Easter Island land dispute turns violent – dozens injured

About two dozen people were injured in a seven-hour-long confrontation.

The clash began at 5 a.m. when officers moved in to evict 10 people from the home they had been occupying since ousting a government official from the property in September, Rapa Nui lawyer Maka Atan told media.

The occupants resisted and the resulting violence left 17 officers and eight civilians hurt, according to police.

Three islanders and one policeman were evacuated to mainland Chile for treatment.

However protesters said that 19 islanders were injured and denied seeing any police hurt.

The official native name of Easter Island, known for its gigantic stone heads known, is Rapa Nui, and that's what many natives call themselves, refusing to identify with Chile, which annexed the island in 1888.

But Atan said riot police used batons and shotguns against the Rapa Nui, firing pellets at close range at their heads. He said he himself was shot in the back with pellets.

About a dozen buildings are currently being occupied by Rapa Nui people, who say Chile illegally took their family's ancestral homes on tiny Easter Island, where a total population of fewer than 5,000 people include about 2,200 Rapa Nuis.

The island's top government authority, Valparaiso Governor Raul Celis, said from mainland Chile that "the evictions will continue."

In recent years, tourism and migration have increased pressure to control available land on the 10 mile (16 kilometer) by 15 mile (24 kilometer) island, and the Rapa Nui have increasingly taken matters into their own hands, seizing a dozen properties they said were illegally taken from their families generations ago.