Chile: coup anniversary brings heavy repression
On September 11, Chileans commemorated the 25th anniversary of the bloody 1973 coup d'etat that overthrew democratically elected socialist president Salvador Allende Gossens.
The coup was led by General Augusto Pinochet, who ruled Chile as dictator until 1990. He continued to serve as chief of the armed forces until March 10 and became an unelected lifetime senator on March 11. This was the last year in which September 11 will be a state holiday.
Some 7000 protesters gathered at different sites in Santiago and marched to the Santiago General Cemetery, where Allende is buried. (Allende committed suicide during the September 11 military assault on La Moneda presidential palace).
One group of 1000 marchers — headed by leaders of the Socialist Party, human rights advocates and relatives of the thousands of people killed and disappeared under the Pinochet dictatorship — was attacked by Carabineros (militarised police) with tear gas and anti-riot vehicles.
Police sprayed marchers with foul-smelling liquids and hurled tear gas directly at the marchers, causing skin irritation, poisoning and burns. Protesters retaliated by throwing rocks and incendiary bombs at police.
A few blocks from the city centre, another group of some 5000 people who had gathered peacefully to pay homage to Allende were attacked by dozens of carabineros with what Peruvian daily La Republica correspondent Jose Bravo called "a rain of tear gas bombs and indiscriminate shots into the air".
The demonstrators responded again with rocks and homemade bombs. According to Bravo, the police grabbed and detained any demonstrator holding a socialist flag or a sign condemning the former Pinochet dictatorship.
The groups of protesters then joined up on Independencia Avenue and marched 20 blocks to the cemetery, where hundreds of Carabineros blocked their entry with tear gas bombs, and more violence ensued.
In the city of Valparaiso, where the National Congress has its headquarters, one person was seriously injured and 24 were arrested when some 300 protesters clashed with police in Italia Park at the end of a march past the congress building.
The violence continued through the morning of September 12 in the outlying neighbourhoods of Santiago, where protesters set up barricades of burning objects and clashed with police. Three police stations — La Pincoya, La Granja and La Victoria — were attacked with firearms, incendiary bombs and rocks.
According to the Santiago daily El Mercurio, two people were killed, 77 injured and 327 arrested in Santiago in violence related to the anniversary commemorations. Of those injured, 36 were carabineros agents and 41 were civilians.
Another 49 people were arrested in other cities. Of the 327 arrested in Santiago, 293 were released; the rest are to be charged.
One of the dead was 25-year old Claudia Alejandra Lopez Beraiges, a student and Communist Party (PC) militant who was shot in the chest. A Carabineros report claims the young woman had her face covered with a bandana and was carrying a bag of rocks, a bottle of ammonia and Marxist literature. The police claimed that Lopez was shot by demonstrators.
Cristian Osvaldo Varela Avalos, a PC leader from the working-class neighbourhood of Cerrillos, died at a clinic after suffering heart failure during the protest at Mapocho. Doctors said Varela died of arterial hypertension, but Erika Labrana, his widow, denied that her husband had hypertension. She said the first doctor who treated him said he had suffered respiratory failure after breathing tear gas.
On September 12, PC general secretary Gladys Marin blamed the government for Varela's death, and demanded that authorities reveal the chemical components of the tear gas used and of the liquid sprayed by police water cannons.
The National Assembly for Human Rights (ANDH) accused the police of a "disproportionate" response and "brutal repression" against protesters.
ANDH leader Julia Urquieta said the commemorations were marked "once more by the image of La Moneda besieged by police forces, and repression exercised against the right of people to express themselves freely in the streets. This is shameful for the country and shows that in Chile there is no democracy."
Despite rumours that he was ill, Pinochet appeared at the military school in eastern Santiago for a private mass commemorating the coup.
On September 10, Chile's Supreme Court voted five to one to reopen the investigation into the disappearance of Enrique Poblete Cordova, a worker detained by the Pinochet regime on June 19, 1974. The landmark decision was based on the Geneva Conventions.
According to the Poblete family's lawyer, Sergio Concha, "For the first time, the High Court recognizes that after September 11, 1973, a climate of war existed, and the government did not respect the international conventions signed on the matter".
[From Weekly News Update on the Americas, 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012, USA, e-mail <wnu@igc.apc.org>.]