Valparaiso: the suppression in Chile continues
For one more time, huge student demonstrations, with the participation of workers, were confronted with suppression (by carabineers) in Chile. Last Thursday, thousands of students, pupils and workers took to the streets of the capital Santiago, as well as other cities, demanding quality, public and free education from the social democratic government of Michelle Bachelet, so that she goes on with the necessary educational reform, an issue which she had undertaken before the elections.
In the city of Valparaiso, last Thursday afternoon and after the massive student demonstration, two students, the 18 year-old Esequiel Borbaran and the 25 year-old Diego Qusman, member of the Communist Youth of Chile, dropped dead by the bullets of a 22 year-old landlord who shot them, as mentioned, from his balcony, because the students had been putting on posters, and who was arrested afterwards. Last Thursday evening and last Friday, new massive mobilizations went on, as well as manifestations, in honour of the murdered students. The government announced that this incident will be thoroughly investigated, but it separates it from police’s action. However, the atmosphere that is created every time students go on a march, is this of a police terrorism.
The mobilizations in Chile were organized, once again, by the Chilean Student Confederation (FECH), the Pupil Coordination of Secondary Education and they demand the abolishment of the laws of Pinochet’s dictatorship that are still in force and which commercialise the right in education. The government of Bachelet, exactly like in her first term (2006-2010), when she applied a social democratic management, in the same way now, in her second term,whereas she is talking about a change of the Constitution and promises, since 2016,a “ public and free education” , in fact, she maintains the powerful private education …as “non profit-making”, exactly because she doesn’t want the interests of her allies to be damaged.
