President Gabriel Boric decided that the military continue to guard the main highways of two regions, although he rejected extending the protection of the armed forces to urban areas and highways secondary
Chile’s right-wing parliamentarian, Cristián Labbé, called for greater support for the Armed Forces positioned in the country’s southern macrozone
President Gabriel Boric extended on Monday the validity of a state of emergencyfor the military to continue guarding the main highways of two regions in southern Chile, although he rejected the demands of the conservative opposition and one of the ruling coalitions to expand the guarding of the armed forces to urban areas and to secondary routes.
In the so-called “southern macrozone”, formed by La Araucanía and Biobío, indigenous Mapuches demand the restitution of ancestral territories. Various violent groups have joined this demand, carrying out armed and arson attacks against machinery belonging to forestry companies, large agricultural estates, churches, schools, and trucks, among others. In addition, in the surrounding area there are theft of wood from forestry companies and drug traffickingregional authorities point out. A forest worker was killed in the area and two others were injured a week ago.
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The Minister of the Interior, Izkia Siches, announced that the state of emergency it is extended “in the same terms”. The state of emergency allows the president to use the armed forces in situations of disturbance of public order, although they are not prepared for it and use weapons of war unlike the police.
Gabriel Boric
Boric reluctantly decreed a state of emergency for 15 days – which expires on Tuesday – in the entire region of La Araucanía and in two provinces of Biobío, some 600 kilometers south of Santiago, where the violence that has dragged on for decades has increased in the last months. With the military guarding the main roads, a worker was killed on an interior route when he was traveling with about twenty other workers.
The president was forced to dictate a state of emergency after his main coalition – formed by the Communist Party and the leftist Broad Front – denied him the votes to approve an “intermediate state”, in which the military would be led by a civilian and did not have the power to restrict the rights of assembly and mobilization.
Although Boric had reiterated that he would not impose the state of emergency, he changed his mind after the increase in violence and pressure from truckers that blocked the main Chilean highway for several days after an armed attack that seriously injured a driver at the end of April and the simultaneous burning of 33 trucks.
The extension of the state of emergency is known less than 48 hoursafter Boric delivers his first message to the country and less than three months after his coming to power. Among their main concerns are the violence in the south, the increase in crime in urban areas and a rising inflation that reaches 10.5% in twelve months.
(With information from AP)
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