Two reported killed in Chile clashes

Press, 12 August 1985, Page 6

Two reported killed in Chile clashes

NZPA-AP Santiago Clashes between the police and demonstrators accusing Chile’s security forces of brutality had left two civilians dead and 10 civilians and two policemen wounded by gun-fire, officials said. They reported 242 arrests.

The Interior Ministry, meanwhile, said yesterday that it would permit 600 more dissidents to return to Chile under its amnesty programme, 4200 others would remain in forced exile. The Ministry also cancelled the

arrest orders against 44 dissidents, most of them members of the banned Communist Party. The anti-Government demonstrations began on Saturday, called in connection with the ruling by a judge on August 1 that there was clear evidence implicating 14 policemen in the killing of three Communist leaders in March. The bodies of the victims were found beside the road to the Santiago airport with their throats cut. The Government arrested

the 14 policemen. The commander of the Carabineros, Chile’s paramilitary police force, resigned from that post and also from the ruling military junta.

The President, General Augusto Pinochet, had instructed the police last week to act with firmness but without undue excesses, and the Carabineros fired tear-gas and water-cannons, but refrained from using their clubs, in dispersing several hundred protesters in the city centre during the day.