression comes knocking at the doors of our militants and those of our comrades with whom we organize and struggle together.

While we were taking part in the May Day march in Santiago, a group of comrades from the "Preuniversitario popular Daniel Menco" in the Nuevo Amanecer neighbourhood (ex-Nueva Habana) approached us and told us about an attack on and the arrest of five of their comrades in the early afternoon of Saturday 30th April.

The "reason" for their arrest is a mural that they were trying to paint in their neighbourhood. Some cops appeared on the scene, threatening that if they did not stop painting the mural they would have their paint confiscated. The comrades peacefully refused. At that point the cops called on reinforcements - a huge group of other cops who violently arrested the five comrade street artists.

These comrades are now being detained at the Silvia Pizarro station in La Florida neighbourhood and are accused of damaging property and violent conduct towards the carabineros. For this reason they will be tried by the military courts and transferred in the meanwhile to Santiago Penitentiary and the COF women's prison.

This news does not surprise us, though it does make us angry and we will mobilize!

The richer the bourgeoisie and the rich get (at the cost of our emargination, exploitation and the instability of our lives) the more there is developing a general discontent which is expressed in the gradual but steady occurence of social struggles, protest and self-organization in the face of which the State and all its powers are showing their true nature: to watch us, punish us and wipe out any form of resistance.

These comrades, who are popular educators and whose group is named after a yound Mapuche student who was murdered while defending his right to study, are today being harassed, repressed and imprisoned, as are people in other the popular movements which are appearing and spreading throughout the country.

Mapuche "comuneros", students, workers and the unemployed - the hidden face of the capitalist dictatorship - are today being imprisoned and are the new political prisoners, social fighters and revolutionaries. We must defend them and free them from the dungeons of democracy and from the counter-revolutionary hands of the ANI (Chilean secret services) by means of popular mobilizations and with the help of those organizations that were born from the conflict with the system.

Finally, we appeal to all human rights organizations, popular education groups, neighbourhood groups, workers and students, Mapuches, political organizations and movements to demonstrate their solidarity with these comrades and beware of any possible defamatory campaigns against them of their release.

Solidarity with Alex, Claudio, Francisca, Esteban and Jorge Luis...

Prisoners for education and struggle! Freedom for all political prisoners! NO SOCIAL STRUGGLE WITHOUT SOLIDARITY!!

Organización Comunista Libertaria - Chile

1 May 2005

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