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Father of slain Catrillanca says doesn't want a Carabinero apology, but for the repressive police to leave his town where security forces murdered Camilo in November.
Marcelo Catrillanca, father of the slain Mapuche youth killed by military-style police last November says he won’t accept any rumored apology from the new Carabinero Director General Mario Rozas until the national security force is removed from Indigenous territory in Chile’s Araucania region.
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New Videos Shed Light on the Murder of Catrillanca in Chile
The senior Catrillanca said any potential apology regarding the death and botched investigation into the murder of his 24-year-old son Camilo Catrillanca seems to be "a joke."
"It's a joke. … Apologies will not serve until the Carabineros are removed (from Ercilla village where the murder took place). They should say: 'Look, in three months the Carabineros in Ercilla will be removed'," said the Mapuche leader.
"What good are the apologies if there are no actions on the part of the State and the Carabineros," stressed the elder.
Over 500 Mapuche leaders, including Catrillanca, are planning protests in the Ercilla and the Mapuche territories on Dec. 27 and 28 against the assassination of his son and the ramped up repression of the Mapuche people in southern Chile by the Sebastian Piñera administration in power since last March.
Camilo Catrillanca was gunned down in his home village of Ercilla on Nov. 14 by Carabineros. Since then the accused soldiers, their superiors and Interior Minister Andres Chadwick have changed the state’s version of the story around the assassination several times to protect the national police force and the administration.
Rozas, who replaced General Hermes Soto as the Carabinero director Friday in light of Soto’s gross mishandling of the murder investigation said Sunday that: “If I had had the authority when the situation occurred I would have been with the family and asked for forgiveness."
Catrillanca and other Mapuche leaders are demanding that they be able to testify in front of the House of Representatives special committee formed to investigate the killing. The house committee questioned Minister Chadwick last week where several socialist party members demanded his resignation.
In another incident, on late Sunday night, three Carabineros were fired from their jobs for using excessive force against a man whose small dog allegedly tried to bite one of the military police in a Santiago suburb that same day.
A video of three national police members tackling, choke holding and hitting the man until he was unconscious went viral overnight Sunday. The female who recorded the video can be heard telling the police to stop, saying, “he hasn’t done anything. You can’t do that.”
Local media says a shot can also be heard in the video footage.
"Carabinero personnel used illegitimate pressure and excessive use of force. Obviously we, the Carabineros of Chile strongly condemn this incident and … we have removed these personnel" from the force, said Colonel Raul Solis. State prosecutors are investigating the incident.
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