In November 2005, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights condemned the Chilean State (Palamara Iribarne case vs. Chili), establishing mainly in said ruling that the structure of our military justice “supposes that, in general, its members are military personnel on active duty, they are hierarchically subordinate to superiors through the chain of command, their appointment does not depend on their competence professional and suitability to perform judicial functions, do not have sufficient guarantees of irremovability and do not have the legal training required to perform the position of judge or prosecutors. All of this means that these courts lack independence and impartiality.”
The year was 2010 and President Sebastián Piñera pointed out, at the time of sending the bill that modified the jurisdiction of military courts, that “this change guarantees due process, equality before the law and full compliance with international treaties.” ”, the central axis of said reform being the fact that from then on no civilian will be subject to the jurisdiction of military courts.
Six years later, under the Government of President Michelle Bachelet, following the path outlined by her predecessor in pursuit of perfecting military justice, a new modification was incorporated, expressly establishing that no civilian who is a victim or accused will be subject to jurisdiction. of military justice.
In recent weeks we have witnessed how, in the context of the processing of the bill that “establishes general rules on the use of force for personnel of the law enforcement and public security forces and the armed forces”, a group of deputies incorporated an indication so that given certain circumstances (states of constitutional exception, protection of border areas, among others) crimes committed by soldiers in the exercise of their functions (Armed Forces and Carabineros of Chile), are always heard by the courts military, even when the victim is a civilian.
This indication was declared inadmissible by the Chamber of Deputies, for distancing itself from the main ideas of the project. Scenario before which, a group of senators has announced that they will try in the coming days to reinstate said indication in the upper house.
Without a doubt, the current scenario is highly worrying, since a legislative proposal of these characteristics constitutes an enormous setback in the progress that our country, transversally in political terms, has been consolidating in recent decades in order to modernize and adjust to democratic standards military courts. It is not trivial that with the return to democracy, Chile has taken a qualitative step by restructuring its criminal justice administration system, reflecting this great decision adopted in 2000, the subsequent reforms to military justice that former presidents Piñera and Bachelet led in the last decade.
It is to be hoped that in the Senate rationality will prevail and purely symbolic considerations with a marked populist tinge will be left aside, and the criterion that our country has been adopting regarding maintaining military jurisdiction in a restrictive and exceptional scope will be maintained, and particularly with the commitment we have acquired to respect and guarantee due process.
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