Two other senior officers are also accused of excessive use of force // The protests left 38 dead and thousands injured and maimed
Aldo Anfossi
Correspondent
La Jornada Newspaper
Wednesday, October 2, 2024, p. 31
Santiago. The Chilean Prosecutor’s Office yesterday presented criminal charges against the general director of the Carabineros militarized police until last Friday, Ricardo Yáñez Reveco, whom it accuses of being responsible for crimes of omission of illegitimate pressures resulting in serious injuries and homicide during the social outbreak of 2019, a citizen uprising that left at least 38 dead and thousands injured and maimed.
Along with Yáñez, who as head of the Order and Security Directorate had to supervise operations and issue guidelines to guide control on the streets, the then general director, Mario Rozas, and the former deputy director Diego Olate are also accused.
The Public Ministry documented almost 1,400 cases of human rights violations, of which prosecutor Ximena Chong will report one by one before the seventh guarantee court of Santiago, with which she hopes to demonstrate that there were no adequate measures to prevent or control the excessive use of force during the protests that continued for weeks.
Chong, head of High Complexity of the North Central Prosecutor’s Office, explained that Yáñez, Rozas and Olate they omit their duties of intervention and do not take actions to prevent or stop their commissiondespite occupying “strategic level commands with specific duties in Public Order Control.
It did not emanate or instruct any administrative acts, instructions or general orders aimed at limiting the use of tear gas or anti-riot ammunition, nor that tended to prevent arbitrary arrests or any other measure that implied changes in the weapons and ammunition used in the control of demonstrations. social conditions, in order to prevent or stop the illegitimate coercion and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment that the subordinate personnel, under his charge and under his command, were committing.he related.
He said that the number of injuries to protesters attributable to Carabineros They were known by the Department of Order and Security of the institution, by the accused Yáñez Revecobut that this task was also entrusted to him by the Ministry of the Interior and Public Security.”
So that “the approximate number of people affected by situations of institutional violence, only in the jurisdiction of the North Central Prosecutor’s Office, is 2,438 people, from October 18, 2019 to March 31, 2020.
Of these cases, one thousand two correspond to injuries caused by a firearm projectile, of which 653 were head or neck injuries; Of these, 430 were the result of shot from pellets and 172 from gases, with a total of 163 eye injuries.he detailed.
The former officer, when speaking to the press, justified what he had done, pointing out that Those of us who were in command, in the time of greatest violence since the return to democracy, had to confront with the means, with the resources that the State gave us, something that was impossible..