Argentinian minister quits in protest over detention of indigenous leaders
Mauricio Macri had come to power with a series of public promises and high hopes, but he took a hardline on the issue of indigenous rights and the police state. His administration has since overseen the imprisonment of several indigenous leaders, many of them detained on trumped-up and fabricated charges, before and during the 2018 World Cup. The government has also arrested and detained dozens of other activists and journalists. Some of them remain incarcerated or on the loose.
The government’s brutal treatment of the indigenous peoples in their custody has taken place under the watch of one of Europe’s most brutal and corrupt autocrats, while, increasingly, the rest of the world is watching, condemning the human rights abuses and the illegal imprisonment of indigenous people.
The recent wave of repression is the result of the increasing economic pressures on indigenous peoples under neoliberal capitalist economic policies and is directly related to policies of privatization, gentrification, and displacement, which favor non-indigenous residents.
During the World Cup, in a clear abuse of power, the Argentine government detained and then illegally imprisoned three members of the indigenous community, who were being prosecuted on false charges. An investigation into the mistreatment of detainees at the hands of the government found that the police officers who were responsible for the abuse had been given permission to detain people without any legal basis and without any evidence. One year later, the same police officers received their first promotion to the rank of Inspector.
It was not just in Argentina, however, that the government is persecuting indigenous peoples. On June 13, 2018, the US government announced that it was ending the Special Rapporteur on indigenous affairs, who had been in office since 2005. The Trump Administration did this despite the fact that, unlike in the case of the Special Rapporteur on human rights defenders, the US delegation did not have the slightest contact with the indigenous peoples who were in front of it during the meeting. The only contact that the US delegation had had with the indigenous peoples was a letter to the Special Rapporteur from Carlos Fernando Chamorro, the director of the National Indigenous Organization of Chile. The letter, dated May 6, 2018, which was obtained by First Search and shared with this publication, was written
