The Undersecretary of the Interior, Manuel Monsalve, reported that the President of the Republic, Gabriel Boric, will request a new extension of the State of Exception in the southern part of the country, specifically in the provinces of Biobío and Arauco, and in the entire region of La Araucania.
This, after a series of meetings between the Government, the Armed Forces and the police. This is the seventh request from the Executive to extend the measure that seeks to control the acts of violence that have occurred in the southern part of the country.
The current extension began to govern from last Tuesday, August 30 and will end on September 13.
Monsalve indicated that “we have had 110 days of State of Exception since May 18 and we usually compared those days with those prior to the state to say by what percentage the acts of rural violence had decreased. If we make that comparison, the facts have decreased by 21 %. But this has a bias, because the 110 days prior to May 18 intersect with 54 days of the previous State of Exception. For this reason, it has seemed pertinent to add two comparison indicators.”
“That is, compare the period from May 18 to September 4, 2021, in which 597 events occurred, with the period from May 18 to September 4, 2022, in which 327 occurred,” he added.
Along the same lines, he declared that “therefore, comparing the periods of the year, there has been a 45% decrease in the events compared to 2021. This shows that beyond the tools that are being used, which are diverse in terms of what the daily life of the area lives, this year has had fewer acts of violence than the year 2021 “.
On the other hand, Monsalve referred to the measures that have been adopted to strengthen security in the southern part of the country, recalling that “a series of decisions have been made that improve response capabilities.” Among these is a “greater presence of rapid response teams in more points in the province of Arauco and in the region of La Araucanía.”
“We will also proceed to seek the acquisition of intermediate armored vehicles that allow the deployment of military or police forces more quickly and we have made decisions to improve the operational capacity of the armored teams in the area declared as a State of Exception”, hill.
