translated from Spanish: Government spokeswoman on street service members: “We saw violence we’ve never seen before”

The former informer of the metropolitan region and new government spokeswoman, Karla Rubilar, noted that decreeing a state of emergency was necessary “because the first thing was to restore public order on the understanding that our people were at risk.” He also confessed that she applied for a state of emergency. “As A quarterEr asked, I talked to Minister Alberto Espina, I asked the President, I brought the list of damages that we had had that Friday in the RM, which was something that was shocking,” Rubilar said. On the exit of the military to the streets amid the massive demonstrations, the new spokeswoman expressed that at that time “we tried to restore order without taking out the military and we could not,” she added: “We saw a violence we had never seen in democracy.” In an interview with La Tercera, Rubilar was consulted by the controversial phrase said by President Sebastián Piñera in the first days of emergency: “We are at war”, which was criticized by the public. In the face of this the government spokeswoman said that “what the President wanted to express is that the vandalism, that harsh crime that we were seeing, very isolated, because it was not the protesters, had to be fought with all the force”, and assured that “it was misunderstood what he wanted say.” On questions about human rights violations, during the more than two weeks of protests in the country, Rubilar noted that the one to take charge is “justice, as it has to be in a rule of law,” he added that the President has no political responsibility: “The President from day one gave very clear instructions on unrestricted respect for human rights.”

Original source in Spanish