Chile was elected as a member of the UN Human Rights Council; this election unleashes mixed feelings in a large part of the population.
The incorporation of Chile, obtaining the first majority, requires the government to comply with what it stated in the presentation of its candidacy to this body and which it reiterates once again by stating that: “it will be a pleasure for Chile to be a member of the UN Human Rights Council”.
It has been given the honour of working actively and from a prominent position in the promotion and protection of human rights, the promotion of peace, democracy, the rule of law and sustainable development, all of which are fundamental components of our public policies and also of our foreign policy”.
As the popular saying goes, a review of how we are doing at home is pertinent in light of this appointment.
Chilean society is still waiting for concrete answers to the cases, which the IACHR gave in January with cold figures, in which the Chilean state acted through its police and armed forces in the streets during the revolt, namely “the bodies in charge of order, were characterised by patterns of violence and excessive use of force, which resulted in the loss of 5 human lives by direct action of state agents and 26 deaths in the framework of the “social outburst”, as well as hundreds of people injured, particularly with eye injuries. These facts are incompatible with Inter-American human rights standards and with the international obligations acquired by the State of Chile in this area”.
A fundamental pillar to validate human behaviour, beyond the merely discursive, is the coherence between thinking, feeling and acting. This principle is extrapolated to each of the facets of the human being, including, without a doubt, politics.
Today, those who govern us are allowing, with the possibility of removing it, a Treaty that no more than a year ago they rejected with vehement discourse and even with T-shirts, where the photos that show such incoherence remind us how easy it is to break the public’s trust in electoral promises.
We should not be surprised that every day there is an increasingly widespread disenchantment with political practice, as we see how those who raise banners in the street, when they come to power, transgress them, with an action that seems to be completely ingrained in our political class.
While we rejoice at the appointment as a member of the Council, today we are paradoxically on the verge of submitting our sovereignty to the TPP11, which would greatly limit the real possibility of enshrining essential human rights for the inhabitants of this territory, rights that have been denied for decades and that not more than 3 years ago millions of people rose up to vindicate such demands. These demands cost the activist demonstrators atrocious violations of their human rights, the likes of which have not been seen since the darkest times of the dictatorship in our country. It is strange that with this happening, Chile is elected as a member of the human rights commission of the international body of the United Nations.
It is also relevant to bring up the unresolved situations of the Chilean state in the Mapuche territories.
The situations of injustice there are not just speeches. This has been made clear in recent days by the recent court ruling in favour of a Mapuche community in the town of Mariquina – in the Los Ríos region – in its lawsuit against Forestal Arauco, to determine the ownership of a territory that has been in the hands of the company for 30 years. It is resolved that the Tres Cruces estate, according to the First Civil Court of Valdivia, is the property of the Delgado Mayolafquén family. And like this concrete example, there are countless similar unresolved abuses that should be clearly termed illegal occupation of territories. Not to mention the government’s definition of a permanent state of emergency, which has the Armed Forces on the roads of the territory and the militarised police altering the daily lives of the Mapuche community members, their emotions and poisoning the hearts of children and adolescents on a daily basis.
On the other hand, given the appointment as a member of the Council, it is of interest to know what Chile’s position will be at the international level. From the perspective of peace and Human Rights, we see with astonishment the permanent and escalating delivery of sophisticated weapons to Ukraine by the US and the so-called first world countries, ruling out in practice the possibility of a diplomatic and political solution to the armed conflict, which puts the entire planet at risk, since Russia is the country with the second largest nuclear arsenal in the world; in this scenario, do these irrational actions not violate Human Rights? Or are we once again joining the club that turns a blind eye?
Things can always be done right. And the citizenry not only has the right to expect the best performance from this government, but also has the right to demand that it corrects the course where electoral agreements or mandates are deviated from, with the courage that today’s crisis demands; concrete actions and not pretty speeches.
It is not the popular demand to the government, nor the voices of any anti-neoliberal social or political organisation that should be silenced, arguing that such criticism would pave the way for the ultra-right to La Moneda; the logic of a supposed lesser evil has been overcome. Political coherence is urgently needed, to wit:
1. speed up trials and sentencing of state agents who committed crimes against protesters in 2019.
2. Halt the executive enactment of the TPP11 .
3. Conclude negotiations so that the forestry companies leave the occupied Mapuche territories.
4. Lift the emergency laws by removing the military from the roads in Mapuche territories.
5. And at the international level, promote a ceasefire and political negotiations to de-escalate the war in Ukraine.
Collaborative writing by Elizabeth Bravo; Sandra Arriola Oporto; Angélica Alvear; Rubén Marcos; Guillermo Garcés and César Anguita. Political Commission.
