Security authorities criticize Boric for not expanding the state of emergency in southern Chile

MADRID, Jan. 31 (Royals Blue) –

The national coordinator of Security in the South Macrozone, Pablo Urquízar, assessed this Monday that the decision of the president-elect of Chile, Gabriel Boric, not to extend the state of emergency in this region “is not understanding what is happening.”

“What we have learned about the president-elect’s government is basically an alternative that seems to me to be not understanding what is happening in the South Macrozone,” Urquízar has expressed in relation to the “dialogue” proposed by Boric’s team as another way to address security issues.

“It is not a problem of dialogue when we are talking about four murders in a week,” stressed Urquízar, who has directly pointed to drug trafficking, terrorism and organized crime for all these problems. “With these people there is no dialogue”, he has settled in a dialogue for Radio Duna.

The words of the person in charge of security of the South Macrozone -which brings together the regions of La Araucanía, Los Lagos and Los Ríos-, take place in the context of a last attack suffered by a carabinero when he was in civilian clothes and three members of his family last weekend.

Urquízar has said that “it cannot be ruled out” that it was a selective attack, since the victim is “responsible” for the reduction of violence in the town of Tirúa. “Who can shoot him without any other motivation, because they were not assaulted, they were not robbed, than to kill a family”, he has asked himself.

“There is no dialogue with these people,” insisted Urquízar, who has also asked to stop “criminalizing” the Mapuche people and abandon the discourse that this type of violent acts is taking place because the political, economic and social “legitimate demands” of this indigenous people.

“That is not the case, the Mapuche people are an honest, hard-working, peaceful people who want the best from the perspective of their people, but another thing is terrorism, drug trafficking and organized crime, and there is no dialogue with that,” he remarked. .

In this sense, he has warned that not extending the state of exception would mean the “instrumentalization” by those who “abuse terror” of “the legitimate demands of the Mapuche people” through the crimes of drug trafficking, theft of wood and arms trafficking.

However, Urquízar has pointed out that the state of emergency is not the only tool that the State can have to deal with this type of situation, giving as an example the need to modernize intelligence systems, a proposal, he said, presented by the outgoing government of Sebastián Piñera, who has lamented that it is “bogged down” in the defense commission of the Chamber of Deputies, waiting to be debated and approved.

A week ago, the elected government announced that it would not extend the state of exception that has been in force in this region since mid-October, and that it has already been extended up to seven times, so it will be in force until February 9, considering that “there is no is sustainable” and has not delivered the desired results.

The southern part of the country, where the Mapuche population is concentrated, the largest indigenous group in the country, has been the scene of increasing violence, with clashes between security forces and citizens who support historic territorial claims.

In the last week, four more deaths have been added in this region, including a farmer and three forestry workers. All of them would have been surprised by assailants, who attacked them from behind with firearms.