[NYTr] Mass protest in Chile: 670 Arrested, 50 Injured
 
Date: Fri, 31 Aug 2007 12:52:08 -0500 (CDT)


Via NY Transfer News Collective  *  All the News that Doesn't Fit
 
SAPA/AFP (S. Africa) - August 30 2007
http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=3&art_id=nw20070830190138757C931988

Chile protest: hundreds arrested

Santiago - About 670 people were arrested and another 50 were injured
in the first major protest since Chilean President Michele Bachelet
took office last year, police said on Thursday.

Hundreds of people protesting the socialist government's economic
policies threw rocks at police officers who retaliated with water
cannons and tear gas during Wednesday's march in Santiago.

The clashes left about 50 people injured, including 33 police officers,
10 of whom were in critical condition.

Socialist Senator Alejandro Navarro, who supported the demonstrators
and was hit in the head by police, while a prominent Chilean poet, Raul
Zurita, was also hurt.

Some businesses were looted in the capital while several streets were
temporarily closed by demonstrators who built barricades and taxi
drivers.

The powerful Central Workers Union organized the demonstration to
protest the socialist government's failure to bridge the social gap
despite the country's strong economic growth.

Communist Party leader Guillermo Teillier called the protest "a great
triumph for the Chilean workers."

Interior Minister Guillermo Belisario Velasco described the
demonstration as an "atypical mobilization" that did not stop the
country from functioning normaly.

Central Workers Union chief Arturo Martinez had said he organized the
protest - which was also extended to the cities of Valparaiso, Rancagua
and Concepcion - as a challenge to Bachelet.

Martinez said the president was mishandling the economy and had failed
to keep her campaign promise of shrinking the gap between the haves and
have-nots, which according to UN figures is the region's second largest
behind Brazil.

Ten percent of the population in Chile holds 47 percent of the country's
wealth, the United Nations Development Program has said.

 
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