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There was no request for resignation, nor was an agreement reached to make a joint statement by the 11 directors who make up the advisory body of the director of the National Institute of Human Rights (NHRI) Sergio Micco. The only thing that everyone present agreed on was that today’s session – via videoconference – would be recorded and made known to the media in the post of transparency and so that there are no misinterpretations.
The instance met after two days in which Micco has come under fire from human rights organizations after an interview with the newspaper El Mercurio in which he pointed out that “We have not done enough to communicate (to young people) one of our truths: there are no rights without duties”. The first to speak in today’s session was himself Micco, who, according to some of those present, summoned the five councilors who issued a statement over the weekend criticizing their statements in the aforementioned interview.
“Why didn’t they call me, because they didn’t ask me anything?” Micco was quoted as saying in the statement.. He then explained that he has never said that human rights are subject to duties and that this response to El Mercurio had to do with common rights, in no case with Fundamental Rights. He insisted that there was an erroneous interpretation of his answer and that the logical thing was that these advisers called him or, at least, waited for his explanations in today’s session.
“If you read the interview Nowhere do I speak of human rights, although it may seem surprising, therefore this whole debate about whether they are conditional or not, does not run with what I spoke about.. I would ask my detractors to explain to me where the expression human rights is, ”said the director of the NHRI in the session conducted by videoconference and whose record was subsequently disclosed by the agency.
He immediately stated that for a director of an entity such as the NHRI, it is unacceptable to “relativize” human rights and ignore their nature, for which reason it would only be necessary to request their resignation if such a situation arose. For this reason, he argued that “the statements of the five councilors seriously jeopardize the prestige and institutional unity and objectively jeopardize the legality, legitimacy and stability of the NHRI, calling into question its own continuity.”
Micco gave as an example of his position before the unconditional and unconditional defense of human rights his recent visits to prisons. According to those present, he pointed out that every time he speaks with an inmate, he has never asked him why he is there, nor is it something that interests him because he understands that he must defend the rights of that inmate over any other situation. “I have never thought that human rights are subject to duties”, Held.
The situation, council members say, it only came to deepen the break inside the body. On the one hand, there are those who issued the statement: Consuelo Contreras, Debbie Guerra, Yerko Lujbetic, Salvador Millaleo and Margarita Romero; and to the other Sebastián Donoso, Carlos Frontaura, Cristián Pertuzé, Branislav Marelic and Eduardo Saffirio.
The latter was the hardest during today’s session. He took the floor and said that what the five councilors had done was very serious, that it was a kind of “guerrilla” and vendetta because their candidate for the director of the NHRI had not come out, that he did not believe them, nor respected them. After this, Saffirio turned off his session and left the meeting. The rest, who did not sign, faced the five who signed the letter for maintaining that this act deepened the break. Marelic, according to sources from the organization, asked that the political debate be raised and not be based on anti-Jewish interpretations, since everyone present there knows that Human Rights were inalienable.
Contreras, according to versions of some present, maintained that they were only exercising their right to freedom of expression, who spoke as advisers and not NHRI spokesmen since, as an agreement, that role is fulfilled by the director and that in particular it seemed incredible to him that the director of the Institute of Human Rights appeared in a full-page interview in El Mercurio and did not speak about Human Rights. That block of advisers said that they were forced to react, because in addition they have long disagreed with interventions.
Finally Micco made a kind of summons if any of his critics requested his resignation. “I cannot understand that a person who conditions human rights remains the director of the NHRI,” he said. Faced with this, say sources from the body, everyone fell silent and the session ended.
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