CAT/C/68/D/882/2018 5.6 Comisión Ética Contra la Tortura (Ethics Commission against Torture) noted that the prominence of the complainant, who on 6 March 2008 received the award “Femme exilée, femme engagée” from the city of Geneva, entails specific risks, since the animosity of the Chilean authorities, including law enforcement and security agencies, and of the paramilitary group operating in the region under the name Comando Hernán Trizano, threatens the existence of all Mapuche leaders. A deportation order would thus constitute a real risk to her freedom and life. Similarly, according to the former coordinator for Chile at Amnesty International France, the complainant would be returned against a backdrop of assassinations, torture, set-ups involving judicial officials and the police, and the criminalization of social protest: “A prisoner told me that he had been tortured into signing a statement implicating another person in acts of which that person was absolutely innocent. These people are sometimes in pretrial detention for six months to two years! The charges against them are often based on counter-terrorism legislation from the time of the dictatorship. Witnesses are often anonymous, hooded or even disguised, which makes a defence impossible […]. The sentences are excessive: 15 years in prison for burning a truck or a corner of a field belonging to a company. The defendants claim this land because they consider it to have been usurped by successive Chilean governments even though Mapuche communities have deeds of ownership […]. Police officers have already killed several demonstrators, in almost all cases by a bullet in the back. The police turn up in a hamlet between 4 and 5 o’clock in the morning and throw tear gas canisters into people’s houses. They do the same in schools. Many children have been hit by rubber bullets. The area is occupied by elite troops of the militarized police (Carabineros).” The complainant, he continues, “will inevitably suffer the same abuses and harassment to which the police have subjected her family. It is inconceivable that Ms. Calfunao should be sent back to a situation that is clearly a threat to her moral and physical integrity. I will say it again: it is my firm belief that she will inevitably be prosecuted and harassed by Chilean law enforcement agencies, which do not hesitate to fire on women and children.” In the same vein, an anthropologist and sociologist from the University of Lausanne states: “Although I understand that Chile is no longer on the list of countries where human rights are systematically violated, as they were during the dictatorship, I am shocked by the decision to deport Ms. Calfunao. Unfortunately, almost every day I record major violations of the rights of the Mapuche people, including their right to freedom and even to life, at the hands of the Chilean State […]; the work of Ms. Calfunao, together with the fact that she is a member of a very politically active family and that she repeatedly criticizes the Chilean State at the United Nations and other international organizations, can apparently be understood as a threat to Chilean national security and thus considered to be terrorism, just like much Mapuche activism. People who are demanding the application of international law and asserting the particular collective rights inherent in their status as an indigenous people are detained on suspicion of committing or supporting violent acts.” According to this expert, “the deportation of Ms. Calfunao before the repeal of the Counter-Terrorism Act will place her in a dangerous situation of great risk to her physical and moral integrity. I understand that these allegations may baffle those unfamiliar with the Mapuche issue in Chile, who have trouble imagining that this State could still use masked witnesses and abusively detain people for longer than is provided by the law on police custody. But as long as the Counter-Terrorism Act remains in force, this will regrettably be the case.” 5.7 In reply to the State party’s argument that, to counter this personal risk, the complainant could live elsewhere in Chile, the complainant cites paragraph 47 of the Committee’s general comment No. 4 (2017), according to which “the deportation of a person or a victim of torture to an area of a State where the person would not be exposed to torture, unlike in other areas of the same State, is not reliable or effective”. 26 GE.20-00012 Government is assuming great responsibility with regard to Ms. Calfunao’s physical and moral integrity.” Statement by Sabine Kradolfer of the University of Lausanne, an anthropologist and sociologist who has worked for nearly 20 years on the issue of the Mapuche people; a similar view was expressed by two other specialists in Mapuche issues, Irène Hirt and Anne Lavanchy, who have stated that there are objective reasons to believe that the mental and physical integrity of Flor Calfunao would be threatened if she were forced to return to Chile, and that her ethnic background, the history of repression of her community and her public prominence would make her particularly vulnerable in the event of her forcible return to Chile. 9