Chile: Police-Involved In Force Misuse Scandal

[Judi Lynn]

This is not the first time Chile police "Carabineros" are embroiled in controversy due to force misuse. | Photo: EFE

Published 11 June 2020 (6 hours 57 minutes ago

A man is bedridden in the hospital after a cop shot him in the head with a gas bomb gun.

Chilean Police (Carabineros) seriously wounded a man during protests demanding government aid amidst coronavirus pandemic crisis, according to a statement released by the victim family on Thursday.

Manuel Flores Osorio was shot in the head by a policeman when he was at his house surroundings in the Villa Francia neighborhood. The shot, triggered by an officer, strongly impacted in Osorio's forehead, causing severe damage. According to the statement, the fragments penetrated his skull and lodged in his brain

"He was with two friends when riots began(...)Then pepper gas and water cannons arrived and a patrol stopped next to my uncle, a policeman got off the car and triggered his gas bomb shotgun straight to his head," niece Alida Illanes related.

More:
https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Chile-Police-Involved-In-Force-Misuse-Scandal-20200611-0015.html

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Beaten, mutilated and forced to undress: Inside Chile’s brutal police crackdown against protesters
Security forces have deliberately shot demonstrators in the eyes and forced those arrested to strip naked. Some of those affected tell Naomi Larsson

@naomilars
Sunday 26 January 2020 13:15

Breathing air thick with teargas and smoke from makeshift barricades on Valparaiso’s street corners, Carla Casoni remembers feeling her skin and eyes burn with the chemical-infused water used as a common police tactic to disperse demonstrators.

“I lost vision temporarily so I was an easy target for the police,” she says. Casoni is one of nearly 30,000 people who have been detained, many arbitrarily, in more than two months of unrest that has swept across Chile.

Just days before Casoni’s detention in the port city on 22 October, Chile had imploded into a social uprising initially sparked by a student protest over metro fare hikes in Santiago. People across the country have since mobilised against economic and social inequality, engaging in mostly peaceful but sometimes violent protests.

Over the weeks, protests have been met with state repression. Soon after the unrest began, President Sebastian Pinera sent military to the streets and issued a curfew, declaring authorities “are at war”. In the following two months, security forces have been accused by rights groups of brutality and a series of human rights abuses, including torture and sexual violence.

Casoni tells The Independent she was beaten by Chile’s Carabineros, the militarised police force, during a protest in the port city. She was with demonstrators who had blocked Avenida Errazuriz, a main thoroughfare in Valparaiso, when a Carabinero pinned her to a tree and hit her legs and back with a baton. She claims she was hit again while she looked for her documents and ID card, and again on the way to the police vehicle.

More:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/chile-protest-police-violence-nudity-human-rights-a9294656.html