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The images are shocking. Several videos show how a policeman pushes a teenager and makes him fall into the bed of the Mapocho River. The 16-year-old is lying in the river until some civilians, and later firefighters, rescue him.
“I want to deny it: for no reason did the Carabineros throw the minor,” said Lieutenant Colonel Rodrigo Soto. “Enough for people to say things that the Carabineros have never done. That causes us a lot of pain (…), there are still subjects who do not know with what intention they invent situations in social networks ”, he added.
After all the international reports verifying violations against human rights, this first Friday in October suggests that little and nothing has changed.
“Since the return to democracy, the Armed Forces and Carabineros have commanded themselves,” confessed former Interior Minister José Miguel Insulza two years ago. Neither the Pacogate fraud, nor the mounting of the Huracán case, nor the concealment of evidence after the murder of Camilo Catrillanca, nor having left Gustavo Gatica and Fabiola Campillai blind … nothing is enough to reform a police force that is incapable of regeneration By herself.
Let’s be clear: the vast majority of the police are honest and well-meaning people who want to work for the benefit of the community. But the institution has degenerated to such an extent that the concealment of criminal actions has become an instinct, a nervous tic that makes its authorities hide evidence, deny obvious facts and accuse others for their own faults.
The High Command of Carabineros, captured by a tribal logic, acts as an autarkic institution in conflict with part of civility, and not at the service of that same society. And, for the same reason, it has the luxury of dividing Chile into friends and enemies: health workers or truck workers; Demonstrators of Approval or Rejection are measured with different rods when they protest on the public highway or commit any infraction.
This kind of ideological police reaches tragicomic extremes: while Time magazine proclaims LasTesis as one of the 100 personalities of the year in the world, Carabineros complains against its members. And a few weeks ago, they used their spotlights to avoid the light projection of a Mapuche symbol in Plaza Italia, in an activity sponsored by a program of the Ministry of Cultures.
Every time an official is attacked, as in the criminal attack with Molotov bombs against two policemen last November, police videos showing what happened are broadcast in a matter of minutes. When that evidence, on the other hand, hurts them, it is systematically hidden or destroyed. Prosecution investigations receive delays and obstacles rather than the collaboration of those who should be the first interested in establishing the truth and removing the bad apples from their drawer.
The government had seven months of relative calm, due to the pandemic, to undertake the reform of the Carabineros and establish control mechanisms. Instead of doing so, it became his unconditional endorsement. When the Comptroller’s Office, complying with its legal attributions, investigates the possible breach of protocols in the use of force, the Minister of the Interior attacks the supervisory body, saying that “the action of the Carabineros cannot be weakened” and prejudging that “the charges will be be distorted ”.
The government of the gardener, does not control or allow to control.
In June, three police officers denounced, without evidence other than their testimony, that they had been denied care at the Melipilla Hospital. Immediately, the then Minister of the Interior, Gonzalo Blumel, prejudged the facts and accused “a betrayal of the medical oath” and “an act of unacceptable discrimination.”
After the summary, the administrative prosecutor dismissed the complaint. Instead of apologizing to those who were unjustly attacked, the current Interior Minister, Víctor Pérez, accused the representatives of health workers of “moral superiority” and “arrogance”.
It is unacceptable for the government to divide the country into friends to whom its sins are hidden, and enemies to whom it is condemned before even investigating. Even more so when two groups of public servants are treated with this double standard: police and health workers.
Nor is it consistent for La Moneda to give full credibility to international reports when they deal with Venezuela, but to minimize or question them when those same organizations denounce abuses in Chile. “I have not seen any sentence in that direction,” the Interior Minister responded this week to the human rights violations verified by organizations such as Human Rights Watch or the United Nations.
When anyone, in uniform or without, shoots another with a shotgun in the face, or pushes them into the bed of a river, they must be held accountable for their action. But when he does so by abusing the legal powers and the weapons that we give him to protect us, the reflection is deeper. Why did that carabinero see a civilian as his enemy? What signals did he receive from above to act that way?
After 30 years of democracy, the Carabineros hierarchy continues to be anchored in the logic of the dictatorship, acting as a force of social repression rather than as a guarantor of equality before the law. Our society deserves a reliable police force, and thousands of honest carabinieri deserve to work in an institution that is respected by the community it should serve.
How many abuses, how many lies, how many more deaths are needed?
