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 Thursday, December 14 2006 @ 12:05 PM PST

Chile: Violence in the wake of Pinochet's death

   
South AmericaBy 12 a.m. on Sunday night the streets of Santiago were calm and empty, save for smoldering bonfires illuminating the shattered glass of broken shop windows. Isolated acts of mindless violence occurred in downtown Santiago as the crowd of anti-Pinochetistas dispersed, marring the largely peaceful celebrations.

CHILE: MINOR ACTS OF VIOLENCE IN THE WAKE OF PINOCHET’S DEATH

The Santiago Times
December 12, 2006

By 12 a.m. on Sunday night the streets of Santiago were calm and empty, save for smoldering bonfires illuminating the shattered glass of broken shop windows. Isolated acts of mindless violence occurred in downtown Santiago as the crowd of anti-Pinochetistas dispersed, marring the largely peaceful celebrations.

The violence was confined to a group the authorities described as “hooded youths,” and resulted in 23 injured policemen and 13 arrests throughout the country. Police followed a contingency plan drafted two years ago in preparation for the former dictator’s death.

Early clashes occurred close to Plaza Italia, where celebrations began almost immediately after the announcement of Augusto Pinochet’s death. At the height of the violence, celebrants-turned-rioters attacked a Shell petrol station and an adjoining pharmacy, throwing one petrol bomb and burning two cars.

Sunday afternoon’s celebratory atmosphere changed rapidly when police opened water cannons onto the procession of around 5,000 people outside the La Moneda presidential palace at 7:30 p.m.

According to police, demonstrators tried to enter the Plaza de la Constitution, where a monument to ousted President Salvador Allende stands. The entire area surrounding La Moneda was cordoned off and doors and windows to the palace were secured as a precaution. When the crowd attempted to force their way through barriers, police dispersed them using three water cannons and four cars firing tear gas. Twelve squads of riot police dealt with minor confrontations.

Chile’s government fully supported the police action. “The government allows people to demonstrate along the Alameda, the capital’s main thoroughfare,” said a government spokesperson. “An isolated minority threw objects at police and finally attempted to cross barriers preventing access to La Moneda.”

Gunfire and small-scale unrest occurred in some outlying boroughs of Santiago. One policeman received a bullet wound and six others were injured when reveling turned sour in the eastern borough of Lo Hermida.

Police were also required in the impoverished neighborhoods of La Pincoya and La Victoria, where celebrants fired gun shots into the air. In Santiago’s western borough of Villa Francia, demonstrators blocked roads with car tires, and an attempt to loot a petrol station provoked a clash with police Special Forces. Nearby in Cerro Navia, vandals set fire to an empty bus, razing it to the ground.

In the provinces celebration and mourning proceeded peacefully. Valparaíso, Chile’s second city, proved the exception, where riot police and one water cannon were used to disperse crowds at Plaza Victoria.

Following the outbreaks of violence, Chile’s government called for “calm and tranquility.” It made a special appeal to parents, asking them to “stop your children demonstrating, stop them from committing acts of violence.”

While the government officially sanctioned demonstrations of both pro- and anti-Pinochet factions, many individual politicians spoke out against the brazen celebration of a person’s death.

“This is a free country, a democratic country. It took a long time to restore democracy and I think that it is everybody’s right, whether they support or oppose the general to express themselves,” said government spokesperson, Ricardo Lagos Weber. “What we do ask though, is that people do so in a responsible and cautious manner.”

Some of Pinochet’s harshest critics were amongst those condemning Sunday’s celebrations. “Pinochet’s death doesn’t make me happy” said Pepe Auth, secretary general of the Party for Democracy. “I’m sad because it reminds us of the deaths that he has on his conscience. His physical passing is a time to remember those deaths, to remember the torture and exile and to celebrate human rights.”

The Socialist Party’s Sen. Carlos Ominami was equally as critical, warning that this type of celebration would provoke global condemnation. “I’m not the kind of person who gets happy about anyone’s death,” he said. “If I had it in me, I would have gone to the demonstrations and asked them to go home.”

SOURCE: LA TERCERA, EL MERCURIO, LA NACION
By Beatrice Karol Burks (editor@santiagotimes.cl)
 

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