Chilean police are investigating the death of 27-year-old police officer, Cristián Martínez Badilla, after he was shot on the 1973 Coup Anniversary on Tuesday.

Badilla was shot while trying to prevent the looting of a supermarket in the suburb of Quilicura, Santiago.

President Sebastián Piñera said his government will do all it can to identify those responsible for the killing of Martinez, the father of a 3-week-old baby.

The officer died “defending our lives, our security, our tranquility,” said Piñera.

A suspect has been taken into custody and a .83 caliber gun revolver was recovered but the person detained denies responsibility for the killing. The fatal bullet entered through an opening in the officer’s protective vest.

The death of Badilla came alongside what turned out to be an extremely violent end to the 11th September ceremonies that mark the 1973 coup d’état in which Gen. Augusto Pinochet took power from former President Salvador Allende.

In total, one officer died, 26 people were wounded, and 255 people arrested, of which 83 are legally considered children.

Five public buses were set on fire and used as barricades against police by masked demonstrators in the streets of Chile’s capital city. More than 400 other public transport vehicles retained broken windows and other damage forcing the transportation agency to cancel service for more than a million people.

More than 58,000 homes were also left in the dark after hooded protestors threw chains onto power lines knocking out electricity in at least 12 of Santiago’s 35 districts. Looting was also a huge problem throughout the city.

Deputy Interior Minister Rodrigo Ubilla said in a press statement that the number of arrests had declined from previous years but violence has intensified, with more firearms being used than ever before. There was “a greater number of gunshots, of weapons, and we’re also concerned about seeing a greater number of young people in the streets,” Ubilla said.

A Chilean court has ended its investigation into the death of former President Salvador Allende confirming that the leader took his own life during the coup on 11th September 1973.

An appeals court in Santiago on Monday upheld a previous judge’s conclusion that the former Chilean leader shot himself at the presidential palace as Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s troops closed in.

Although the history textbooks of the country have long taught his death was suicide an official investigation was launched as a part of a huge investigation into more than 700 alleged human rights violations during Pinochet’s rule. Many Allende supporters doubted his suicide and blamed the military for his death.

Judge Mario Carroza order the exhumation of his remains last year.

“With the goal of establishing the facts of the case, and motivated by the various versions about this episode that exist, lines of investigation were set and decreed, and all were carried out and every detail was satisfactory,” Carroza wrote in his ruling, handed down last December.

The ruling officially labels Allende’s death as suicide and closes the case.

Today marks the 39th anniversary of the coup d’état in which Allende’s government was ousted by Gen. Augusto Pinochet and the military. Pinochet’s regime lasted 17 years, in which more than 3,000 people were killed and another 30,000 more imprisoned and tortured, according to human rights organizations.

Commemorations for those who were murdered have taken place across the country with the main ceremony happening outside the monument to President Allende located in front of the Palacio de La Moneda.

The largest event, took place this past Sunday, 9th September, in a march that ended in front of Santiago’s General Cemetery near a memorial dedicated to the disappeared and executed political prisoners.

The last few days however, have not come without an escalation in tension between police and protestors.

Sunday’s 3,500 person march ended in violence after a small group of masked protestors attacked a government building and looted local shops.

According to police the march was peaceful with most people carrying pictures of family members and loved ones who disappeared or were killed, until the group of roughly 100 demonstrators built barricades and lit fires.

Police responded with tear gas and water cannons to combat the masked protestors.

Lorena Pizarro, president of the AFDD, a group of families of the disappeared, blamed police, calling on the government to “put an end to police repression and impunity in Santiago,” according to the Santiago Times.

The violence continued for roughly three hours and ended in the arrest of eight people.

“It’s hard to believe that, once again, a peaceful march has been hijacked by encapuchados,” said Gonzalo Diaz del Rio, chief of security for the Santiago Metropolitan Region. “They have no regard for the rights of others and generate destruction to public and private property.”

Violence erupted on Tuesday in Santiago, Chile, as student protestors and police clashed during one of the largest marches in recent weeks.

According to protest organisers and police, between 50,000 and 130,000 people took to the streets some banging drums, while thousands of others followed the procession masked in black hoods.

The atmosphere at the beginning of the protest was optimistic and cheerful and the march ended in a concert. However, it quickly escalated into violence when some protestors started throwing sticks and stones at police, who responded with tear gas and water cannons.

