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Annual Report Chile 2020

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Annual Report Chile 2020 ANNUAL HUMAN RIGHTS REPORT CHILE 2020 ANNUAL HUMAN RIGHTS REPORT 2020 CENTRO DE DERECHOS HUMANOS FACULTAD DE DERECHO – UNIVERSIDAD DIEGO PORTALES VIOLENCE AND STRUCTURAL DISCRIMINATION: SOCIAL UNREST AND THE PANDEMIC FROM A HUMAN RIGHTS APPROACH Lidia Casas B. and Judith Schönsteiner What follows is a panoramic view of an exceptional year, in which social mobilizations demanding a more just society, are intertwined with the violence exerted by order and security forces with hundreds of injured protestors and several deaths, and the deficiencies of the State that have become even more evident in the face of a pandemic. For these reasons this year has been unparalleled, and as such our Report is structured differently than in previous years: it is arranged by chapters that review the State’s response to events that have occurred since the close of our Annual Report in September 2019. This intro- duction not only attempts to outline the national situation during the past year—under the presumption, generally speaking, that the facts analyzed in this Report are well-known—but also to shed light on con- nections between social unrest, the demands for greater social justice, and economic, social, cultural and environmental rights. The response to the estallido social occurs, furthermore, amidst unprecedented chal- lenges due to the pandemic and in a changing scenario resulting from the constitutional referendum process. Our concern as a Center for Human Rights is that the exercise of human rights is best realized in a democracy, and as such it is essential that society, and especially the entire State apparatus, ensure the con- ditions for its reinforcement. This will hardly be forthcoming if the conditions of structural inequality that feed the social discontent and the disrepute of institutions continue. 1. A YEAR OF SOCIAL CONFLICTS, UNCERTAINTIES, CHALLENGES, AND HOPE The Human Rights Report on the events of 2020 is shrouded by an exceptional context. What began with a series of demonstrations—the explosion of the social unrest beginning on October 18th 2019—was 7 preceded by mobilizations from different sectors demanding reforms related to economic and social rights, such as the No + AFP movement, and particularly from high school students rejecting the “Safe Class- room” Act approved in December 2018, which allowed the immediate expulsion of students from their schools as a result of their possible participation in acts that were classified as violent. The 30-peso (4 US cents) increase in the price of the capital’s subway fare by Metro de Santiago, a state-owned company, was merely the catalyst for the un- rest: all the conditions, prior to the specific act of increasing the fare, already existed for the citizens’ unrest to manifest itself at any mo- ment. Ultimately, the overall social disenchantment was heard in the typical clamoring of the pots and pans, the street protests, and also in acts of violence against property and looting of supermarkets. The second theme discussed in this Report is the Covid-19 pan- demic, which has shed light on the structural problems of inequality that the vast majority of the population lives with on a daily basis. An analysis of data on temporary permits issued for transiting in quarantined zones—conducted by the interuniversity group COES (Centro de Estudios de Conflicto y Cohesión Social)—showed that in the wealthy boroughs in Eastern Santiago, such as Las Condes, Vita- cura or Ñuñoa, people requested permits mainly to walk their pets, while in the boroughs of the capital’s southern sector, hit the hardest by Covid-19 mortality, permits were requested in order to take food to prisons or to attend funerals.1 While the figures can only indi- cate trends—we have no record or systematic information in which people apply for permits in each borough, and we have been unable to cross-check these with actual mobility data, i.e., the movement of people, for example, to attend communal soup kitchens or potlucks (ollas comunes) or to perform informal work, for which they might not have taken out a permit. What is clear, however: the pandemic has more severely impacted the most vulnerable boroughs, whether rural or urban. Some could claim that the social unrest began on October 18, 2019, with around one hundred students who among themselves had organized to simultaneously jump the turnstiles and avoid paying the Metro fare at different subway stations throughout the city of Santiago. This was an act of protest against the announcement of a 30-peso increase in the subway fare, and the government failed to understand why citizens in different parts of the country were also disgruntled about something occurring in Santiago. The politi- cal management by the executive branch in the face of the criticism 1 COES, “Los permisos para salir de casa reflejan la desigualdad en Santiago de Chile”, Agencia EFE, July 22, 2020. 