Thousands of Chileans defy curfew and monitor incidents | Chronic

Thousands of Chileans challenged the curfew at various points in Santiago on Monday night, before military formations and security forces fired grenades with tear gas and water to disperse protesters. The curfew came into effect at 8 pm and will last until 6 am.

The scale of the demonstrations and the persistence of acts of violence have led the military authorities to impose a curfew in Santiago and its areas of influence for the third consecutive time, as well as for the first time. in Tarapacá, Antofagasta, Coquimbo, Valparaíso, Maule, Biobío and Los Ríos.

From Geneva, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, the former Chilean President Michelle Bacheletcalled on the government and protesters to seek a means of dialogue to calm the situation, while calling for a "independent research" identify responsibilities for acts of violence that have resulted in deaths and injuries.

Bachelet also demanded that the "inflammatory rhetoric", in apparent allusion to the statement of the President Sebastián Piñera, who last night considered that the authorities are "at war with a powerful and implacable enemy ".

The day in most major Chilean cities began calmly and in the afternoon, protesters began to gather in Santiago and other cities to protest against social inequalities and demand improvements in health services. Education and the retirement system.

In front of the supermarkets and the shops, there were long lines of people anxious to do their shopping, fearing to be looted.

In Santiago and Valparaíso, incidents were again reported in which security forces – accused of having acted brutally in suppressing the social outburst – threw tear gas at protesters in the middle of the violence. a real militarization of public spaces.

The balance of these days of fury has stunned most citizens.

According to a report by the Ministry of the Interior, 11 people were reported to have died in the midst of the riots, the vast majority of them in fires reported during the 110 looting perpetrated against supermarkets and shops in different parts of the country. .

One of the victims was shot by security forces in Coquimbo, according to an unofficial report.

At least 960 people were arrested, including 244 for curfew, during the last 24 hours of demonstrations, during which six groups burned and eight metro stations were destroyed.

The Minister of the Interior, Andrew ChadwickHe said the incidents of the last two days reinforce his theory that the wave of violence in Chile has a high degree of organization among criminal groups.
"Yesterday, I said we could not be naive enough to think that there was no action that could be linked, organized in some of these criminal sectors, and that's pretty obvious with what happened in recent days ", said the minister, quoted by the agency EFE.

The militarization of the country ordered by Piñera has intensified in recent hours to try to control the violent excesses caused by clashes between protesters and security forces.
On the political front, Piñera received many criticisms for having mentioned that the country was "in war".

Even after this statement, the head of National Defense, General Javier Iturriaga, claimed that he was in particular at war "with nobody", which caused innumerable comments because apparent contradiction with the president.

"It is not appropriate to speculate on a sentence that I said today in the morning, and according to my remarks, there has never been a dual intention with regard to what the President of the republic stressed ", the army clarified a little later.

The protests began last week against an increase in the price of subway tickets and spread over the weekend with more violence, while demands for improved health and safety systems. education and unequal distributions of income and requirements for better functioning of social services and retirement.

Piñera, confronted with the virulence of the reaction, announced last week its decision to put an end to the increase in the metro.

The freeze was approved by a large majority in the Senate, as was the case in the Chamber of Deputies.