The unprecedented social crisis that has rocked Chile for a month has killed 22 people, including five as a result of police intervention, and more than 2,000 injured.
President Sebastian Piñera on Sunday (November 17th) condemned, for the first time, the violence committed by the police since the start of the social protest movement on October 18th in Chile.
"There was excessive use of force, abuses or misdemeanors were committed and the rights of all were not respected", acknowledged in a televised speech the head of the Chilean State. The unprecedented social crisis that has rocked Chile for a month has left 22 dead, including five as a result of police intervention, and more than 2,000 injured, including 200 people with eye injuries.
"There will be no impunity, neither for those who have committed acts of exceptional violence, nor for those who have committed (…) abuses"Piñera added, referring in part to the destruction perpetrated by the most radical protesters, and also to the violence of the police during the protests.
The accusations of human rights violations against the police have increased since the beginning of the challenge, prompting the UN to send a fact-finding mission. Amnesty International investigators are also present in the country.
A change of Constitution
The conservative president also spoke for the first time on the historic agreement reached Friday in Parliament by the political parties on the organization of a referendum in April 2020 on a change of Constitution. "If the citizens decide, we will move towards a new Constitution, the first developed in democracy"said Piñera.
The protest began on October 18 to protest against a rise in the metro ticket in Santiago and soon turned into an unprecedented social explosion in the South American country hired so far for its economic and political stability. The protesters are calling for far-reaching structural reforms of the ultra-liberal economic model, in which health, education and the pension system are almost entirely the private sector.
A replacement of the Constitution, inherited from the period of the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990) and accused of maintaining strong inequalities in Chilean society, also featured prominently in the claims.