8 was unfortunate: the former Minister of Economy, Juan Andrés Fon- taine, called on passengers to wake up earlier to take advantage of lower fares and avoid traveling at peak times. Shortly beforehand, the former Undersecretary of Assistance Networks in the Ministry of Health, Luis Castillo, in an attempt to explain the queues of people waiting from early morning to obtain a number for being attended in the country’s primary care centers, said that the users did this be- cause the lines were conducive to personal interaction and social life. Meanwhile, another minister from the economic sector, dealing with the increase in the cost of certain basic necessity products and servic- es, invited citizens to gift each other flowers as these were among the products that had dropped in price.2 Ten days before the outbreak of the social unrest, President Piñera had indicated that Chile was an oasis in Latin America.3 The country saw an executive branch that was completely removed from the reality of millions of Chileans. The social protest was not over 30 pesos; it was the reflection of a latent discontent in the social, political and economic spheres. In this vein, a recent study by the Universidad de los Andes on the gaps of perception among the Chilean elite—businesspersons, academics, opinion leaders and politicians—regarding inequality is a sample of this. This sector perceives Chile as mostly middle class— believing that 57% of Chileans were part of it—in circumstances where the data indicate that only 20% of the population falls in this socioeconomic group, and that the vast majority hit poverty levels (around 77%) despite access to commodities only through debt and loans, and that a minimum percentage of 3% fall in the affluent class.4 The elite, in turn, overestimates the number of people en- rolled in the private healthcare system (39%)—when in fact this lat- ter figure is around 18%—and believes that 8% of poverty stricken sectors are enrolled in the private healthcare system when, in fact, there are none.5 What is most striking is that among the challenges they perceive for a more just society are education and employment (43%), followed by equal opportunities (33%), and only in last terms do they believe that the problem lies in wealth redistribution (16%).6 Against this backdrop, the statement of the former Minister of Health, Jaime Mañalich, makes complete sense, who expressed 2 La Tercera: “Subsecretario Luis Castillo asegura que los pacientes van temprano al con- sultorio porque es ‘un elemento social, de reunión social,” July 9, 2020. 3 La Tercera: “Piñera asegura que ‘en medio de esta América Latina convulsionada, Chile es un verdadero oasis con una democracia estable,’” October 8, 2020. 4 Círculo de Directores, Unsholster, and Centro de Gobierno Corporativo y Sociedad U. de los Andes, Percepciones de la élite sobre la desigualdad en la sociedad chilena, October 2020, p. 8. 5 Id., p. 12. 6 Id. 9 genuine surprise that in some boroughs of Santiago such levels of poverty and overcrowding existed.7 The massive and transversal character of the demonstrations – mostly performed by the younger generations – shows a consistency of the uprisings, that represent different struggles and social demands that were already present. Thus, the population of other cities in the country quickly joined en masse, strengthening a process that would last several months and that was only managed to be appeased thanks to the institutional agreement on a constituent process signed in No- vember 2019 and, later, to the confinement measures adopted as a re- sult of the Covid-19 pandemic. However, the violence that accompa- nied the peaceful demonstrations was also unprecedented since the return to democracy. This is why the structure of this Report is different from that of previous years. While a first part describes and analyzes the reaction by different state agencies to police violence during the social unrest, a second part analyzes several of the citizens’ demands and exposes how the problems of the “social agenda”, once again laid bare later during the pandemic, respond to a common denominator: a structural dis- crimination due to socioeconomic reasons, a reflection of the historical inequality in our country that, as a society, we have not yet managed to remedy. The hopes placed on a new Constitution are, largely, the ex- pectations of overcoming this structural discrimination. It is clear that there is no magic wand, and various changes cannot wait until a new Constitution, along with the appropriate laws required for these urgent transformations, come into force. Nevertheless, a new Magna Carta will facilitate the possibility of change if it places non-discrimination in the enjoyment of human rights, especially social rights, at the front and center of its content. Lastly, given that a country without memory repeats its mistakes, since the first version of thisReport in 2002, we have been provid- ing an account of the truth, justice and memory of the human rights violations during the dictatorship and, especially, the obligations of non-repetition.
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