Chile's Supreme Court orders police protection for student leader after tweeted death threats

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Associated Press

Chile's Supreme Court orders police protection for student leader after tweeted death threats
By Associated Press

5:20 p.m. EDT, August 23, 2011
SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) — A student protest leader in Chile now has police protection after receiving death threats by Twitter.

Camila Vallejo is president of the University of Chile's student federation. She has repeatedly used Twitter to mobilize huge marches for education reform.

But she also has received death threats through social networks — including a message from a high-ranking culture ministry official who invoked the infamous phrase Gen. Augusto Pinochet used while toppling President Salvador Allende in 1973. Pinochet was recorded telling his troops: "If you kill the bitch, you do away with the litter."

Chile's Supreme Court ordered police to protect Vallejo and her parents. The court also sanctioned the official who sent the message.

Read more: http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/nationworld/sns-ap-lt-chile-student-leader,0,7284210.story

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Read an excellent post and thread from rabs on this unusual Chilean student protester in the Latin America forum:

Meet the Communist who has Pinera in a serious political predicament
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=405x54799

[rabs]

1. Right-wing government invoking politics of fear

There is speculation tonight in Santiago that the Pinera government may invoke the Pinochet-era National Security Law in order to limit/quash demonstrations scheduled for the two-day national strike that begins tomorrow at 9 a.m. Santiago time.

Carabineros police today were being dispatched to guard railroad, subway, bus and airport terminals to prevent "sabotage." Hospitals, electricity companies are alerted too. There were some Carabinero sweeps today to detain "anarchists" before tomorrow.

There is a general sensation of near panic among the right-wing pinera cabinet ministers, some who were openly pinochetista.

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There is a bad mistranslation by the Associated Press in the story.

"If you kill the bitch, you do away with the litter."

The saying, attributed to Chilean campesinos, is; "Mata la perra y se acaba la leva."

A more correct translation should have been:

"Kill the bitch and (the pack of macho dogs following it) will disappear."

Nothing to do with the litter. Typical AP screwup.

[Judi Lynn]

2. Such a clear example of AP at its best delivering our news to us, as 1 of only several wire services

the US public has to believe or not believe for all its conventional Latin America news coverage.

Makes you wonder if this obnoxious blunder was intentional or not. Any crap they feed us which gets challenged can only be explained, if challenged, as "whoops, our mistake."

AP's version simply doesn't make a lot of sense, does it?

Very interesting learning there is unrest among the Pinochetistas. It's time the other criminals started meeting a little consequence of their own poor moral histories working for that bloodthirsty maggot put in place and lustily backed by the Nixon adminstration forward as he tortured and mutilated, murdered and terrorized his way through his Presidency.

Thank you for throwing some light on this. We need something beyond our own corporately manipulated crap to explain what the hell is going on there. (They did so damned well during Pinochet, keeping the whole country clueless while Pinochet even swept out and included U.S. American people staying there, tortured and murdered them for merely knowing too much. Meanwhile we all sat here in the States on our thumbs, ignorant as the day we were born concerning what was being done there in our names. What a wonder, knowing how to read what our courageous public watchdogs share with us!)

Viva, Camila Vallejo.