Naomi Larssen: Beaten, mutilated and forced to undress: Inside Chile’s brutal police crackdown against protesters

By Dilip -
The National Human Rights Institute concluded in its annual report that the state’s response to the mass protests “produced, as a whole, the most serious and multiple violations of human rights committed since 1989”, referring to the 17-year dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet that ended in 1990. The national police force has not been purged or reformed in the 30 years since

Breathing air thick with teargas and smoke from makeshift barricades on Valparaiso’s street corners, Carla Casoni remembers feeling her skin and eyes burn with the chemical-infused water used as a common police tactic to disperse demonstrators. “I lost vision temporarily so I was an easy target for the police,” she says. Casoni is one of nearly 30,000 people who have been detained, many arbitrarily, in more than two months of unrest that has swept across Chile.  Just days before Casoni’s detention in the port city on 22 October, Chile had imploded into a social uprising initially sparked by a student protest over metro fare hikes in Santiago. People across the country have since mobilised against economic and social inequality, engaging in mostly peaceful but sometimes violent protests. 

Victor Jara murder: ex-military officers sentenced in Chile for 1973 death

Over the weeks, protests have been met with state repression. Soon after the unrest began, President Sebastian Pinera sent military to the streets and issued a curfew, declaring authorities “are at war”. In the following two months, security forces have been accused by rights groups of brutality and a series of human rights abuses, including torture and sexual violence. Casoni tells The Independent she was beaten by Chile’s Carabineros, the militarised police force, during a protest in the port city. She was with demonstrators who had blocked Avenida Errazuriz, a main thoroughfare in Valparaiso, when a Carabinero pinned her to a tree and hit her legs and back with a baton. She claims she was hit again while she looked for her documents and ID card, and again on the way to the police vehicle.

She describes hours in detention at a local police station as being robbed of her dignity. She says she and other detainees were forced to undress as part of a rigorous search process that has been condemned by rights groups. Casoni had to strip twice, once at the police station, and again while being detained by the gendarmeria, Chile’s penitentiary unit, where she was forced to perform squats while naked in front of a group of other detainees and officials....
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/chile-protest-police-violence-nudity-human-rights-a9294656.html

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