Human Rights Crisis in Chile

When protests broke out in October 2019 in Chile, many turned to social media to post about what was happening on the ground. As violent images and videos went viral, people outside of Chile were now witnessing the uprisings through computer screens and cell phones. But the Chilean government contradicted protestors’ account of events. What was the truth? This question informs the content of this report by comparing and contrasting the perspectives of protesters, including their experiences with state repression and violence, alongside the Chilean government’s narrative.

Students, staff, and faculty affiliated with the Human Rights Investigations Labs at the University of California, Berkeley and the University of California, Santa Cruz organized the information contained in this StoryMap. The students relied on online open source information and material sent to them by their peer networks (known as closed source information, because it wasn’t obtained through publicly available means). The students digitally verified user-generated content that appears in the report, even if it came from a trusted source. Our report concludes with an overview of the most serious human rights violations that the research team was able to document and verify and considers how the existing social inequalities in Chile have been further exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.