The committee that will draft the new constitution calls for pardon for those detained in Chile's social protests
- The bill to put an end to incarceration has been put to the vote this Thursday. It will be discussed again on Monday.
The Constitutional Convention has tabled the necessary bill to ask for pardon from those detained in the social protests that began in 2019. The vote took place this Thursday and will be discussed next Monday in the Senate Human Rights Committee. The forces for and against are equal.
According to data collected by El País, the bill has been fostered by Senate President Adriana Muñoz and Socialist Senator Isabel Allende. In the second round of voting there were 105 votes in favour, 34 against and 10 abstentions. The president of Chile, Sebastián Piñera, has announced that if the project is approved on Monday, he will reject it.
On 5 July, the Convention for the reform of the 1980 Constitution was launched by dictator Augusto Pinochet. The proposal to grant pardons, for its part, was submitted shortly after the establishment of the group. In a communiqué issued after the vote on Thursday, they stressed the need for a bill. According to his words, in the social protests launched in October 2019, “state agents violated human rights (...) and arrested and detained thousands of people in illegal conditions”. It was then that the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and the organization Human Rights Watch denounced the excessive use of force by security agents.
According to radio station Bío Bío, Convention President Elisa Loncón explained that many of the detainees are "political prisoners". Those imprisoned are, in his view, the most serious problem facing Chilean democracy, and not the prisoners. For his part, the Minister of the Interior, Juan Francisco Galli, has opposed the statements and has ensured that there are no political prisoners in Chile, as El Mercurio has included.
Both the forces of the State and the Army have demonstrated their position against this measure. The national prosecutor, Jorge Abbott, has explained that if the bill were passed and pardoned, many of the serious crimes would go unpunished.
Protests of 2019
In October 2019, protests were organized in Chile to denounce the rise in the price of public transport. It was a spark. They became a demand to fight social inequalities in the country and lasted for two years. With the call for a new Constitution, the situation has calmed down in the streets.
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