translated from Spanish: UN Committee calls on Switzerland not to sport Chile’s Mapuche for risk of torture

The United Nations Committee against Torture today called on Switzerland to annul the deportation order to Chile issued in 2018 against the Mapuche indigenous representative Flor Calfunao Paillalef, resident in the country since 1996, understand that you face the risk of being tortured if you return to your country.
The committee determined that her deportation “would put her at risk of torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, as indicated by the treatment of several members of her family,” the UN body said in a statement.
In its decision, the committee considered that there is “a pattern of systematic violations of the rights of the Mapuche people in Chile against those who defend their fundamental rights and seek to maintain their traditional lifestyle.”
He insisted that Switzerland must re-examine Calfunao Paillalef’s asylum application, as it has a responsibility to protect it as the competent authorities in Chile did not exercise due diligence to prevent, investigate, prosecute and punish bad treatment suffered by indigenous Mapuche.
Calfunao Paillalef arrived in Switzerland irregularly 23 years ago and applied for asylum in the country in 2008, although it was repeatedly denied (the last in July 2018 by the Swiss Federal Administrative Court), which led the Mapuche representative to bring the case before the United Nations committee.
She is by decision of the Mapuche authorities of the Wallmapu (traditional territory of this people) the ambassador of the “Mapuche Permanent Mission to the UN”, which was established in 2011 and has observer status at the European headquarters of the United Nations.
The Swiss city of Geneva awarded him an award in 2008 for his work in denouncing human rights violations suffered by the Mapuche community for defending its traditional territory in the Araucanía against landowners and hydroelectric concessions, forestry and mining.
In its decision last year, Switzerland’s top judicial body recognized an intensification of campaigns in Chile against Mapuche activists and an “increased repression” by state and paramilitary forces, but denied the right to asylum in understanding that there was no “collective persecution.”

Original source in Spanish