CHILE:The Chilean government has defended its decision to back a church-brokered agreement that ended a months-long hunger strike by a jailed Indian-rights activist.
An official in the office of President Michelle Bachelet said Patricia Troncoso was not granted a pardon and would serve out her 10-year prison sentence - albeit in a work camp and not in a prison, and with weekend leaves.
"She obtained nothing more than the law permitted," José Antonio Viera Gallo, general secretary to the presidency, told a local radio station.
Ms Troncoso has served about half of a 10-year sentence under anti-terrorism laws for setting fire to a forestry plot in southern Chile. The arson was one of many such attacks by Mapuche Indian militants on corporate targets in a low-level conflict that raised tensions in southern Chile, the Mapuches' ancestral homeland.
The hunger strike has focused attention on the plight of the Mapuche minority.
Activists say that despite Chile's economic growth, the Indians have been left largely landless, impoverished and victims of police repression.
The government rejected Ms Troncoso's original demands, including the release of Mapuche "political prisoners" and the "demilitarisation" of Mapuche zones in the south. Under the agreement, Ms Troncoso will serve out the remaining five years of her sentence in a police work camp in the south and will be allowed to go home on weekends. Two other imprisoned Mapuche militants received similar benefits as part of the deal worked out through a Roman Catholic bishop.
In addition, President Bachelet named a new commissioner charged with finding ways to improve the lives of Chile's Indian minority. Census figures show that less than 5 per cent of the nation's residents describe themselves as indigenous.
The deal immediately came under attack from the conservative opposition to the president, who heads the governing centre-left coalition.
"You can't pretend the law applies in some parts of the country and not in other parts," Senator Jovino Novoa told reporters, calling the agreement a reward for violence.
Ms Troncoso (38) ended her fast on Monday, 111 days after she began taking only liquids. She is being held at a hospital in the south. Last week, police doctors fearing for her life began providing her with an intravenous mix of nutrients. Friends and her father described Ms Troncoso as weak but lucid.
She is a non-Indian former theology student from Santiago who has been a long-time advocate for the Mapuche cause.