Richard Curinao, editor of Mapuche news site Werken News, has released a statement accusing Chile’s Investigations Police of harassment. Curinao claims the police have been aggressively searching for him at several addresses. He says their search springs from an interview Werken News and Chile Today did with CAM leader Héctor Llaitul, who is now being detained.
Through a press release, the Editor of Werken News Richard Curinao is accusing the Chilean Investigation Police (PDI) of harassment. He says they are aggressively searching for him because he was involved in an interview with Coordinadora Arauco Malleco (CAM) leader Héctor Llaitul. This is the same interview that Chile Today Editor Boris van der Spek released a statement about weeks ago. Van der Spek also accused the PDI of similar treatment.
Curinao accuses the Chilean authorities of “colonial anti-Mapuche politics.” “Approximately a month ago, the Investigations Police went to my brother’s house in Santiago, saying that they were looking for me to ask me some questions … days later they went to an address that I had lived in for many years in Santiago, with the same demand, but this time with much more force, determined to enter the house,” reads the statement.
As Chile Today reported on Aug. 26, during the formalization of Héctor Llaitul in Temuco, the public prosecutor asked the PDI to obtain declarations from both Curinao and van der Spek regarding the interview, in which Llaitul validated the use of sabotage as a political action.
“Today, off the record …, I’ve been informed that my name is in the investigative binders regarding the detention of peñi Héctor Llaitul. Through this press release, I wish to make clear that, if forced, I won’t collaborate with this new juridical circus and that I will appeal to all the necessary authorities to protect my journalistic endeavors and to prevent this practice of political persecution from being used against the communicators affiliated with social causes, in general, and with the process of Mapuche resistance in particular,” says the editor of Werken News.
Catalina Vergara is graduated in Social Communications from the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. She has previously worked on Strategic Communications.