translated from Spanish: INDH officials are calling for the resignation of Sergio Micco for “seriously neglecting the unrestricted defense role of the DDs. HH.”

A few days ago, the director of the National Institute of Human Rights, Sergio Micco, said that there is no systematic violation of human rights in the country, following the social outburst that has left a number of injured protesters.
Micco’s statements were not shared by the other workers of the institute, who through a statement signed by the Association of Officials and Officials of the Institute for Human Rights (AFFINDH), called for the departure of the director and the rest INDH council.
In the first instance, they reject “categorically the statements issued by the Director of INDH, Sergio Micco, last Sunday, November 3rd in the ‘Central Table’ programme of Channel 13, and which relativize the serious human rights violations that occurred in Chile, within the framework of the current process of social mobilization”.
“We report that serious, massive and systematic human rights violations by state agents are now in Chile,” they added.
According to the field work they have done in recent weeks, they have “found that there are serious, massive and systematic violations of human rights in Chile that have been constituting crimes against humanity since the beginning of the process of mobilization, with the establishment of the constitutional state of emergency and the provision of military and police forces on the streets.”
“It is absolutely false to claim that such crimes can only be committed through explicit and concerted policies of state terrorism. Massive or systematic violations of human rights can occur within formally democratic contexts and do not always respond to active policies, but also to the lack of adequate policies, or tolerance of practices of violation of human rights,” they explained.
“When repressive action by State agents involves the commission of crimes such as: homicide, serious bodily injury, rape or sexual abuse, and torture, and these attacks have been done in a general or systematic manner, we are already, in principle, crimes against humanity,” they said in the text.
“The statements issued by the Director of INDH have irretrievably affected the observation work we carry out, as well as the credibility of our action,” they insisted, so that “we demand the resignation of the entire INDH Council, including Sergio Micco as Director of the INDH, for seriously neglecting the role of unrestricted defence of human rights, for which they were appointed, putting partisan and personal interests before those of citizens.”

Original source in Spanish