Latest news with #GabrielBoric
The Sun
2 days ago
- Politics
- The Sun
Chile government proposes to legalize abortion up to 14 weeks
SANTIAGO: Chile's government said Wednesday it had introduced a bill in Congress to legalize abortions up to 14 weeks of pregnancy, a key pledge of left-wing President Gabriel Boric during his 2022 election campaign. In Chile, abortions are only permitted for three reasons: a threat to the life of the mother, serious malformation of the foetus, or rape. 'Thirty-six years after therapeutic abortions (terminations due to medical necessity) were banned in our country... we are opening the debate in Congress,' Minister for Women Antonia Orellana told reporters. She was referring to dictator Augusto Pinochet's 1989 repeal of a law allowing abortions on health grounds, which ushered in a total ban on terminations for over 25 years. The bill unveiled by the government on Wednesday comes a year after Boric announced plans to decriminalize all abortions. His minority Frente Amplio (Broad Front) party faces an uphill battle to get the bill through parliament, with the conservative opposition vehemently opposed to expanding abortion rights. Orellana admitted it would be 'naive' to think that abortions would be legal before Boric's presidency ends in March 2026. Decriminalizing abortion under all circumstances is a long-standing demand of feminist groups in Chile. A poll by the Centre for Public Studies showed, however, that only 34 percent of Chileans back the right to abortions regardless of circumstances, whereas 50 percent believe terminations should only be allowed in special cases. Boric, who became Chile's youngest-ever leader in 2021 aged 35, failed in his bid to put expanded abortion rights in a new proposed constitution in 2022. Voters however rejected the draft charter.
Bloomberg
5 days ago
- Business
- Bloomberg
Chile's Leftist Presidential Hopefuls Spar Over SQM-Codelco Deal
Chile's left-leaning presidential contenders clashed over a landmark deal signed last year between lithium supplier SQM and state-owned Codelco, highlighting differences ahead of the sector's primary vote. 'I am not willing to have the Chilean government form an alliance with SQM,' Jeannette Jara, who most recently served as President Gabriel Boric's labor minister, said in an ADN radio debate Monday.
Yahoo
24-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Brazil's president seeks ‘indestructible' links with China amid Trump trade war
The Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has heralded his desire to build 'indestructible' relations with China, as the leaders of three of Latin America's biggest economies flew to Beijing against the backdrop of Donald Trump's trade war and the profound international uncertainty his presidency has generated. Lula touched down in China's capital on Sunday for a four-day state visit, accompanied by 11 ministers, top politicians and a delegation of more than 150 business leaders. Hours later Colombia's president, Gustavo Petro, arrived, making a beeline for the Great Wall of China and declaring his desire for the South American country to not 'only look one way' towards the US. 'We have decided to take a profound step forward between China and Latin America,' Petro said. Chile's Gabriel Boric has also travelled to Beijing to attend Tuesday's meeting between members of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (Celac) and Chinese representatives. Addressing hundreds of Chinese and Brazilian business chiefs in the Chinese capital on Monday, Lula hit out at Trump's tariffs, saying he could not accept the measures 'that the president of the US tried to impose on planet Earth, from one day to the next'. The Brazilian leftist said he hoped to build an 'indispensable' relationship with China – already Brazil's top trading partner – and heaped praise on his Communist party hosts as his officials announced $4.6bn (£3.5bn) of Chinese investment in their country. On Tuesday, Lula is scheduled to meet China's leader, Xi Jinping, who is expected to return the visit in July, when Xi travels to the Brics summit in Rio. 'China has often been treated as though it were an enemy of global trade when actually China is behaving like an example of a country that is trying to do business with countries which, over the past 30 years, were forgotten by many other countries,' said Lula, who is expected to seek major Chinese investments in Brazilian infrastructure projects. The visit of the three South American leaders to China underlines the east Asian country's rapidly growing footprint in a region where, over the past 25 years, it has become a voracious consumer of commodities such as soybeans, iron ore and copper. Chinese companies have also poured into the region. Electric cars made by the Chinese manufacturer BYD can be seen cruising the streets of Brazilian cities, from Brasília to Boa Vista, deep in the Amazon. The visits also come amid global jitters over Trump's volatile presidency and Latin American anxiety and suspicion over the US president's plans for a region where he has threatened to 'take back' the Panama canal – by force if necessary. Matias Spektor, an international relations professor at the Getúlio Vargas Foundation, a Brazilian thinktank and university, said the presence of the three South American presidents in Beijing underscored how, in the Trump era, with the US in retreat, such leaders were increasingly reaching out to other parts of the world. Related: US-Panama relationship was 'very strong'. Then Trump upended the diplomatic playing board 'It tells us that countries around the world are willing to go out … to exploit all the opportunities that are there in the international system – and there are many. Because, as America turns away from free trade and as America adopts a policy that is … instead of transactional, predatory – countries have an incentive to engage with those who are transactional,' Spektor said, pointing to recent trips Lula made to Japan and Vietnam. '[Lula] is very proactively trying to open trade for Brazil at a time when America is undoing the previous rules of the game, and the new rules of the game are not yet born … These [Latin American] countries want to shape the norms that are likely to emerge now. And those rules are not going to emerge in Washington DC. They are going to be made globally,' Spektor added. Spektor said Latin American leaders such as Lula had long considered the world a multipolar place. 'What happened on 20 January [with Trump's return to power] is that the barrage of policy change coming from Washington DC has accelerated the belief that was already in place that the axis of global power has for a while been moving towards the east, and somewhat towards the south.'
