The protests in Chile and government’s response

Since I wrote here last month on how the people of Chile – Latin America’s top nation in per capita income – rose up in protest in Santiago, the capital, over a 3.7 percent increase in subway train fares, there have been interesting developments, particularly in the way the government eventually reacted to the protests which rapidly spread nationwide. More issues were raised converging on inequality in income and economic opportunities and strong demand for deep-going reforms.

A crackdown followed: President Sebastian Piñera declared a state of emergency claiming Chile was “at war” against “gangs of evil delinquents.” Arrests, deaths and injuries mounted as thousands of soldiers and police clashed with protesters. Undaunted, a million people marched into Santiago toward the Congress building; legislators and their staffs hurriedly evacuated their offices.

Piñera then cancelled Chile’s hosting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit on Nov. 16-18 and the global climate convention in early December. The UN human rights high commissioner, Michelle Bachelet (former president of the country) dispatched a team to look into the situation. By that time, the autonomous National Human Rights Institute (NHRI, equivalent to our Commission on Human Rights) had reported 3,535 protesters arrested, 1,132 injured taken to hospitals, and the press reported at least 26 had died in violent clashes with security forces.

Last week, the UN team reported that the police had acted “in a fundamentally repressive manner,” and that “excessive or unnecessary use of force…led to unlawful killings and injuries, arbitrary detentions, and torture and ill-treatment including sexual violence.”

Earlier in November, the Human Rights Watch presented its report. “We never thought we would have to come back to Chile under these circumstances to record massive human rights violations,” its director for the Americas said. “We thought this was [already] history.”

But apparently President Piñera has taken the time to rethink his government’s response. This Thursday, the New York Times published a front-page article by him, wherein he soberly acknowledged that, indeed, income inequality has caused many Chileans to feel “left behind.” Such feeling, he adds, was “overrun by a legitimate sense of justice that triggered a wave of street protests.”

And the protests, he notes, has produced the “biggest social movement in our recent history” that has become “a great opportunity to build a new future for Chile… an opportunity to reconnect with our citizens and lead a new transition towards a more egalitarian society.”

The social movement, Piñera writes, has spurred the government to undertake two reform steps: First, he intends to launch a social agenda that includes raising minimum income and pensions; reducing medicine prices, more funding for public health care; stabilizing costs of transportation, road tolls, water, electricity; hiking taxes on the rich; cutting the high salaries of legislators and other public officials. It’s a very big order, and it remains to be seen whether the protest movement will be appeased or even, if the government will deliver.

Second, Piñera promised to begin a national process of Citizens’ Dialogues regarding the movement’s main concerns and demands, “where no questions are off limits.” A new constitution is to replace the 1988 Pinochet dictatorship’s constitution, to be drafted “with effective citizen participation.” In a nationwide consultation on Dec. 15, two million Chileans (91 percent of respondents) voted for drafting a new charter.

Moreover, in dealing with the protests, Piñera admitted that “there is evidence of abuses and excessive use of force.” But he claims, “We applied the strictest rules with respect to the use of force, adopted a policy of full transparency in human rights information, and strengthened the system of public defenders.” Even as the NHRI was granted “full access to perform its legal mandate in the protection of human rights,” he points out, his government invited both the UNHCHR and HRW “to observe the situation on the ground.” Furthermore, Piñera says his government ensures the independence of the public prosecutors to investigate any complaints, and of the courts to judge “any abuses or crimes committed by military or police personnel.”

Responding to a key demand of the protest movement, the Chilean president created a task force to propose reforms for the Carabineros – counterpart of the Philippine National Police – which was responsible for horrific human rights violations during the 17-year Pinochet dictatorship (1973-1990), and had never been purged or significantly reformed since then, according to the NY Times. (The Carabineros are “a militarized police force, with a military structure and logic, not a civil police force,” notes a political analyst. “All attempts to reform it after the dictatorship have been very slow, with very little capacity for civilian control.” Precisely, the protesters demand that the Carabineros be turned into a “civilian force with robust accountability.”)

The Carabineros is now being closely scrutinized. Its current director said last week that 856 internal investigations were underway on the reported human rights violations committed during the protests.

Opposition legislators have called President Piñera to account for the Carabineros’ violent actions. They tried to impeach him, but the Senate dismissed the charges; instead they blamed the interior minister who was then forced to resign; he is now banned from holding any public office for the next five years.  

The public prosecutors’ office has opened 2,670 criminal investigations, mostly involving Carabineros personnel, based on reports of torture, sexual violence, and injuries from firearms.

These accusations have taken place in the midst of a series of scandals over the past two years, involving the Carabineros, leading to the ouster of 35 generals; its former chief resigned in 2018, after an anti-terrorist squad killed an indigenous man and then tried to cover up the crime. The police organization is also deeply mired in corruption. To date, almost 100 police officers and civilians have been convicted in connection with a $35-million embezzlement scandal that dragged on beyond 10 years. The trial of the 31 officials charged as ringleaders is set to begin soon.

The Carabineros intelligence division, we further learn, “has been in disarray” after its agents were investigated for their role in a scheme “to fabricate evidence to falsely implicate members of the Mapuche indigenous community in terrorist activities in 2017.”

Some of these developments in Chile sound so familiar to us Filipinos. Yet, there are other aspects that sound “too good to be true” if these were to be reported in our country. These should give President Duterte veritable food for thought, he who has derided human rights and refused moves by the UNHCHR and the International Criminal Court, in the exercise of their mandates, to look into HRVs committed here.

They are food for thought as well for the country’s progressive social movement, which the Duterte regime’s counterinsurgency National Task Force has been vilifying and which (according to interior secretary Eduardo Año) it targets to obliterate.

May peace and goodwill find space in our hearts this Christmas!

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