- Chilean government mobilizes police and military on anniversary of social revolt Archived Message
Posted by sashimi
on October 19, 2020, 3:19 pm
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by Mauricio Saavedra (quote) Massive demonstrations are expected in Chile this week in the lead-up to an October 25 referendum to reform the country's constitution. This week also marks a year since the eruption of massive protests and strikes against decades of free market policies that have produced only social inequality, police violence and poverty for the vast majority of the population. Without a doubt, the social unrest that extended into March of this year would have continued unabated absent the devastating impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the country's working class. The renewed protests are expected to be large precisely because of the criminal mishandling of the pandemic: the ultra-right government of billionaire president Sebastian Piñera has proven to be as indifferent to human life as it is to the livelihoods of students, youth, workers and the most vulnerable sectors. In a nation of only 19 million, the number of COVID-19 infections is reaching close to half a million people, and confirmed and suspected deaths have surpassed 18,170 - 3,500 of whom died without receiving hospital care. Mass poverty hit levels last seen during the 1981-82 depression, with the official unemployment rate reaching 13 percent. If inactive workers are added to the unemployed, the figure increases to 29 percent, or almost 3 million people. The super-exploited informal sector, meanwhile, now accounts for 22.6 percent of the total workforce. Another 680,000 workers have been forced to eat into their social security due to a government directive permitting employers to furlough staff for months on end without pay. To top this off, some 40 percent of families who received an "Emergency Family Income" got a maximum of US$205 for three months, less than a third of the US$654 poverty line. In response to the planned marches and demonstrations, Interior Minister Victor Pérez is preparing to deploy tens of thousands of militarized Carabineros police and Special Forces. The Minister of Defense, Mario Desbordes, announced the deployment of the military throughout the country in order to protect critical infrastructure from supposed "looting and attacks." He is putting into effect a law passed early this year with support from the parliamentary "lefts" in the Senate - the Socialist Party, the Party for Democracy (PPD), Frente Amplio - that allows for the use of the armed forces for domestic purposes without decreeing a state of emergency, which requires congressional approval. ... The precedent was established earlier this year in La Araucanía, a major hotspot for unemployment, deep-seated poverty and now the uncontrolled spread of coronavirus among the indigenous Mapuche population. Under the pretext of combating so-called "terrorist activity," Piñera militarized this southern region, and the people today live under virtual martial law. Ultra-right and fascistic UDI deputies, mayors and governors do the bidding of forestry multinationals, mining companies and power plants, with Carabineros Special Forces offering their services as a private security force. Mapuches are claiming land traditionally tended by indigenous communities but usurped under the 17-year military dictatorship. Also, in recent weeks, the Carabineros police, Special Forces and the military have used indiscriminate and overwhelming force to repel spontaneous rallies. A fortnight ago, as protests against police repression were being dispersed with water cannon and tear gas, sixteen year-old Anthony Araya fell head-first seven meters into the shallow Mapocho River after he was pushed over the railings of the Pio Nono Bridge in the city centre by a Special Forces officer. Unbridled police state repression against the working class has only intensified. Striking health workers and miners have also been dispersed with water cannon and faced arrest, while port workers were set upon by Carabineros and the Navy riot squad after picketing a container operator in Iquique. Union delegate and port worker from San Antonio José Ibarra was brutally attacked by cops, who claimed they mistook the worker for a burglar. In the working class commune of Lo Hermida, in the southeastern Santiago district of Peñalolén, Carabineros Cpl. Oscar Cifuentes was exposed by neighbors as an agent provocateur. Cifuentes, who went by the name of "Giovany Arévalo," infiltrated community groups to draw up lists of activists who were then followed by police outside their homes and with drones. The provocateur raised suspicions because he was constantly inciting youth to attack the local Carabineros headquarters - early morning raids were conducted in Lo Hermida, with ten people arrested on charges of attacking the police station. Investigative news site CIPER reported that Cifuentes was operating under the auspices of an Orwellian intelligence law which empowers Carabineros to use infiltrated agents without judicial authorization, so no civil authority supervises their actions, which are financed with reserved funds. The Civil Registry provides Carabineros an undisclosed number of false or stolen identities for use by possibly hundreds or even thousands of agents, who are set loose in working class communities to prepare black lists, entrap workers, facilitate mass arrests and, most ominously, to round up political opponents as the military junta did in the immediate aftermath of the 1973 military coup. In the case of Cifuentes, the cop was given the stolen identity of a young man from Alto Hospicio in Northern Chile. Interior Minister Pérez, however, insisted that the cop had not committed any crime by inciting the population. "He was in a context and acted within that context (...) He was fulfilling a task and a mission," said the former Pinochet minister. (/quote) -- Cont'd at https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/10/19/chil-o19.html |
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