49 officers were injured and 75 people were detained, including 14-year-old suspected of setting fire to three buses.
Police used water cannons to break up a protest in Chile’s capital Santiago by thousands of Chilean students demanding free education, and hooded vandals set ablaze 3 city buses amid violence that left dozens arrested and injured.
The crisis over education reform in Chile remains unresolved despite more than a year of demonstrations by Chilean students, teachers and families. The marches have mostly been peaceful but often end with clashes between police in riot gear and groups of vandals armed with sticks that loot shops and hurl rocks and Molotov cocktails.
Small groups of hooded vandals often mingle in student protests, setting ablaze traffic lights and hauling rocks at police and three buses were set ablaze in free education demonstration in Chile.
Three buses burned / clashes with police as thousands protesters demanding free education in Chile
Presidential spokesman Andres Chadwick says Chilean student leaders cannot be exempt from responsibility after the burning of the Transantiago mass transit system buses.
Santiago’s municipal government had banned the students from flooding the streets of the capital, fearing the protest would turn violent. Demonstrations demanding education reforms have swept Chile for more than a year.
The government says the latest one in late June turned out to be the most violent with 472 demonstrators arrested and 36 police officers injured. The transportation ministry said damages to the public buses would cost Chile’s capital around 400 million pesos.
The transportation minister, Pedro Pablo Errazuriz said : ‘ It’s unacceptable. There are millions of people who use the Transantiago and these heartless ones are taking the wrong attitude by burning the buses and putting at risk passengers and the driver. ‘
Chilean students protest continue as buses burned / Chile Demonstration News
Raw footage shot with a cellphone camera of an attack on one bus showed passengers crawling on the floor while hooded vandals hurled rocks at the windows.
Politicians and students have toughened their stance, but the system still fails families with poor quality public schools, expensive private universities, unprepared teachers and banks that make education loans at high interest that most Chileans cannot afford.
Student leaders want to change the tax system so the rich pay more. They also want the state back in control of the mostly privatized public universities to ensure quality. They say change will come only when the private sector is regulated and education is no longer a for-profit business.
The president of the University of Chile student federation, Gabriel Boric has told to the local TV : ‘ I deeply regret what is happening in the streets of Santiago, but the government is responsible for this because of its indolence and silence to all the proposals of the student movement. We have tried all ways to reach out and have a dialogue. ‘
[adrotate banner=”41″]
