Below is an article published by The Santiago Times:

The Inter-American Federation of Human Rights (FIDH) is preparing to take court action against the state of Chile for human rights violations against the country’s indigenous Mapuche people. The violations are related to the prison convictions of several Mapuches between 2001 and 2003.

Jimena Reyes, head of the Americas Desk of the FIDH, has been in Chile this week meeting with various members of the Mapuche community in an effort to prepare for the court action that will proceed next year in the Inter-American Human Rights court in Costa Rica.

"It is a case against the Chilean state for the human rights violations committed between 2001 and 2003 regarding convictions under the antiterrorism law of members of the Mapuche community,” Reyes said.

The country’s antiterrorism law, passed during the dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet, has been regularly used over the years to convict Mapuches involved in conflicts demanding access to their ancestral lands. The law increases the penalty for crimes considered acts of terrorism, particularly arson, and critics believe it has criminalized the Mapuche social movement.

Reyes criticized the line of Chilean policy with regards to the Mapuche conflict, and said that FIDH had been fighting against this line since 2000.

“It is a purely repressive tendency, applying emergency laws like the internal security law or antiterrorism law to characterize crimes so that they are more seriously penalized,” she said.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, Reyes visited Mapuche families affected by the prosecutions under the antiterrorism law, and in particular by the perceived use of the law to impose harsher sentences on Mapuches during this time.

Reyes’ visit to Chile comes at a tumultuous time for the Mapuche people, following last week’s contested ruling by the Temuco Court of Appeals in southern Chile that permitted prison authorities to force feed four Mapuche prisoners on a hunger strike.

During her time in Chile, Reyes also visited five other Mapuche prisoners on a hunger strike as the men announced their intention to start a “thirst strike” Friday if their demands of being transferred back to the prison in Angol from Temuco are not met.