“It is a setback compared to the last 30 years”

At 4:00 p.m. the discussion of the Rules of the Use of Force (RUF) begins in the Chamber of Deputies. The project, which aims to regulate the procedures of the law enforcement and security forces, brings with it complexity for the ruling party and the Executive. The commission’s process included the reestablishment of military justice, which The Minister of Justice Luis Cordero described it as “a setback compared to the last 30 years.”

It should be remembered that the Executive reserved the constitutionality of said norm, since, according to their argument, this norm exceeds the scope of the Rules on the Use of Force. Minister Cordero also asserted that “I have the impression that the people who promoted this rule are unaware of the previous discussion and are unaware of the organic problem that military justice currently has.”

Within the framework of World Press Freedom Day, Minister Cordero arrived from his ministry to answer questions to the press that had been pending from the press point offered by the spokesperson minister Camila Vallejo and Foreign Minister Alberto Van Klaveren. In that instance, Cordero argued against military justice in two parts.

First, he maintained that there was a consensus that “With respect to common crimes, whatever the condition of the subject, he was subject to common legislation.” Although he warns that it is evident that RUF must exist, which were also requested by both military and law enforcement forces, this discussion is about “a very different thing from what the respective criminal jurisdiction is.”

The minister reviewed the modifications made in 2010 by the government of former President Sebastián Piñera and “the perfections” made in 2016, but about that he recalled that “Chile is condemned internationally for using military justice in cases of common crimes.”

Then, but no less relevant, the minister highlighted the deficiencies of military justice “of which there is full consensus among specialists, is that it requires a profound change.”

The minister described the panorama of the norm: “Military judges, military prosecutors and auditors of armed institutions “who also participate in the case of military justice, are officials of armed institutions subject to vertical command.”

In that sense, he highlighted that it is “a regime of justice admittedly lacking impartiality and independence and in fact it does not have the immobility of the judicial system. “It is a very structured problem.”

Regarding how the Public Ministry would act in the case in which law enforcement and security forces are investigated, the minister explained that “This rule is made so that the Public Ministry does not continue to know about these matters, that is its central purpose. They are common crimes committed by officials of the Armed Forces and Carabineros. in the performance of their duties or in situations that are identified in that rule. That is, the state of exception, critical infrastructure and electoral processes.”

Then, the minister ruled that this rule “lacks all rationality from a technical point of view” and that ” nI’m not even making a political judgment about this,” well, “dFrom a technical point of view, it ignores the debate that the country has had in the last 30 years and that all administrations have aimed to correct.”