[ad_1]
The Government rejected the bill presented yesterday Wednesday by opposition senators seeking to grant pardons to all those detained during the wave of protests started in October last year, with the exception of those accused of a terrorist crime.
Signed by Isabel Allende (P.S), Yasna Provoste (DC), Adriana muñoz (PPD), Juan Ignacio Latorre (RD) and Alejandro Navarro (Progressive Country), the document seeks to exempt from criminal responsibility and remit the penalty of those who have been arrested from October 7, 2019 until the date of its presentation, within the framework of protests, concentrations and demonstrations.
“In Chile there are no political prisoners, what exists are people who are imprisoned because there are independent courts of justice and a prosecutor’s office that did a job”, said this Thursday the minister spokesman for the Government, Jaime Bellolio, at a press conference in Talca, Maule Region.
According to the spokesperson for La Moneda, the parliamentary initiative “presents impunity Faced with the serious acts of violence that have occurred and it seems to us that it is not in line with what the citizens want and comes to justify violence “.
“This idea of justifying that if someone commits crimes or has a past of domestic violence, or tries to burn with a Molotov bomb to a Carabinero, tries to loot, tries to destroy public spaceIt is something that I think is totally inappropriate, “said the head of Segegob.
Furthermore, he added: “Social protest is also good for the health of democracy, but it is very different when crimes start to be committed.”
DELGADO: “THERE IS NO REASON FOR THEM TO BE HOMOLOGABLE WITH A CATEGORY OF POLITICAL PRISONER”
Along the same lines, the Minister of the Interior, Rodrigo Delgado, stated from Antofagasta -where he headed a meeting of the northern macrozone- that “the government’s opinion is one: the people who are deprived of liberty today are people who are not deprived of liberty for speaking what they think, for belonging to a specific political party or for a specific ideology. These people are deprived of liberty for having committed crimes “.
“If there are people or authorities who think that it is necessary to change the category of these people, for example, that they are called political prisoners, it does not seem to me, because technically there are no political prisoners in Chile; we are in the presence of people who committed crimes“stressed the chief of staff.
“Here we are talking about people who threw Molotovs, people who violate public or private property in a serious way. There is no reason to think that these people are comparable with a category of political prisoner, where a person, as in several countries, is arrested for speaking his mind, “he added.
LATORRE CALLS ON THE GOVERNMENT TO SEE “POLITICAL EXIT”
The Senator Latorre, one of the promoters of the initiative, called on the Government to “rather worry about looking for a political solution to the prisoners of the revolt, and to analyze the cases. “
In “many of them,” he said, “preventive detention has been abused as political punishment, there is no due process. “
While the bill recognizes that acts for which large numbers of people have been detained are punishable by law, “a distorted process has been experienced” in these cases due to “a disproportionate state response followed by mass arrests and the opening of multiple criminal proceedings.”
The motion states “abuses and violations of the procedural guarantees of the accused, which has meant the preventive deprivation of liberty in unjustified terms that would not take place in normal circumstances. “
The project also highlights the repeated complaints from international and national organizations that report abuses and human rights violations by the Carabineros.
According to data from the Public Ministry, the Prosecutor’s Office has formalized a total of 5,084 people for various crimes committed in the protests since October 18 of last year, 648 of whom are in preventive prison and 725 have already been convicted.
