Indigenous rights protester killed by police in Argentina [View all]

[sandensea]

Last edited Sun Nov 26, 2017, 08:16 PM - Edit history (2)

An Indigenous rights protester, a member of a Mapuche tribe, was shot dead by Gendarmerie militarized police forces in Argentina.

Rafael Nahuel, 22, was reportedly shot in the back during a court-ordered eviction of the Lof Lafken Winkul Mapu protest camp. The incident took place this afternoon near the shores of scenic Lake Mascardi in Patagonia's Río Negro Province, in southwestern Argentina.

Nahuel and two other victims, a man and a woman with bullet wounds in the abdomen and shoulder, were transferred to the Ramón Carrillo Hospital in nearby Bariloche, where the protester died. Two others were detained.

Numerous demonstrations have been called in and around Bariloche, the nation's leading winter tourism destination. Protesters and supporters such as the CTA labor union blame British-born landowner Joe Lewis, who owns 46 mi² around Lake Escondido (just south of Lake Mascardi), as well as the right-wing administration of Mauricio Macri - who has vacationed at Lewis' lakefront mansion as president.

This was the second such case in Argentina in three months.

News of Nahuel's death arrived just hours after the burial of 28 year-old artist and activist Santiago Maldonado, whose disappearance on August 1 during a similar Gendarmerie raid on a Mapuche protest camp further south garnered international attention.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and the UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances have criticized the Macri administration for their handling of the case.

An autopsy performed after Maldonado's body was found on October 20 revealed that he had drowned; but that he had died sometime in late August rather than during the August 1 incident, and that his body had been in the water for about a week rather than the 80 days that had elapsed since his disappearance.

His being located nearly a mile upstream from where he was last seen moreover has led his family and rights groups to suspect he may have died in custody, and his body later planted.

"It's very strange that the body was found where it was, when we have searched those same places and there was nothing," his brother Sergio Maldonado pointed out. "We want to know the truth."

At: https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=es&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pagina12.com.ar%2F78435-otra-vez-persecucion-y-muerte-en-la-patagonia

Rafael Nahuel



Lake Mascardi