Violent protests erupted on Friday in Chile in the southern city of Panguipulli after a police officer shot a young street juggler for what had been reported as his refusal to give the officer identification papers.
Videos emerged showing the cop firing shots at Francisco Martínez Romero, 27, as he was juggling two “blunt” machetes made of tin. In response, the juggler ran toward the cop firing the bullets, who shot him in the chest.
Protestors set several government buildings on fire, leaving the city – a tourist destination known for hot springs and glacier-fed lakes – without many public services.
As the Trends Journal has been reporting since 2019, massive demonstrations were raging throughout much of the country as hundreds of thousands were taking to the streets in protest of government corruption, lack of basic living standards, police brutality, violence, and crime.
However, as with many nations – such as India, France, Lebanon, Columbia, Algeria, South Africa, etc., where protests were also raging throughout 2019 for the same reasons – when governments launched the COVID War and imposed draconian shelter-in-place orders, they banned the protests.
“There’s a lot of tension in general in Chile,” Boris Van Der Spek, the editor of Chile Today, told Al Jazeera. ”There’s a lot of human rights violations, oppression by the Chilean police in the shanty towns near the capital, which we never hear of.”
Protests also broke out in Santiago, and Reuters, citing local media, reported that protesters set barricades ablaze and threw rocks at police.
TREND FORECAST: One of our Top Trends for 2021 was “New World Disorder 2.0.”
The riots and demonstrations that were spreading across the globe in 2019, as millions took the streets in protests, which were banned by governments when the COVID War broke out, will again resume.
National unrest will escalate into civil wars, some of which will spread into regional wars. The immigration crisis will dramatically escalate as millions flee their embattled countries seeking safe-haven nations. New, anti-establishment, anti-immigration, anti-rich (“off with their heads”) class-warfare political parties will be formed.
