The Undersecretary of the Interior, Manuel Monsalve, referred to the intentionality at the origin of the forest fires that were reported by the Minister of the Interior, Carolina Tohá, in a new balance.
In this regard, he indicated that “it seems that sometimes we tend to divide the country between those who want to clarify the origin of the fires and those who do not seem to want to clarify it, that dilemma and division is not only useless, but it harms the unity that the country requires in matters of emergency”.
“The government wants to clarify the origin of the fires and, therefore, it is going to collaborate with all the tasks that other institutions have to do, which are State institutions. The Public Ministry, the police, Carabineros. In fact, we have filed complaints ”and“ there is no one in Chile who does not want to clarify the origin of the fires ”, he added.
He stressed that “the will of all of Chile and of the government is that any responsibility for the origin of the fire, whether due to negligence or intentionality, be clarified, prosecuted and punished. There is no doubt about this, and it is not good for the country to generate doubts”.
For her part, Minister Tohá pointed out that the “specialized investigations, which are what Conaf does, tell us that of the fires evaluated so far, which are 685, there are still many to evaluate, but of those that have already been evaluated and investigated, we have 25.1% of intentional fires”, although there are still claims to be analyzed.
He also made a call not to “deepen controversies regarding the issue of how much intention there is or is not, which is not useful to face this emergency,” he concluded.