Chilean president Sebastin Piera met by protests on secretive UK visit
John McEvoy
11th September 2021
This article was originally published in Alborada, an independent media organisation that focusses on Latin America.
On 10 September 2021, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson welcomed Chilean President Sebastián Piñera to 10 Downing Street, his official residence in central London. Piñera’s arrival in the UK marked the final instalment of a relatively secretive European tour, during which the embattled president called on the Vatican, Paris, Madrid, and Rome. Official confirmation of Piñera’s visit was released late on 9 September, likely to thwart mobilisations against his administration’s appalling human rights record. Protesters nonetheless gathered outside of Johnson’s residence, with Chileans and others loudly condemning Piñera, a right-wing oligarch and millionaire, for his brutal crackdown of nationwide protests over the past two years. Given the British state has been a key supplier of arms aiding repression in Chile, it seems unlikely that Johnson attempted to broach the issue of human rights.
Neoliberalism and repression
After cancelling his original trip to Europe in June, Piñera stepped off his private plane in London late on Thursday evening to little pomp and ceremony.
According to official accounts, Johnson and Piñera‘s discussions on Friday morning focussed on the climate crisis, the Coronavirus pandemic, and political issues in Latin America. With recent electoral victories for the Left in Bolivia, Peru, and Argentina, Piñera represents an important UK ally within a region that seems once again to be drifting from the foreign policy prescriptions of the imperialist states. To this end, the UK government has remained largely silent in the face of massive human rights abuses in Chile beginning in late 2019.
In October 2019, Chile became the site of a student mobilisation which rapidly transformed into a mass uprising against the rising cost of everyday life – a symptom of a process of neoliberal economic restructuring initiated under the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet that came to power following a US- and UK-sponsored coup against the socialist government of Salvador Alllende. Piñera’s government responded to the mass protests – which, by late October, were attracting over one million people onto the streets of Santiago – with brutal violence.
More:
https://www.thecanary.co/global/world-analysis/2021/09/11/chilean-president-sebastian-pinera-met-by-protests-on-secretive-uk-visit/
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03:17, 12-Sep-2021
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Omar Elwafaii
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