The protestors tried to protect themselves with giant wooden boards behind which they continued to throw objects at the police. Only a few protestors were reportedly arrested.

“It’s (the violent protestors) who are causing harm for everyone. Everything could have gone very well,” said 15-year-old student Javiera to AFP, as she looked on at the masked demonstrators mounted on a barricade.

Protest organisers say the violence at the rallies allows for authorities to criminalize the student movement, which enables them to divert the attention away from the students’ demands which include free and high quality public university education.

This protest also had the backing of the Unified Workers Federation (CUT), who called on members to join the march.

The protest came just two weeks after many students were forcefully evicted from occupying three schools in Santiago.

Students have been rallying in the streets for over a year demanding a reform to Chile’s national education system, which suffered from sharp cuts to its funding during the 1973-1990 dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. Now, it favours expensive private schools that are out of the reach of the poor.

Since 2011 only a handful of demonstrators have gone to court after more than 40 protests. The mass arrests that typically take place during these demonstrations have gathered international criticism from numerous human rights groups.

“I hope that at the end of the day, we speak of strengthening public education … and the end of profit [in private education],” said one of the leading student organizers, Gabriel Boric to AFP.

A Chilean judge has ordered the arrest of eight former police and army officials for kidnapping a US hiker, Boris Weisfeiler, during the Pinochet regime.

The Princeton University professor went missing in 1985 while hiking on his own through the Chilean Andes. Although the country’s officials formerly claimed that he had drowned in a nearby river, judge Jorge Zepeda used evidence from declassified US files to charge the former officers with “aggravated kidnapping” and “complicity”.

According to the declassified files, Mr. Weisfeiler was abducted and brought to a secret police torture centre in Colonia Dignidad, approximately 350km south of the country’s capital, Santiago. The files also suggested that the hiker was arrested by police of the military because he was dressed in camouflage, leading the former officials to think he was an informant. Allegedly, Mr. Weisfeiler was brought to Colonia Dignidad where he was tortured and questioned.

The charges are believed to be the beginning of a resolution that the family of Mr. Weisfeiler has been waiting for since the professor’s disappearance in 1985. His sister, Olga, has been retracing her brother’s route and searching for answers since then. “It has been a very challenging 27 years for me and my family since Boris disappeared,” she told the BBC.

The charges are part of a long line of re-addressing human rights violations of the Pinochet regime. According to Chilean law, a case needs to be deemed a human rights violation before it can be taken to the commission. Olga Weisfeiler submitted a report to the Chilean human rights commission, known as ‘La Comision’, on 4^th March, 2010.

Currently in the country, an estimated 350 cases involving around 700 military officials and civilians of the Pinochet regime remain open. During the 1973-1990 rule, approximately 3,000 people were disappeared or killed. Colonia Dignidad was one of the facilities that was allegedly used during the regime and was able to operate as a “state within a state”, granting it impunity at the time.

The colony was finally investigated in 2005 by Chilean authorities and was made to apologise for its human rights violations.

A reported 139 people were arrested in Chile’s capital on Thursday as protesters were evicted from three schools that they were occupying.

During the high school occupations, referred to as ‘tomas’ (Spanish for ‘takeovers’), students refused to leave the premises of the establishments and were received with tear gas and pressurised water hoses.

The recent occupation of eight schools came after student representatives rejected proposals that classes continue, made by the city mayor, Pablo Zalaquett. The representatives of the schools told reporters that the point of the ‘tomas’ would be lost if classes were to continue.

The president of the Student Federation of Universidad de Chile (FECH) told the press that the students do not enjoy occupying the schools, but insisted that their demands were fair.

“We know that the struggle is hard and often has costs, but we believe that if we do not try the cost for Chile will be much higher,” he added.

Some of the other demands of the students include increased minimum wage in order to live while in school as well as free tuition.

“I think access to education is a human right. They (the government) have not offered us anything that is concrete enough to stop the occupations,” student Darío Del Valle, told The Santiago Times.

Mayor Zalaquett defended the recent forced evictions of four of the eight schools as he believed the students were going to call reinforcements and escalate in violence.

“My role is to guarantee education for the thousands of students who just want to study,” he told reporters.

Students are also protesting the controversial “Hinzpeter Law” which proposes to increase punishment for unauthorised protests and occupations. The law, named after the Interior Minister Rodrigo Hinzpeter, would mean that any occupation of public property would be deemed criminal and violators could see up to three years in prison.

