CAT/C/68/D/882/2018 in January 2017. Houses in the community had been hit by gunfire; although the police had been alerted by telephone, they had not come to the scene, so, after more shots had been fired, members of the family had decided to fell a tree to prevent access to their community and thereby protect themselves. The police had then turned up to remove the tree and arrest the complainant’s sister for blocking the road. While attempting to defend his mother, the complainant’s nephew had been hit by 38 bullet fragments. The complainant attached the complaint lodged by her family, a medical report and a copy of the cooperation agreement that she had entered into with the World Organization against Torture and the International Federation for Human Rights, whereby they would cover the costs in Switzerland of her nephew’s surgical operation. 2.10 On 15 May 2017, the State Secretariat for Migration rejected the complainant’s request for reconsideration and set her departure for 19 June 2017. Although it noted the existence of State repression, especially by Carabineros, who applied disproportionately severe measures and sometimes took individuals into police custody, the State Secretariat for Migration concluded that such police custody was immediately challenged by lawyers and human rights defenders before the courts, which, in accordance with the law, ordered the individuals’ immediate release. The State Secretariat added: “It seems that these disproportionately severe measures are being applied only in Araucanía, the home region of the Mapuche. They are therefore of a regional nature. Consequently, [the complainant] could avoid such possible acts of violence by settling and staying in another part of the country.” Lastly, the State Secretariat was of the view that the international prominence of Mapuche issues had the effect of protecting Mapuche leaders and activists, in particular, as the Chilean authorities could not afford to cause them serious harm for political reasons without provoking fierce protest. 2.11 On 13 June 2017, the complainant appealed the decision of the State Secretariat for Migration before the Federal Administrative Court, stating that international pressure had no protective effect, since persecution that had been condemned at the international level continued nonetheless, and recalling that not even the precautionary measures requested by IACHR had had the effect of protecting her family members. They were still being oppressed, arrested and imprisoned, and the aggressors were never punished. On 16 January 2018, the complainant informed the Swiss authorities that her sister had been violently arrested and detained for her opposition to the construction of a road through the traditional lands of the Mapuche people. 2.12 On 11 July 2018, the Federal Administrative Court dismissed the complainant’s appeal, stating that the Mapuche people were not victims of collective persecution and that the problems encountered by the complainant’s family merely reflected measures taken by the Chilean authorities against members of her family as a result of their activism, having nothing at all to do with the complainant. By letter of 19 July 2018, the State Secretariat for Migration gave the complainant a deadline of 16 August 2018 to leave Switzerland. On 14 August 2018, the complainant was informed that her request for an extension of her departure deadline, filed in the hope of regularizing her status, had been rejected. The complaint 3.1 The complainant claims that she has exhausted all available effective domestic remedies, as she applied to the Committee after the Federal Administrative Court’s judgment of 11 July 2018, which upheld the rejection by the State Secretariat for Migration, on 15 May 2017, of her request for reconsideration of the decision of the Federal Office for Migration, dated 18 August 2010, by which her application for asylum was rejected. 3.2 The complainant submits that her deportation to Chile would be a violation of her rights under article 3 of the Convention, because, given her commitment to defending the fundamental rights of the indigenous people to which she belongs, she would be at risk of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, 6 both by the Chilean authorities and by private individuals. She claims that there is both a consistent pattern of violations of the human rights of Mapuche rights defenders and a situation of personal risk. 6 4 The complainant recalls that, according to the Committee’s general comment No. 2 (2007) on the implementation of article 2 by States parties, articles 3 to 15 of the Convention apply equally to torture and ill-treatment. GE.20-00012