Four human rights organizations want Chilean President Sebastián Piñera to be tried by the International Criminal Court for the police violence that has been unleashed against protesters from the October 2019 protests until now. The organizations assure that both the president and other authorities are responsible for crimes against humanity and that the Chilean Justice takes a long time to judge them, while it does process the detained protesters.
The request is made specifically by the Baltasar Garzón Foundation of the former Spanish judge of the same name, the Chilean Human Rights Commission, the American Association of Jurists and the Centro di ricerca ed elaborazione per la democrazia. They presented him to the ICC Prosecutor’s Office a 141 page requirement, published by the medium ‘Ciper’. In the text, the organizations give figures and show some examples of what they classify as crimes against humanity.
Their intention is for the international justice mechanism to investigate, accuse and call to trial not only President Piñera, but also the civil, political and police authorities named in their report.
Police abuses in the protests in Chile, common crimes or crimes against humanity?
As in all cases, for the International Criminal Court to begin an investigation against a person, it must be proven that the crimes committed are part of those analyzed by the ICC. This international body only investigates and prosecutes genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and aggression.
For this reason, the document attempts to prove that police violence against Chilean protesters is really a crime against humanity.
The four organizations complain that the Chilean Justice is investigating the excesses of the police and the military as a common crime so that the ICC cannot investigate them and to “favor their subsequent impunity.” Instead, the organizations claim that the authorities committed crimes against humanity and to prove it they speak of an “organized, massive, extensive and systematic attack against the civilian population” since the protests began in October 2019.
They also say that systematic rape is proven by the number of people injured throughout the country. The report ensures that between October 2019 and February 2021 there were at least 464 people with eye injuries from the shooting and tear gas from the authorities. At least a dozen Chileans completely lost an eye, while eye surgeries increased after the protests.
Prosecutor’s Office raises 5,558 victims who denounce Human Rights violations since the beginning of the social demonstrations https://t.co/4pTsLHT4Go
– Chilean Prosecutor’s Office (@FiscaliadeChile) January 31, 2020
The organizations also count 292 victims of sexual violence at the hands of police officers and more than 1,200 illegal arrests. Although they speak of 26 deaths during the demonstrations, the figures from the Public Ministry for January 2020 are even higher.
According to the Prosecutor’s Office, at least 31 Chileans died during the clashes with the authorities and the entity assures that it is investigating the complaints of more than 5,500 people who say they have suffered human rights violations.
The Chilean Justice has an “unjustified delay” in the investigations, according to the organizations
Another element that must be demonstrated for the ICC to even accept to examine Piñera’s responsibility or not is that the Chilean Justice is not willing or unable to investigate. Otherwise, the ICC does not interfere. This is known as the complementarity principle, because the Court is created to complement the national justice bodies.
For this reason, the four organizations that make the request to the Prosecutor’s Office of the Court emphasize that the Chilean Justice has not been effective in investigating the authorities. Specifically, they denounce that the Public Ministry and the Courts of Justice “have had an unjustified delay” in investigating the Carabineros and the denounced members of the Army.
In addition, they say that these entities have shown an “asymmetric behavior” in the face of the slowness in judging the public force compared to the speed and severity with which they have sentenced the detained protesters.
According to a Amnesty International report cited in the document, almost half of the investigations into human rights violations during the protests “have been closed without formalizations and most of them with practically no progress,” while the Government was effective against those who protested and “filed lawsuits against more than 1,000 protesters ”.
To reinforce this idea, in the letter, the Chilean Human Rights Commission showed that of 36 processes that they chose for their analysis, the Justice has only formalized two state agents. The others continue to be investigated for cases that include people who lost an eye when they were shot with leaded pellets (although they are prohibited) and others who had to reconstruct part of the skull shattered by the gases launched at close range.
“These cases cast doubt on the will and capacity of the Chilean justice system to investigate and punish the massive and systematic violations of human rights committed by the public force, which is under the command of a government that has constantly supported its criminal actions. , deliberately allowing new human rights violations to occur ”, criticizes the document.
The main reason why the organizations ask the ICC to specifically investigate Piñera is because, in their view, he did not comply with the obligations of international human rights treaties and, on the contrary, supported the abuses of the police forces. “The President of the Republic declared that he was ‘at war’, decreed a constitutional state of exception (state of emergency), ordered the Army to occupy the streets and opted for the application of a policy of massive, serious and systematic violations of the rights ”, says the document.
The odds that the ICC will investigate Sebastián Piñera
Despite the arguments presented by organizations of lawyers and human rights defenders, the process is just beginning and the pace of the ICC is slow. Before a person is called to trial before that international court, the Prosecutor’s Office has to complete two steps. First, you must do a preliminary examination to determine whether or not there is sufficient evidence and to decide whether or not the Court should intervene.
The second step is to open a formal investigation and only when these two phases are met, a pre-trial stage is opened, which may or may not end in the trial as such.
For all these phases to be fulfilled, the ICC Prosecutor’s Office usually takes years. For example, that entity has only been making an initial evaluation of certain cases in Colombia since 2004 and has not yet formally started the investigation.
So Piñera’s case may be delayed, if even the Prosecutor’s Office accepts the request to begin a preliminary examination.
We will file an injunction with the International Criminal Court against the President @sebastianpinera for its responsibility in human rights violations.
“We are not going to allow impunity to be maintained”, PC President and deputy @gteillier. pic.twitter.com/O3gPjg9Bc1
– Communist Party of Chile (@PCdeChile) January 2, 2020
Furthermore, this is not the first time that an entity has asked the ICC to investigate the Chilean president for his political responsibility during police abuses in the protests. In January 2020, the Communist Party assured that it would present a request for the same. The then Interior Minister Gonzalo Blumel dismissed the accusations and said that in Chile “the rule of law works” and that the judicial authorities would address all cases.
So far, neither the President nor the Government have ruled on the new request made by the organizations to the Court.
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source https://pledgetimes.com/sebastian-pinera-reported-to-the-icc-for-police-abuses-in-protests-in-chile/
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