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CHILE - Combative demonstration on the 5th anniversary of the murder of trade-union activist

Five years ago – on the 21th of February 2013 - Juan Pablo Jiménez, himself a trade-union activist, was shot dead on his way to work at the electrical engineering company Azeta. Soon after, protests started as the police investigations seemingly went nowhere. In the end, the police produced some 16 year old gunslinger who supposedly shot dead Jiménez from a distance of 1035 meters with a 9mm handgun. A bogus story never believed by his friends, family and activists as he was due to take part in a meeting denouncing the companies anti trade-union practices the very day after he was murdered. Commemorating him and demanding justice, a combative demonstration was held last week.


Juan Pablo Jiménez was purposefully murdered so he would no speak out and denounce the companies practices at his company, Azeta, a subcontractor of Chilectra. None of the many people who attended the demonstration demanding justice and punishment for his vile murder nor any other sane person can believe in the story the police cooked up to conceal the fact that it was a targeted killing of a working class right's activist, who was committed to contribute in the struggles of his class.


The 16 year old the police produced a month after his murder – whom they "caught" with eight bullets in his leg in some hospital – and who supposedly shot Jiménez from a distance of 1km and 35m with a stray bullet during a firefight he was engaged in, is nothing but a scapegoat so the police investigation mustn't shed light on the struggles Jiménez was engaged in at his workplace.


No wonder, that after five years have passed by and the police's story was found to be absurd by independent forensic analysts, the demonstration on the 5th anniversary of his murder had no sympathy of neither the cops nor the Chilean state itself. The cops who attempted to quell the justified protest last week against a state covert execution in the interest of a multi-million dollar company came to experience this first hand.


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