On Tuesday, Amnesty International, Greenpeace, and Acción (an association of Chilean NGOs) protested saying that the proposed law will infringe on the freedom of assembly.

To date, the bill has been approved by the Civil Security Committee in the country’s Chamber of Deputies and it will soon be debated.

So far, students have not shown signs of halting their protests. Currently, the only other school that was scheduled for Thursday’s eviction, Barros Borgoño, remains occupied.

A group of experts from the United Nations met on Monday in Chile to analyse the country’s handling of those that were ‘disappeared’ during the Augusto Pinochet regime.

The visit from the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances will last from 13^th to 21^st August and will take a close at the Chile’s development with investigations and court proceedings for those missing, as well as reparations to the families. The group will visit memorial sites and meet with state officials as well as academics and various representatives of other UN agencies.

“This report will also serve for advice and recommendations to the state on how it should be advancing,” stated a representative of the UN’s South American Commission of Human Rights to the Santiago Times.

The group is five experts from around the world, including: Mr. Olivier de Frouville (France), Mr. Ariel Dulitzky (Argentina), Ms. Jasminka Dzumhur (Bosnia and Herzegovina), Mr. Osman El-Haije (Lebanon) and Mr. Jeremy Sarkin (South Africa).

Amnesty International Chile reported that during the 17 year dictatorship, there were 3,216 cases of executions or forced disappearances and 38,254 cases of political imprisonment and torture.

Senators are calling for urgent reform of the water code in Chile to prioritise human and agricultural use following a serious drought. One hundred and eight areas have been declared under a state of emergency and ten more are zones of agrilcultural catastrophe.

Senator Guido Girardi , from the Partido Por la Democracia has drawn up a law for the nationalisation of water supplies and on Monday many legislators spoke in support of the change.

The current drought threatens to spread beyond the current zone, further threatening dwindling water resources and pushing up food prices.

“The lack of water, exacerbated by an increasing global population means it is an increasingly scare resource in high demand. This will be continue to be a big problem in the future,” warned Giradi yesterday in a press release.

“Water must be a human right, not a commodity,” he added, in reference to the private companies who own water.

Secretary General of the Access to Water, Land and Environmental Protection Movement (Modatima) also emphasised the need for the state to guarantee access to water supplies;

“It is fundamental to position water as a fundamental and inalienable human right,” he said.

He added that groups making large profits from the water business were guilty of “committing crimes against humanity.”

The government responded by announcing the start of construction of four new planned reservoirs and says it will build 11 more over the next 10 years, increasing state water storage capacity by 50%.

The next zones facing the biggest risk from drought are the central northern regions of Coquimbo and Valparaíso.

On Thursday, Chile’s National Corporation for Indigenous Development (CONADI) submitted a proposal for an indigenous consultation law to the Human Rights Committee in the Senate. It comes after a series of recent protests arising as conflict has escalated between the Mapuche indigenous groups and police.

The law hopes to open more dialogue between the government and indigenous communities to improve land conditions as well as human rights abuses.

According to the Santiago Times, CONADI director, Jorge Retamal stated that the “document is very important for the country and for our native people”.

Social Development Minister, Joaquín Lavín, presented the proposal with Rematal on Wednesday at the UN’s International Labour Organisation (ILO) headquarters in Santiago. The proposal hopes to directly address land use, based on the ILO’s Indigenous and Tribal People’s Convention 169, which was ratified in 1991. The convention was originally created to ensure that natives could “exercise control over their own institutions, ways of life and economic development and to maintain and develop their identities, language and religions, within the framework of the States in which they live”.

The proposed law hopes to replace the current law, Decree 124, which has been said to not be up to Convention 169 standards. The current law was enacted in 2009, yet the indigenous communities and other groups claimed that they were never consulted beforehand.

This new law would address a wider range of social issues. The executive director of Amnesty International Chile, Ana Piquer, explained how “[these] policies range from the social aspects, to security to development” and also emphasised how the right to consultation was important in Chile especially with current projects that impact the land rights.

“For example, in the context of the Mapuche conflict, the right of consultation is crucial when solving conflicts such as the long term problems of land restitution,” she added.

