CHILE’S POLICE CRACK DOWN ON ANARCHIST GROUPS

(September 29, 2006) Chilean police launched a new offensive against the various “anarchist groups” operating in Santiago this week in response to the Molotov cocktail launched at the La Moneda Presidential Palace during a September 10 protest march.

CHILE’S POLICE CRACK DOWN ON ANARCHIST GROUPS

In Wake Of La Moneda 9/11 Molotov Cocktail Attack

Santiago Times

(September 29, 2006) Chilean police launched a new offensive against the various “anarchist groups” operating in Santiago this week in response to the Molotov cocktail launched at the La Moneda Presidential Palace during a September 10 protest march.

The order to monitor the groups was issued by Judge Leonardo de la Prida, and the Special Investigations Brigade of the Chilean Civil Police (Bipe) is now actively creating a “register” of all anarchist groups operating in the country, documenting the groups’ leaders, members, ideology, financing, operating areas, and possible connections to foreign anarchist movements.

The new crackdown on Chile’s anarchist movement lead to a raid Tuesday in the San Ignacio borough of Santiago. Six young anarchists were arrested in a squatter settlement, and police said the group had Molotov cocktails in their possession. One of the arrested included a Spanish citizen, Miquel Balaguer, identified as being a leader in the Barcelona-based “okupa” movement.

Police Chief José Bernales said that police found evidence the group had participated in the violent marches that occurred on September 10 and 11 commemorating the September 11, 1973 military coup lead by Gen. Augusto Pinochet (ST, Sept. 11). The police suspect the group has connections with other anarchist groups, and evidence was found indicating the group had been planning violent actions for an upcoming October 9 protest march in support of Chile’s native Mapuche population.

The actions against the anarchist groups were widely criticized online in anarchist blogs and on the Indymedia independent media outlet. A group calling itself the “Platform for the Freedom of Anarchist Prisoners” issued an online press release on Wednesday and said, “Today they criminalize us just for being anarchists, for expressing an alternative political view, paradoxically in a country that prides itself by speaking of democracy and freedom of _expression.”

The group called for the release of the “26-S Anarchist prisoners” (alluding to the day they were arrested). At about the same time, the Chilean consulate in Barcelona was covered with graffiti urging the prisoners’ release.

While Chile’s mainstream media widely reported that Molotov cocktails were found during the house raid, anarchist activists argued that the objects found were simple household goods. In an article entitled “Witch Hunt in Chile,” Indymedia reported that the confiscated goods included empty bottles, common in any house populated by groups of university students; kerosene, used by several of the detained who are fire-jugglers; and sawdust, used to care for the many cats found in the house.

In addition to the materials that could be used for Molotov cocktails, the police carted away “subversive material,” including magazines, posters, banners and books.

A witness to the raid told Chile’s La Nación newspaper that the house was a “cultural center.” “They showed free movies there. I know one of the people that lived at the house. I never saw several of the people who were taken away; they may have been there for just a day or two,” the witness said.

The raid prompted fear in other squatter collectives around Santiago. The leader of the República 550 Cultural Collective, Alex Corvalán, filed a preventative lawsuit Wednesday before Chile’s Court of Appeals, seeking to protect the commune’s residents from police action. According to Corvalán, police asked to enter the center last week and were allowed in. Once inside, however, the police began to “interrogate” the residents.

“I think a serious attack against democracy is underway in Chile,” said the center’s pro-bono lawyer, Hugo Gutiérrez. “People are being persecuted for their ideas, for their beliefs, and that is not tolerable.”

The República collective was created in 2005, after a group of squatters known as Akí took over the abandoned building. Today, over 600 people from age 15 to 80, including ballerinas, acrobats, actors, human rights activists, and indigenous Mapuches, frequent the center.

“We are a group of professionals that have started a cultural project,” said one of the collective’s spokesmen, who is called Lobsang. “A lot of people come here to create and learn. We don’t want them to be bothered by the police bugging us.”

The actions against Chile’s anarchist groups come after the Bachelet government was widely criticized for being caught off guard by the student protests that rocked Santiago in May and June. After sacking her Interior Minister and appointing Belisario Velasco to the job, the government indicated it would use secret “informants” in order not to be caught off guard again (ST, Jul. 18).

Bachelet said it was the duty of the executive to be aware of pending social problems and to have all available information. “We are speaking of institutions approved by Parliament, of police forces that always work to find problems and solve them,” she said. “As the entire world wants us to better anticipate problems, that is what we are going to do.”

Last week, Velasco prohibited protest marches near the La Moneda Presidential Palace both in response to the Molotov cocktail and in anticipation of Monday’s health-care and student strikes (ST, Sept. 26).

