Chile yesterday announced that it would stage a referendum next year to replace its dictatorship-era constitution — a key demand of protesters after nearly a month of sometimes violent civil unrest.
The charter, in force since 1980 and enacted by the former military junta of Augusto Pinochet, has been changed numerous times over th years, but it does not establish the state’s responsibility to provide education and healthcare — two demands made by millions of Chileans who have taken to the streets.
After hours of negotiation between ruling coalition and opposition lawmakers, the Chilean National Congress early yesterday agreed to hold the plebiscite in April.
Photo: AFP
The referendum will ask voters whether the constitution should be replaced and, if so, how a new charter should be drafted, Chilean Senate president Jaime Quintana said.
The unrest that began on Oct. 18 with protests against a rise in rush-hour metro fares has mushroomed into a broader outcry against the status quo, with burning, looting and daily confrontations between demonstrators and police.
The crisis is Chile’s biggest since its return to democracy in 1990, leaving 20 dead — five at the hands of state forces — and more than 1,000 injured.
While Chileans are accustomed to seeing violent clashes between police and demonstrators, a new trend is leaving them shaken: the blinding of protesters by shotgun pellets fired by state security agents.
At least 230 people have lost sight after being shot in an eye in the past month, Chile’s main medical body said.
Of those, at least 50 people will need prosthetic eyes, it said.
“This means that the patient doesn’t only lose their vision, but they lose their actual eye,” Medical College of Chile vice president Patricio Meza said.
The victims are on average 30 years old. In 80 percent of the cases, the damage is caused by the impact of a lead or rubber projectile on their eyes, Meza said.
“We are facing a real health crisis, a health emergency given that in such few days, in three weeks, we have had the highest number of cases involving serious ocular complications due to shots in the eye,” he said.
At demonstrations, it is common to see police firing pellet guns at crowds.
Often, “they’re firing at 90 degrees, which is to say, directly at the face,” Meza said, adding that most of the injured say it was the national police force who are the ones firing.
The National Institute of Human Rights has said that while it condemns violence by protesters, this does not justify “the indiscriminate use” of pellet guns by riot police.
Meza said other countries seem to follow protocols about the use of pellet guns, but in Chile, “this is clearly not happening.”
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