In Chile, anyone who denies committing crimes against humanity will be punished | It was approved by the Constitutional Convention with opposition from the right

Ethics Committee Constitutional Congress of Chile created it Sanctions will be imposed on agreements that deny the existence of human rights violations by the state In periods when crimes against humanity were proven to have been committed.

The traditional committee coordinator Marcos Barraza explained it The concept includes the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990), the violent repression of the Chilean security forces during the 2019 outbreak of society and all acts committed against indigenous peoples.. The founding right strongly opposed the measure and criticized what they described as an “attack on freedom of expression”.

The definition adopted by the Commission asserts that “denial must be understood as any act or omission that justifies, negates, minimizes, excuses or glorifies the crimes against humanity that occurred in Chile between September 11, 1973, and March 10, 1990.” In addition, it considers “human rights violations that occurred in the context of the social outbreak in October 2019 and beyond.”

The measure has a dimension referring to indigenous claims, indicating that actions that justify, deny or minimize “atrocities and cultural genocide, of which indigenous peoples and Afro-tribal peoples have been victims throughout history and during European colonization and from the State of Chile.”

The regulation sparked controversy within the sectors that represented the right in the founding agreement. “Some are behaving in their tyrannical passion for re-establishment as if they had already drawn up and approved a new constitution. The opinion of the committee is not above constitutional guarantees“, books Marcela Copello, made up of Vamos from Chile, on his Twitter account.

Another traditional Pinochet Democratic Autonomous Union (UDI), Catherine MontenegroAccording to him, during the session in which the procedure was approved, this caught his attention denial for free “Very limited, with a very narrow time period and date in both definitions”Claiming it as “violations of human rights before September 11, 1973.” independent traditional Damaris Abarca It didn’t take long for him to reply: “I was not balanced because you put human rights on this level of relativism”.

Abarca added that it was important to stop “the denial that seeks to restrict things by saying that the government of Salvador Allende has violated human rights” and called “that we deal with matters responsibly, because Here are families still ignorant of their whereabouts and wondering“.

They have not yet revealed what the specific penalties are For voters who deny the existence of human rights abuses in Chile during the period of dictatorship and social upheaval. According to figures from the Rettig report, the Valech Commission, and the report of the National Foundation for Reparation and Reconciliation, Chile counts 2,125 deaths and 1,102 disappeared by the military government that Pinochet installed for 17 years.