This proposed law comes after last week President Piñera announced his “Plan Araucanía” which hopes to address the various challenges that face the Chilean Mapuche. The Plan includes a school, hospitals and compensation for indigenous members who were attacked by Carabinero police.

A protest by secondary school students in Chile on Wednesday resulted in violent confrontation between demonstrators and police. More than 75 people were arrested and an estimated 49 members of the police force injured.

The Asamblea Coordinadora de Estudiantes Secundarios (ACES) organised the protest, in which an estimated 5,000 secondary school students participated.

Protestors echoed demands that have been raised in other student protests throughout the past year in Chile. Students have taken to the streets to call for free and high quality public university education. Yesterday’s protest is not the first of recent demonstrations to end in violence.

Yesterday’s protest, though mainly organised by and composed of secondary school students, also counted with the support of the Confederación de Estudiantes de Chile (CONFECH), a university student group. University and secondary school student movements have supported each other in repeated protests since May 2011.

On Wednesday, the secondary school students gathered in Santiago’s Plaza Italia, with the intention of marching down the Alameda – the principal avenue in Santiago – towards the Plaza Los Héroes.

Authorities had denied authorisation for a protest on the Alameda. They gave the ACES two alternative options for protest locations, but the organisation rejected both.

When students began marching on the Alameda, the Special Forces responded with water canons and tear gas. Tear gas was also released near the headquarters of the Federación de Estudiantes de Chile (FECH), another university student group that has been highly involved in this year’s protests and supported ACES’ mobilisation on Wednesday.

Students responded to police action by throwing stones and sticks. The police response forced protestors to relocate the demonstration to the Parque Bustamante. An estimated 49 members of the police force were injured, with at least one in serious condition. Injuries were also reported among protestors, and 75 of the demonstrators were arrested.

Protesters also barricaded streets and blocked traffic, and some damage to public buildings was reported. Private vehicles and businesses also suffered damages.

The destruction escalated when several, yet unidentified, persons – allegedly numbering near 40 – set fire to three buses. The Ministry of Transport stated that the protestors stopped the buses and forced drivers and passengers to exit the bus before lighting them on fire.

In a press conference, Santiago Mayor Cecilia Pérez estimated that the damages resulting from the bus burning will cost the city around US$834,000; no injuries were reported in connection to the burning buses.

Speaking for the protestors, ACES spokeswoman Eloísa González accused the Special Forces of staging the burning of the buses in order to be able to suppress the protest with more force. She stated, “There are infiltrations from the Special Forces, with the intent to interfere in the manifestations and to try to restrict the free will of the students.”

The student leader continued, “We do not have clarity about who are these hooded figures, and how these violent acts have occurred. I am very concerned by the attitude of the government to want to individualise, to stage set-ups, to take social and student movements out of focus”.

Minister of the Interior Rodrigo Hinzpeter labelled these accusations “ridiculous”. Santiago Mayor Pérez also criticised that “this is not a social movement that defends ideas, it is a political movement” and accused that student groups, “do not take responsibility, neither for legal marches nor for illegal marches”.

President Sebastián Piñera’s government has declared that some protestors will face charges. Government spokesman Andrés Chadwick stated, “the leaders that call these illegal marches know the results they are going to provoke… they cannot exempt themselves from the responsibility that they have”.

Chadwick further stated, “We [the government] are going to act with all the rigor of the law”.

Protests also occurred in other Chilean cities, including La Serena, Viña del Mar, and Valdivia. At least fifty other protestors were arrested in these demonstrations across Chile, and three other injuries have been reported.

In an attempt to alleviate overcrowded prisons, the Chilean government began to release and deport foreign prisoners who had mostly been sentenced on drug trafficking charges.

At 11am, 82 Peruvian women and 41 men were transported to the Chacalluta border crossing with Peru where they underwent medical checks and agreed to not return to Chile for 10 years.

The Santiago Times reports that 14 more Peruvians received official pardon from the Chilean government and will be released on Wednesday. Another 122 prisoners will be set free on Thursday, bringing the total number of freed prisoners to 258.

Prisoners are being released as part of an amnesty act passed by Chilean Congress in April. At the time that the legislation was approved by the House of Representatives, the prison population was estimated to be 52,000, and prisons were said to be over capacity by 60%.

In total, 1,066 foreign nationals, a large majority of whom are Bolivian and Peruvian, will be sent to their countries to finish serving their sentences.