• About Us
  • Who Are We
  • Work With Us
Thursday, March 23, 2023
No Result
View All Result
NEWSLETTER
The Globe Post
39 °f
New York
44 ° Fri
46 ° Sat
40 ° Sun
41 ° Mon
No Result
View All Result
The Globe Post
No Result
View All Result
Home Featured

UN Condemns ‘Repressive’ Response to Chile Mass Protests

Staff Writer by Staff Writer
12/13/19
in Featured, World
Chile President Lifts State Of Emergency, But Protests Continue

Aerial view of demonstrators during the fifth straight day of protests against a now suspended hike in metro ticket prices in Valparaiso Chile, on October 22, 2019. - Photo:JAVIER TORRES/AFP

Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

Chilean police responded to recent mass protests in a “fundamentally repressive manner,” resulting in serious abuses including unlawful killings and torture, U.N. investigators said Friday.

In a fresh report, the U.N. rights office said that during the recent mass protests and state of emergency in Chile, police and the army violated international rights norms and standards for crowd control and use of force.

“The police has regularly failed to distinguish between people demonstrating peacefully and violent protesters,” the report said, warning that “excessive or unnecessary use of force” had in some cases resulted in deaths and severe injuries.

Chile’s worst crisis in decades erupted in mid-October over metro fare hikes but quickly escalated into the largest scale outbreak of social unrest since the end of the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet nearly 30 years ago.

Furious Chileans have taken to the streets to register their anger over inequality and particularly to vent at the elites that control much of the country’s wealth.

Amid alarming reports of killings and violence, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights and former Chilean president Michelle Bachelet decided in October to send a team to investigate.

The investigators, who visited the country from October 30 through November 22, concluded in their report that “there are reasonable grounds to believe that … a high number of serious human rights violations have been committed.”

“The management of assemblies by the police has been carried out in a fundamentally repressive manner,” mission chief Imma Guerras-Delgado told reporters in Geneva.

During their mission, the investigators documented 113 cases of torture and ill-treatment and 24 cases of sexual violence, committed by police and army forces.

‘Extrajudicial Execution’? 

Chile’s public prosecutor’s office has said it is investigating 26 deaths in the context of the protests, and the U.N. team said it had verified information concerning four of the cases.

These included “four cases of arbitrary deprivation of life and unlawful death involving state agents,” mission chief Imma Guerras-Delgado told reporters in Geneva.

The investigators said two of those cases involved people who were shot with live ammunition, despite posing no risk to the lives of police or military officers and not participating in acts of violence.

This could “amount to an extrajudicial execution,” Guerras-Delgado said.

Chile’s justice ministry has also said more than 4,900 people were injured during the protests, including nearly 2,800 police officers.

The U.N. investigators meanwhile pointed to other sources reporting as many as 12,000 people wounded.

Their report especially decried the “unnecessary and disproportionate use of less-lethal weapons” such as anti-riot shotguns and tear gas canisters, which had left roughly 350 people with severe eye injuries.

The investigators urged Chile to “immediately end the indiscriminate use of anti-riot shotguns to control demonstrations,” and to use tear gas only “when strictly necessary.”

The investigators also reported that more than 28,000 people had been detained between October 18 and December 6, many of them arbitrarily, but that the great majority had been released.

Guerras-Delgado pointed to official Chilean figures showing that more than 1,600 remained in detention.


More on the Subject 

‘Serious’ Rights Violations During Chile Protests: Human Rights Watch

ShareTweet
Staff Writer

Staff Writer

AFP with The Globe Post

Related Posts

Chile vote
Featured

Chile Rejects Draft Constitution: Five Things to Know

by Staff Writer
September 5, 2022
A man waves the Chilean flag
Interviews

What Can Chile Teach Us About Democracies and Constitutions?

by Deon Feng
November 27, 2020
Chilean Senators Approve Pension Reform. Photo: AFP.
World

Chile’s Senate Approves Pension Reform Law in Blow to President Piñera

by Victoria Mulville
July 23, 2020
Latin America’s Slums Facing Losing Battle Against Virus Spread
World

Latin America’s Slums Facing Losing Battle Against Virus Spread

by Staff Writer
May 29, 2020
Street rally in the Chilean port of Valparaiso
Opinion

The Collapse of Chile’s Model: ‘The People Have Had Enough’

by Antonio Castillo
November 19, 2019
Chile President Lifts State Of Emergency, But Protests Continue
Featured

Chile to Vote on New Constitution in Response to Mass Protests

by Staff Writer
November 15, 2019
Next Post
Boris Johnson addresses the final Conservative Party leadership election hustings in London on 17 July 2019

Johnson Wins Big in 'Brexit Election' But Problems Loom

Progressive Media Icon Cenk Uygur Takes on the Democratic Establishment

Progressive Media Icon Cenk Uygur Takes on the Democratic Establishment

Recommended

Transgender Army veteran Tanya Walker speaks to protesters in Times Square near a military recruitment centre

Tennessee Is A Drag on the First Amendment

March 21, 2023
participants of an artificial intelligence conference

How AI Could Upend the World Even More Than Electricity or the Internet

March 19, 2023
Chinese President Xi Jinping

China’s Path to Economic Dominance

March 15, 2023
Heavily armed police inspect the area near a Jehovah's Witness church where several people have been killed in a shooting in Hamburg, northern Germany

Eight Dead in Shooting at Jehovah’s Witness Hall in Germany

March 10, 2023
Myanmar Rohingya refugees look on in a refugee camp in Teknaf, in Bangladesh's Cox's Bazar, on November 26, 2016

US Announces $26M in New Aid for Rohingya

March 8, 2023
A flooded road in Batu Berendam in Malaysia's southern coastal state of Malacca

At Least Four Dead, Tens of Thousands Evacuated in Malaysia Floods

March 6, 2023

Opinion

Transgender Army veteran Tanya Walker speaks to protesters in Times Square near a military recruitment centre

Tennessee Is A Drag on the First Amendment

March 21, 2023
Chinese President Xi Jinping

China’s Path to Economic Dominance

March 15, 2023
An earthquake survivor reacts as rescuers look for victims and other survivors in Hatay, a Turkish province where hundreds of buildings were destroyed by the earthquake

Heed the Call of Our Broken World

March 1, 2023
Top view of the US House of Representatives

‘Cringy Awards:’ Who Is the Most Embarrassing US House Representative?

February 13, 2023
Protesters rally against the fatal police assault of Tyre Nichols, outside of the Coleman A. Young Municipal Center in Detroit, Michigan, on January 27, 2023

How Do Violent ‘Monsters’ Take Root?

February 3, 2023
George Santos from the 3rd Congressional district of New York

George Santos for Speaker!

January 16, 2023
Facebook Twitter

Newsletter

Do you like our reporting?
SUBSCRIBE

About Us

The Globe Post

The Globe Post is part of Globe Post Media, a U.S. digital news organization that is publishing the world's best targeted news sites.

submit oped

© 2018 The Globe Post

No Result
View All Result
  • National
  • World
  • Business
  • Interviews
  • Lifestyle
  • Democracy at Risk
    • Media Freedom
  • Opinion
    • Editorials
    • Columns
    • Book Reviews
    • Stage
  • Submit Op-ed

© 2018 The Globe Post