With its judgment on the night of 23 January 2013, the Constitutional Tribunal of Chile challenged the United Nations Office for the Human Rights of Indigenous Peoples and questioned the entire academic and judicial system that defends the rights of indigenous peoples and the consultation process stipulated in ILO Convention 169.
Within hours of the start of the Summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States and the European Union (CELAC-EU), and in a context of increasing criminalization of the Mapuch people by the Chilean State, the Constitutional Tribunal of this South American country failed to vote against the economic discrimination in favour of the six families that dominate the Chilean fishing industry. It also approved the violation of Convention 169 of the International Labour Organization (ILO), which has been the Law of the Mapuch Republic since 2009.
The ministers reviewing compliance with the Chilean constitution thus endorsed the spurious parliamentary process that approved this questionable fisheries law, popularly referred to as Longueira’s Law and which approves fisheries privatization, known to the international fisheries community as Individual Transferable Quotas.
The Pinochet dictatorship tried to impose this marine resources privatization law under the so called Merino Law. It was later approved by the government of Ricardo Lagos and was called the Maximum Catch Limits, or LMC Law. Since 2011 the Piñera government gave it the name Longueira’s Law in honour of the far right populist Economy Minister, Pablo Longueira.
By five votes in favour to three against, the ministers of the Constitutional Tribunal issued their verdict, rejecting the claims that the fisheries privatization law is unconstitutional. The unprecedented and massive complaints were presented to the Constitutional Tribunal by 11 Senators and 30 Deputies.
According to Juan Carlos Cardenas, Executive Director of Ecoceanos, The ruling of the Constitutional Tribunal sanctions the existence of first, second and third class Chileans. It also gives support to the policy decision of the Chilean state to violate an international agreement, by continuing to ignore the rights of Indigenous Peoples. He added that the constitutional rights of citizens which are not upheld by the government, the congress and the political parties, are also not upheld by the Constitutional Tribunal.
After the approval of fisheries privatization by the Constitutional Tribunal, various citizens and indigenous peoples’ organizations agreed that the decision of these Chilean public servants opens the way and sets the precedent for not applying Convention 169 to all the megaprojects of the extractive and energy industries in Chile and in the Southern Cone of Latin America.
The decision of the Chilean Constitutional Tribunal endorses all the interests of transnational companies, of the corrupt political parties, and of the fishery and agricultural oligarchs and cartels. But what is more, it calls into question the United Nations system for the Human Rights of Indigenous Peoples, affirmed Ecoceanos.