Japan Times
22-05-2025
- Japan Times
Chile weighs future of charming German village with dark past
With its pristine swimming pool, manicured lawns and lush forest backdrop, Villa Baviera, a German-themed settlement of 122 souls in southern Chile, looks like the perfect holiday getaway. But Colonia Dignidad, as it was previously known, is a byword for horror, as the former home of a brutal cult that was used for torturing and killing dissidents under the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. Twenty years after the cult leader, former Nazi German soldier Paul Schaefer, was jailed for the sexual abuse and torture of children at the colony, the Chilean state wants to turn it into a memorial for the victims of the country's 1973-1990 dictatorship. In June last year, President Gabriel Boric ordered that 116 hectares of the 4,800-hectare site, an area including the residents' homes, a hotel, a restaurant and several food processing factories, be expropriated to make way for a center of remembrance. But some of the inhabitants, who were separated from their families as children, subjected to forced labor, and in some cases sexually abused, say they are being victimized all over again. 'Heavy burden' Schaefer founded Colonia Dignidad in 1961 as an idyllic German family village — but instead abused, drugged and indoctrinated the few hundred residents and kept them as virtual slaves. The boundaries between abuser and abused were blurred, with the children of Schaefer's sidekicks counting themselves among his victims. Anna Schnellenkamp, the 48-year-old manager of the colony's hotel and restaurant, said she "worked completely free of charge until 2005," the year of Schaefer's arrest. "So much work I broke my back." Several years ago, Schnellenkamp, whose late father, Kurt Schnellenkamp, was jailed for five years for being an accomplice to Schaefer's abuse, finally found happiness. She got married, had a daughter and started to create new, happier memories in the colony, where everyone still communicates in German despite being conversant in Spanish. But she still views the settlement as part of her birthright. "The settlers know every detail, every building, every tree, including where they once suffered and were forced to work," she explained. Potato shed torture cell Around 3,200 people were killed and more than 38,000 people tortured during Chile's brutal dictatorship. An estimated 26 people disappeared in Colonia Dignidad, where a potato shed, now a national monument, was used to torture dozens of kidnapped regime opponents. But on the inside too, abuse was rife. Schaefer was captured in 2005 on charges of sexually abusing dozens of minors over nearly half a century. He died in prison five years later while in preventive custody. His arrest, and those of 20 other accomplices, marked a turning point for the colony, which had been rebranded Villa Baviera a decade previously. Suddenly, residents were free to marry, live with their children, send them to school and earn a paycheck. Some of the settlers returned to Germany. Others remained behind and built a thriving agribusiness and resort, where tourists can sample traditional German fare such as sauerkraut. Some residents feel that Chile, which for decades turned a blind eye to the fate of the enclave's children, now wants to make them pay for the sins of their fathers. "One feels a kind of revenge against us," said Markus Blanck, one of the colony's business directors, whose father was charged as an accomplice of Schaefer's abuse but died before being sentenced. The government argues the expropriations are in the public interest. "There is a national interest here in preserving our country's historical heritage," said Justice Minister Jaime Gajardo, assuring that those expropriated would be properly compensated. European-style memorial While several sites of torture under the Chilean dictatorship have been turned into memorial sites, Gajardo said the memorial at Villa Baviera would be the biggest yet, similar to those created at former Nazi concentration camps in Europe. It is not yet clear whether it will take the form solely of a museum or whether visitors will also be able to roam the site, including Schaefer's house and the infamous potato shed. The clock is ticking down for Boric to make the memorial a reality before his term runs out in March 2026. His government wants to proceed quickly, for fear the project could be buried by a future rightwing government loathe to dwell on the abuses of the Pinochet era.
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Business Standard
20-05-2025
- Business
- Business Standard
Andean aspirations: Why is India cosying up to Chile for a trade deal?
While both sides have shared trade interests such as agricultural products and services, the elephant in the room is Chiles expansive reserves of critical minerals, key among them being lithium New Delhi Listen to This Article While addressing a joint press conference during Chilean President Gabriel Boric's visit to New Delhi in April, Prime Minister Narendra Modi remarked that even though India and Chile are at different ends of the world map, separated by vast oceans, they still share unique natural similarities. 'The Himalayas of India and the Andes mountains of Chile have shaped the way of life in both countries for thousands of years… The great Chilean poet and Nobel Laureate Gabriela Mistral found inspiration in the ideas of Rabindranath Tagore and Aurobindo Ghosh. Similarly, Chilean literature has been appreciated in India too.
