Amnesty International Accuses Rising Excessive Police Violence in Latin America

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – One year after nationwide protests against the Chilean government, Amnesty International has published a report on excessive police violence during the protests in late 2019. The organization calls for an investigation into the command of the Andean police force known as the “Carabineros”. Latin America and the Caribbean showed an overall upward trend in cases of excessive police violence, according to the human rights organization.

In the document, which is over a hundred pages long, Amnesty explains the background to the protests, the victim statistics and documents its methodology, in which official data were analyzed and interviews with victims of police violence and state officials were included.

As a result, Amnesty concludes that the protesters’ human rights were “grossly violated” by officers of the ‘Carabineros’, at least in the first one and a half months of 2019. According to Amnesty, excessive violence would be used as a deliberate means to “disrupt the demonstrations” among the population.

However, according to the organization, these incidents should be taken as a unique opportunity to better incorporate social rights and social minorities in a potential new constitution, should the referendum on the amendment to the Constitution be passed by the population on October 25th.

However, Chile is but one instance of longstanding excessive police violence in Latin America. The German international broadcaster Deutsche Welle highlights examples such as Colombia and Mexico, where several people have already been killed by police violence during protests this year. amerika21 has also reported on such cases in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia and Venezuela on several occasions this year.

The militarization of the police force is mentioned as a factor contributing to the rise in violence, as extrajudicial measures to solve problems in society continue to be accepted. These include eliminating potential offenders rather than arresting them.

According to Amnesty’s deputy director of research for the Americas, Fernanda Doz Costa, this level of acceptance also echoes the era of Latin American dictatorships. At the time, the police considered protesters “a danger to the state, rather than people whose right to peaceful protest they were obliged to protect”. She also criticized the common impunity of police officers.