translated from Spanish: Chile: present pardon project for prisoners for social outburst

The senator and president of the Senate of the Republic of Chile Adriana Muñoz is one of the legislators who from the Party for Democracy (PPD) heads the bill that aims to pardon the citizens investigated, charged and convicted in the framework of the social protests that since October 2019 marked the pulse of the Transandino country. The legislative process also aims to regularize a situation with regard to people in pre-trial detention: “There are almost 800 people who are in pre-trial detention, who have no process,” Muñoz said.

In addition, Muñoz noted that they also want the framework of the accusations that have been made to the defendants: “The main crimes that are charged are disorders, and we want to see what the disorder means, if a person for disorder is a violentist, he is a person who deserves that he is a year and two months without due process.” For the time being, the Chilean Ministry of the Interior reports 232 people on re-trial detention charged with felonies during that period. Both the Executive and several human rights experts have rejected the existence of political prisoners in Chile, as did José Miguel Vivanco, director of human Rights Watch’s (HRW) Division of the Americas. Muñoz says that the Executive seeks to confuse: “The government has never wanted to talk about that at that time, on October 18th, until March, and to this day, that there are manifestations, there are violations of human rights.”

“We do not endorse violence and what is sought is quite malicious, there is no group of parliamentarians here who are defending violence. There’s state violence here,” he said. For his part, the President of Chile, Sebastián Piñera, stated that he will veta a possible law to pardon prisoners for acts of violence in the social outburst that began in October 2019, if Congress were to sanction it.” Our Government expresses its total disagreement and opposition to the above-mentioned draft general pardon and anticipates that if the project progresses, and if necessary, it will use its veto power to prevent its approval,” the representative said.” We believe it is a bad project and that it violates public order, citizen security, democracy and the rule of law,” Piñera said.

Original source in Spanish