Violent clashes have taken place between 400 artisanal fishers and police in Queule, in the Araucania region of Chile.
Seven artisanal fishermen were wounded by bullets, one of them with head injuries. The small-scale fisherworker leader Hernán Machuca from Condepp, said that Undersecretary Raul Súnico is “not a valid interlocutor” and demanded that the Minister of the Interior, Rodrigo Peñailillo, initiate a concrete review of the new Fisheries Law.
Machuca, artisanal fishers regional leader and spokesman for the National Council for the Defense of Fisheries (Condepp), said to www. Aqua.cl: “We got tired of waiting. For that reason, we declare the current Undersecretary of Fisheries and Aquaculture Raul Súnico , as a non-valid interlocutor. We demand that Minister of the Interior, Rodrigo Peñailillo, revise the new Fisheries Law, – which privatized Chilean fisheries – as President Michelle Bachelet promised in her public speech last May 21″.
The Condepp leader added that ” fisheries mismanagement by the Undersecretary of Fisheries and the Minister of Economy, Luis Felipe Céspedes, have meant that small-scale fishermen have to go outside” – as occurred recently in the Maule coastal region. “The word of the Chilean government has not been fulfilled.”
The Michele Bachelet fisheries program clearly calls for the prohibition of trawling in Chilean waters, but in reality the opposite is happening during the last months. “The Undersecretary of Fisheries has signed the resolution No. 3200, authorizing the industrial trawling to capture Reineta or Southern ray bream (Bramma australis) as bycatch, forgetting that fishery is 100% utilized by the small-scale fishers,” said Machuca.
Machuca argued that this “plight” of artisanal fisheries implies that massives protests will increase. For this reason, Condepp demanded that Minister of the Interior “take the control of this situation that seriously affects the artisanal fishermen, and deliver concrete solutions to our urgent demands.”