January 10, 2020 Codepu Team CODEPU, news, PUBLICATIONS
Student demands have long been pointing to the unfairness of the education system that prevails in our country.
The University Entrance Examination (PSU) is a reflection of the inequalities imposed by the economic and political order that has been in place for decades. The students realize that the social, cultural and economic realities of a privileged minority contrast with the daily reality of their own biographies. They see that the education system only guarantees a future of uncertainty and precariousness and, in the best of cases, an anxious competitiveness. Hence the student demands to leave behind the role of the market in education and to assume as a country that there are social, economic, political and cultural rights that must be guaranteed for all.
That is why we are not surprised by the mobilization and protest, always legitimate by any means. We believe that the solution to the serious problems of inequality must be addressed with profound structural changes and not with more repression, threats and adultcentric discourse which give rise to possible and serious violations of human rights as we have seen since October 18 and even before. Let’s not forget that Police Special Forces kept 4500 student under surveillance from rooftops nor the «Secure Classroom» program that was used as a form of social control and other tecniques of similiar characteristics.
We are concerned that sectors that have supported and benefited from an economic and political order are unleashing a campaign to affront and disqualify high school students, their organizations and their leaders.
We absolutely reject the announcement of lawsuits under the State Security Law against 32 secondary school students. The aforementioned law has an obscure dictatorial past and its origins in those provisions that seek to outlaw popular political participation. We recall that Carlos Ibáñez del Campo and Augusto Pinochet Ugarte used and abused such legislation.
We have insisted that the criminalization of social protest and all repressive measures do not resolve the basic problems raised by the social and popular movement. And even less does it resolve the demands of the student movement in particular. On the contrary, they further strain social relations.
As an organization that defends human rights, we reject any attempt to imprison adolescents and outlaw their political participation. The social and political crisis requires political solutions complemented by the promotion of measures to transform the economic order that guarantee rights for all – which are still absent – and not repressive policies.
We stand in solidarity with the secondary school students, with Victor Chanfreau, Ayelén Salgado and the thirty or so secondary school students to whom the State Security Law is being applied.
CODEPU