“Today I could not authorize a march because there is no way to guarantee that no one will infiltrate the march to attack La Moneda, but this doesn’t signify a permanent movement backwards,” Velasco said. He said once the committee is able to identify the violent groups that infiltrate demonstrations to encourage vandalism of property and confrontations with the police, it will allow marches around the capitol building to resume.

Still, not everyone was pleased with the crackdown. Representatives of the Families of the Disappeared called the measures “unnecessary” and “insulting a right that the Chilean people achieved after many years of fighting and at huge costs” (ST, Sept. 25).

Velasco received widespread acclaim in Chile’s mainstream media after Monday’s strikes and marches were mostly peaceful in nature, and many argued the methods he implemented had proved successful.

SOURCE: LA TERCERA, EL MERCURIO, INDYMEDIA, LA NACIÓN
By Nathan Crooks (editor@santiagotimes.cl)


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9-11 VIOLENCE ROCKS SANTIAGO, CHILE

Santiago Times

(September 13, 2006) Violence erupted in several parts of Santiago Monday night, as protestors marked the 33rd anniversary of the September 11, 1973 military coup led by Gen. August Pinochet that plunged the country into 17 years of dictatorial rule. According to police, the violence peaked at 10 p.m. In perhaps the most tragic incident, a six-year-old child was shot in the head by a stray bullet while playing in his house.

Hooded protestors blocked roads and attacked power stations in the southern Santiago communities of La Pintana and Puente Alto. Widespread power outages were reported.

Traffic was blocked to the exclusive Santiago suburb of Huechuraba because of barricades set up on the Avenida Vespucio highway.

In Santiago’s Peñalolén borough, police faced off 100 protestors at the intersection of Tobalaba and Grecia. The conflict was broadcast live on TV, and protestors were seen firing semi-automatic guns into the air.

The six-year-old child who was shot with a bullet apparently fired into the air by the Peñalolén protestors. The bullet entered the second floor apartment in which the child was playing with its mother.

The child, identified only by the initials T. F. A. B., was taken to Santiago’s Clinica Alemana Hospital and operated on several times. By Tuesday morning the bullet had been removed, but the child remained in critical condition.

Santiago’s historic center borough was relatively quiet, as were the neighboring borough of Providencia and the eastern suburbs of Las Condes. Santiago Times staff reported empty streets along the normally busy downtown Ahumada and Huerfanos pedestrian boulevards. All businesses were closed early, and many were boarded up with plywood.

Metropolitan Governor Víctor Barrueto spent the night in a helicopter observing the violence. The helicopter overflights reminded many of the worst days of the Pinochet regime, when popular protests were similarly observed and threatened. Early in the day, over 79 were detained after protestors connected with the radical Manuel Rodríguez Patriotic Front took over the University of Santiago and resisted police with 90 Molotov cocktails.

Violent protests were also reported in Arica, Temuco, Valparaíso, and Concepción.

President Michelle Bachelet condemned the violence Monday, referring to a Molotov cocktail tossed at La Moneda during a Sunday march. “No one has the right to attack La Moneda,” she said. “The best way we can honor this tragic day is to commemorate it in a way that makes the country better. People didn’t give their lives for this country so that these kinds of attacks could occur” (ST, September 12).

Bachelet said that it was regrettable that there were “still people who don’t understand the sacrifice that was made to restore democracy to the country…. La Moneda was in flames 33 years ago, it’s something that should never happen again.”

The Sunday march turned violent as it proceeded from Santiago’s central Alameda boulevard, past the La Moneda Presidential Palace, and onwards to Santiago’s General Cemetery, where the remains of political opponents killed during the Pinochet era are buried. An anarchist group, identified by the initials CRA, tossed a Molotov cocktail at the Palace and also painted graffiti on surrounding buildings. The central headquarters of the BancoEstado bank was also attacked (ST, September 11).

The Santiago Times received unconfirmed reports that numerous U.S. franchises, most especially McDonalds and Burger Kings, were also attacked by vandals. National media did not confirm these reports.

September 11 was decreed a national holiday during the Pinochet regime and remained a holiday during the first years after Chile’s transition to democracy, thus giving protesters a day free to manifest their disapproval of the anniversary.

Following Chile’s return to democracy in the 1990’s, the day has been used by both Pinochet supporters and leftist activists to mark the most controversial event in modern Chilean history. In the early 1990’s, protesters were sometimes killed, but the intensity of the protests has calmed in recent years.

Forty-nine people were arrested in last year’s September 11 protests.

The September 11 commemorations come smack in the middle of a politically charged month in Chile that includes the anniversary of a failed attempt of Gen. Pinochet’s life (Sept. 10), which is celebrated by many, and the national independence holidays celebrated September 18 and 19.

SOURCE: LA TERCERA, EL MERCURIO
By Nathan Crooks (editor@santiagotimes.cl)