At least 23 people have been killed in anti-government protests and 2,300 injured, with scores blinded by non-lethal projectiles

This article is more than 9 months old

This article is more than 9 months old

This article is more than 9 months old

Hastily cramming spare clothes into his rucksack, Romario Veloz left his mother’s home in the Chilean beach city of La Serena on the afternoon of 20 October to attend his first ever protest.

Days earlier, the first sparks of what would become a firestorm of unrest had broken out in the South American country, as thousands of people took to the streets to demonstrate against political exclusion and economic inequality.

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A student of civil engineering and freestyle rapper, Veloz, 26, was born in Ecuador, but had moved to Chile with his mother when he was nine. He told his family that he was going to protest so that his daughter Maite, five, could grow up in a fairer society.

But as the crowd neared the city’s bus station, Veloz was struck by a soldier’s bullet, and according witnesses, never regained consciousness. He was pronounced dead that evening. Two other protesters were also injured that afternoon.

“An hour after he left home, a message came through on a WhatsApp group saying that they had just killed an Ecuadorian and I knew that it was my son,” said his mother, Mery Cortez.

Soon after the unrest began, Chile’s President Sebastián Piñera deployed troops and militarized police, declaring that the country was “at war with a powerful and uncompromising enemy”.

More than a month later, the country’s security forces have been accused of a catalogue of serious human rights abuses against protesters, including torture, sexual violence and extrajudicial executions.

The turmoil has left at least 23 dead and 7,000 detained. Chile’s human rights institute (INDH) reported that more than 2,300 have been injured – more than 1,400 of whom sustained gunshot wounds.

The INDH is compiling 384 legal cases against the police and armed forces, including six cases of homicide.

Meanwhile, more than 200 people have suffered eye injuries from shotgun pellets, teargas canisters and non-lethal ammunition.

Outbreaks of vandalism and arson have left shops and buildings in ruins, and more than 1,700 police officers have been injured.

But so high is the toll among protestors that human rights observers conclude the carnage is the result of a deliberate strategy, said Claudio Nash, an assistant professor in the University of Chile’s department of international law. “These are not isolated cases, and it can all be interpreted as a mesh of serious, widespread and systematic violations,” he said.

On Thursday, Amnesty International accused officers of carrying out attacks with “unnecessary and excessive force with the intention of injuring and punishing protesters”. (Chile’s defense minister Alberto Espina rejected the findings as “extraordinarily serious and absolutely false”.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Mery Cortez and Eric Villalobos, whose son Romario Veloz was shot dead by Chilean troops during recent protests in 2019. Photograph: John Bartlett/The Guardian

Meanwhile, Romario Veloz’s family is still trying to find out exactly what happened. Although she has lived in the country for 17 years, and was married to a Chilean, Cortez says that she has not heard anything from the country’s authorities.

“Nobody has called me to explain the situation, to apologise, to see how we are or how [Romario’s] daughter is. Nothing,” she said. “If it weren’t for social media, I would never have found out what happened to my son.”

In a statement to the Guardian, the military said its troops had acted in self-defence after a large group of people approached an army unit, “surrounding and attacking them with different objects and weapons”. The statement contained no more detail and misspelled Veloz’s surname.

Witnesses dispute that official version. Ulises Cortés, a 19-year-old student from nearby Coquimbo, was standing beside Veloz when he was hit.

“The march was very peaceful, but when we approached a mall some soldiers appeared,” he said, “Some protesters began to insult them and they suddenly knelt and aimed their guns at us.

“After the first shots rang out people started throwing stones. More gunfire followed – and that’s when Romario was hit. We must have been more than 100 metres away, so we couldn’t have hurt or threatened them.”

Carlos Soto, a 56-year-old neurologist who was in the crowd, rushed to administer CPR.

“He never regained consciousness as we treated him, and suddenly a hail of bullets tore over our heads and we threw ourselves to the ground. All of this took place in a peaceful march,” Soto said.

Cortez was not allowed to see her son’s body until the following day. “They returned his bag to me, but when I finally brought myself to look inside the clothes weren’t even his.”

“I never got his watch back nor the chain he always wore around his neck, and his phone was handed to me without a SIM card. There was nothing on it – it had been completely reset,” said Cortez.

Piñera ordered the military back to their barracks a week after Veloz’s death, but Chile’s carabineros police force remains on the streets – even though it too faces a string of abuse accusations.

The INDH has tallied 220 cases of severe eye trauma, and scores of people have been injured or blinded by non-lethal projectiles. Amnesty investigators found that police officers have fired “potentially lethal ammunition in an unjustified, widespread and indiscriminate manner and in many cases aiming at people’s heads”.

The carabineros have insisted that the non-lethal projectiles used in crowd control are made of rubber, citing the supplier’s technical specifications and an analysis carried out by its own forensics laboratory.

But a University of Chile laboratory study concluded that some are only 20% rubber, with the rest made up of barium sulphate, silica and lead.

Gen Enrique Bassaletti of the carbineros gave a radio interview on Friday in which he likened the use of shotguns to chemotherapy, saying that “they kill some good cells and some bad ones”.

Earlier this month, President Piñera admitted that there had been “some” excessive use of force and promised that there would be “no impunity” for officers found responsible.

But such promises are of little comfort to Cortez and her grieving granddaughter Maite.

“One evening she took some rosary beads from me and began to pray,” Cortez recalls. “She asked him to come down from heaven so she could tell him how much she loved him.

“How do I explain to her that he won’t come home any more? How do I find the words? The only thing I ask of God is that there is justice for Romario.”