“This is a public health issue”

President Gabriel Boric, when delivering his third Public Account, caused a stir with his intention to submit legal abortion to parliamentary discussion at the end of the year. For some analysts, this issue was aimed at reaffirming his political support base, that 30% most progressive, and fundamentally female. Others, however, maintain that by announcing the presentation of the project at the end of the year, the discussion will tend to put pressure on the right, which will be pulled by the ultra-conservative groups, leaving a space to take electoral advantage of the debate.

The opposition has highlighted certain aspects of the speech such as security and the prison issue, but the announcement of legal abortion altered spirits. What is your balance?

-I have always been in favor of sincere and transparent debates. During the administration of President Bachelet we already had a debate on the voluntary interruption of pregnancy. Some of these debates reached the Constitutional Court. It is an issue where religious convictions, in particular, I believe are part of personal jurisdiction, but in this there is an issue of women’s autonomy.

Secondly, it is a public health issue that was very evident in the previous discussion and the President raises it precisely in a context where it also has to do with the continuity linked to a dignified death. They are debates that a democratic society has to have transparently regardless of the personal convictions that we have, because in this there is a question of public policy and personal autonomy, which I believe is a perspective that we should not lose sight of.

The President ended by referring to three issues that are basic, I believe, and I believe they are justice, equality and freedom. And freedom in this is personal autonomy, both for those who are in a complex life situation, where they make a decision in irreversible conditions of an illness such as a dignified death, and that which has to do with autonomy. And reproductive autonomy, a woman under certain types of conditions, which is part of the legal debate, by the way, in democratic systems.

How do you view this dispute? What will be the strategy to maintain the debate within the sphere of public policies?

-I believe that the evidence is very useful for this. In other words, you will understand that what cannot be is this: that in a debate on women’s autonomy, the protagonism is without the opinion of women, deep down, right? Secondly, it has to do with the fact that in a situation as complex as that, this is not, and the evidence shows it, the woman who faces situations of that style, situations of those characteristics, does not do so under conditions of pure liberality.

So, there is a dimension of society of allowing a difficult decision to be made with autonomy, but also with protection. The prohibition and penalization is what marginalizes these types of aspects. It seems to me that it is a reasonable way, not only to respect autonomy, but also a way to address the commitment of society as a whole in the face of these types of situations.

What milestone is marked with this announcement of support for the legal actions that South Africa took against the State of Israel?

-If you look at that part of the President’s intervention, it is in the sixth axis, which is the topic of Human Rights, and previously he makes an introduction about the vocation that the country has historically in matters of Human Rights, which it had historically until the dictatorship and that it has reestablished it with the return to democracy and that has to do with its universalist vocation, one of the countries that Chile also participated in the process of drafting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Chile has had a leading role, it has had a return to democracy and that vocation for universality has to be coherent. So, with those crimes that may be being committed, and just as the President said, Chile has repudiated what is happening in Nicaragua, in Venezuela, it also does so in other parts of the world, such as what is happening in Gaza and in West Bank. That, just as it condemns these types of actions, it also condemned, and the State of Chile has condemned, the Hamas attacks, and when one makes a hypothetical suppression of who are the authors of crimes that violate human conscience, violate human dignity, and that is why the President decides to go one step further in what had already been a leading role.

One also has to measure the President’s statements in the context of what has been happening recently, particularly what has been happening in Rafha and the effects it has had on victims, boys, girls, women, who have nothing to do with it. do with the main conflict that gave rise to this crisis in the background. And it seems to me that it is consistent with the historical policy that the country has had regarding Human Rights.

Regarding the announcement of the expropriation of what was Colonia Dignidad, what is the main objective that is proposed and what are the material objectives?

-Colonia Dignidad is an enclave established in the 1960s, where three major situations of Human Rights violations were committed. One, that of the colonists who lived isolated and under conditions of semi-slavery. Two, the sexual crimes that were committed within it, particularly by its leader Paul Schaeffer and all the consent that existed within it for this to occur. And thirdly, how that was used as a place for the forced disappearance of people and a place of torture during the dictatorship.

In 2016, Steinmeier, president of Germany, apologized in his capacity as minister for the crimes that occurred in Colonia Dignidad. Starting in 2017, the State of Chile with the German State made a work list where, in fact, certain sectors of the colony have been identified as a national monument, for what it represents for the history of human rights, but also , today it continues to be a site of expertise, for example, in the National Search Plan.

So, the expropriation of those aspects that were declared, that are linked to the monument, has to do with this dimension of memory and not forgetting that for many years this was a place of systematic violation of Human Rights, that a sector that even could have supported that enclave and that the events over time demonstrated, even for those people who had supported it, the brutality of the crimes that occurred in that place.

And in a context where it seems that violations of Human Rights occur, in full view and patience of the entire world, I believe that the country’s universalist vocation in terms of human rights is a recognition. The declaration of expropriation of certain sections of Colonia Dignidad for what they represent for the memory in the country in terms of human rights.

This work, as you told me, was done in alliance or coordination with the German State. Is there other work with other States, for example with Sweden, regarding irregular adoptions?

-We are working in the Interministerial Commission, the President also referred to the issue of irregular adoptions. In the case of the Swedish State, it is not only the only one, Belgium, France, and the Netherlands have been carrying out investigations into irregular adoptions.

In the case of Sweden, this is where there is a very significant nucleus and it is one of the concerns that exists in the case of Sweden. There is an open investigation in the Commission that extended its report delivery deadline during the visit of the President of Germany and Sweden. It will probably also be useful to see the progress of the Commission that has been operating in Sweden.

In the Public Account of your ministry, you issued the warning regarding penal populism. How does this warning dialogue with a policy that seeks to increase prisons?

-For a matter of infrastructure to maintain conditions of dignity. What I have insisted is that prison is a tool, but it cannot become an end in itself. If you want to occupy a prison you also have to worry about the organization.

The President was very emphatic about the issues of recession policy in his Public Account, and that if one wants to occupy the prison also to combat crime, one has to have prisons with adequate segregation, they are not overcrowded prisons, basically.

So, it’s not just about building prisons for the sake of building prisons, it’s about making the prison used as an effective means for reinvestment and proper segregation, especially in the case of more serious crimes.

Do you think this policy, the prison policy, can be a legacy of the President?

-What it seems to us is that the policy of the infrastructure master plan had to be a permanent policy and not simply depend on projections for a decade.

-There were figures in the Public Account 5,000 new places in prisons and 12,000 new places in 2030. How significant is it for the deficit we have today?

-It is relevant, especially from a management point of view, but all these positions are funded positions, they are those that are already in operation, they are those that already have processes in development or because they are already being tendered or because they are in the engineering stage. The President has been very responsible, those are the positions already funded.