Chile: hunger strike ignored

Alejandra Arriaza, a lawyer with human rights organisation 
CODEPU and social democrat parliamentary deputy Antonio Leal last 
week denounced the irregularities of the sentencing of political 
prisoners that have led to the current human rights crisis in 
Chile.

In a statement to the media Leal pointed out that Ramsn Escobar 
(who has spent 12 years in prison), Julia Peqa (10 years) and 
Claudio Melgarejo (11 years) have not yet been sentenced and 
their cases remain open after more than a decade.

Furthermore, military tribunals have applied different laws to 
try the same "crimes" and, in some cases, the prisoners have 
spent more time in prison than set down by those laws. The deputy 
recalled that the ex-Minister for Justice Francisco Cumplido 
himself has stated on more than one occasion that the application 
of the Anti-Terrorist Law was wrong in the case of these 
political prisoners.

The intolerable situation led six of the political prisoners to 
commence a hunger strike in April.

The following is a declaration made in Santiago on June 20 by the 
President of the Communist Party of Chile, Gladys Marin:

We have come to express our solidarity with the imperilled 
political prisoners on hunger strike and to demand their 
immediate release.

It is neither possible nor acceptable that human beings who have 
given their all for their ideals, striving to obtain democracy 
for our country, should be subjected to the physical tortures 
that 70 days on hunger strike represent without giving them a 
solution.

This cannot be permitted; it is at such times that the people 
have the right and the duty to go into the streets to demand the 
liberty of those Chileans who have paid dearly for their right to 
be treated justly and with dignity.

If today we have some democratic possibilities, we owe them to 
human beings like those who have dared to risk their lives to 
reach them.

From this moment on, and from a perspective of profoundly human 
ethics and values, we are going to redouble our efforts to 
achieve their immediate release. We will struggle together with 
their families and friends. We will not accept that they should 
be traded like commodities in exchange for impunity to those who 
violated human rights during the dictatorship.

Immediate freedom for the political prisoners!

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Unofficial translation