The UN reported that the human rights of protesters in Chile continue to be violated and that the state has virtually failed to comply with any of the 21 recommendations the agency made to it three months ago.
“We continue to receive allegations of rights violations in Chile,” said the South American representative of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), Jan Jarab.
In a report published last December following a multi-day visit to the country, OHCHR recommended that the State develop new police protocols to ensure the proper use of force, protect the role of human rights defenders or create a monitoring mechanism composed of civil society and independent experts, among other issues.
“We call on all authorities, especially those with direct human rights responsibility, to redouble their efforts to effectively implement the report’s recommendations, as well as any measures aimed at ensuring full validity of human rights in Chile,” Jarab said.
Chile is experiencing its most severe social upheaon since the end of the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990), which began last October as an appeal for students to sneak into the capital’s subway to protest against the fare increase and became a revolt by a fairer economic model.
The wave of protests, which have dropped in intensity from the mass demonstrations of the first few months, has already left more than thirty dead, thousands of injuries and detainees, as well as episodes of extreme violence with fires, rants and destruction of public furniture.
At the height of the crisis, both OHCHR and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), Amnesty International (AI) and Human Rights Watch (HRW) accused security forces of committing serious human rights violations during the dispersion of the marches and urged the state to stop the situation.
The agency reported that it continues to receive recent accounts and audiovisual records of police cart sanding and beatings by Carabineros (Chilean Police), as well as information on the misuse of tear-gas bombs, “in cases with serious consequences such as head trauma or vision loss.”
“Tear gas cartridges should never be fired directly at people, as this makes them potentially lethal,” Jarab warned.
OHCHR also urged the State to conduct “prompt and comprehensive” investigations to establish the accountability of agents and their hierarchical lines in such violations.
