Human Rights and Public Protests in Chile during 2011: the public hearing before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights

Abstract

The large scale public protests that took place in Chile in 2011 were met with violence on the part of the State: the right to freedom of assembly was curtailed, protesters were subjected to harsh repression and those detained were even tortured. In the face of this treatment, a group of students along with lawyers from the Citizens Advisory Program of Instituto Igualdad brought their case to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights so as to present these human rights violations in a public hearing. This article describes the context in which the decision was made to bring the matter before this international body, the content of the claim presented to the Inter-American Commission, as well as the State’s answer and the Commission’s reaction to the presentation of these facts.