Sergio Micco presented his resignation to the direction of the National Institute of Human Rights (INDH), after a group of advisers from the organization requested his resignation. Thus ended a conflictive relationship between the organization and the academic who today assures that everything started with prejudices against him and that it ended in a “cancellation” towards his management.
“I would say that this started with prejudice against me, and that it frankly ended in an open cancellation culture. I calculate at least six funa campaigns against what I represented,” said Sergio Micco, in an interview with The Mercury, adding that his position against the voluntary interruption of pregnancy as a right surely played against him.
The former director of the INDH told the morning newspaper that “if we continue to make human rights not an ethical minimum, but an ethical maximum where human rights are already true government programs, we are in a serious problem.”
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Sergio Micco resigned just days before the end of his term as director of the INDH. Faced with this, he explained that for 60 days there was a strike by the two unions of the institute asking for his resignation because he declared that the violations of human rights in Chile were not systematic or that there were no political prisoners. “Then there were 180 days of taking over and I did not resign. So the highest body of the INDH is the council. And that highest body was configured in a majority opposed to what I represent. As things were, I was not going to become an obstacle to development of a new majority within the council”.
It is worth mentioning that the directors Constanza Valdés, Yerko Ljubetic, Consuelo Contreras, Francisco Ugás and Lieta Vivaldi, plus the support of Fernando Pairican, who is awaiting his formal appointment, requested the resignation of Micco, whose mandate ended on July 29 .
“I did not want to continue to be an obstacle to relations with the government,” Sergio Micco said, arguing that “obviously I was not a persona grata for the Executive Branch.”
Micco affirmed that he received complaints and pressure to file criminal complaints for 103 cases of disappeared detainees. And he assured that of those 103 people, 102 were known, that is, they were not disappeared detainees. “Can you imagine that as director of the INDH I would have said that the Carabineros, in the midst of the constitutional state of emergency, were detaining people and making them disappear? I was criticized a lot because I did not talk about refounding the Carabineros, and today the President of the Republic also declares their support for Carabineros de Chile”.
The former head of the INDH criticized that since January 18 they had been asking for a meeting with President Gabriel Boric to discuss the truth and justice agenda, but that “never happened.” In his opinion, “there were quite a few bad manners.” He commented that “the coup warns” seems to him to be a terrible human relations policy in general, and in particular within public organizations. “If I have a fundamental objection with respect to an authority, I notify him in advance.”
“When one is attacked for the ideas that he defends, I even consider it an honor. I fought against a military dictatorship for defending human rights and now for defending principles openly. I find it an honor,” he added.
Asked if he will vote Approve or Reject, Micco said that “I cannot be with this draft Constitution.” And he stated that “that constitutional proposal, that culture that promotes that all the inhabitants of Chile claim for our individual rights, everything is asked of the State to guarantee it, it will not work.”
“I am concerned that in the draft of the new Constitution this (abortion) is established as a right, or a fundamental guarantee. Because, in my opinion, it has to be defined in a national congress. That it be the representatives of the people who say yes or no, but that it not be established in such a way that people who do not agree with it are expelled from the civic community,” concluded Sergio Micco.
