Easter Island: Eyes on Chilean Police

For two weeks now, unarmed indigenous activists in Easter Island – or Rapa Nui – have occupied public (read Chilean) property, claiming ancestral rights to a land that has seen colonization from Peruvian slave traders to French missionaries to the island’s conversion to a sheep farm by a Scottish-owned Chilean company until 1953. As a result, the Rapanui people have been forced to what is now the only inhabitance on the island: Hanga Roa.

When I was in Hanga Roa in May 2010, I spotted a building with a hand-made sign: Rapa Nui Parliament. Outside the physically unassuming building I saw few visibly austere voices for independence for this tiny South Pacific island controlled by Chile. But media reports suggest otherwise:

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