SANTIAGO – Chilean far-right presidential candidate Johannes Kaiser defended the use of lethal force against criminals in an AFP interview Thursday (Friday Manila time) and said he would deport migrants with criminal records to El Salvador’s brutal anti-gang prison.
Kaiser, 49, has tapped into widespread frustration among Chilean voters about crime and immigration.
In the last days of campaigning ahead of the first round of the election on November 16 he has narrowed the gap with the two frontrunners, Jeannette Jara, a communist representing a broad center-left coalition, and fellow far-right candidate Jose Antonio Kast.
Kast is seen as less extreme than Kaiser.
Kaiser shot to fame as a YouTuber who railed against feminists, migrants and critics of the country’s late military dictator Augusto Pinochet before entering politics.
In an interview on his campaign bus he told AFP his goal was to protect the human rights of “law-abiding citizens” and not “preventing the attacker from getting shot.” AFP
“Preventing someone from mugging you at night, stabbing you in the back, raping your wife in your own home, or sexually assaulting your daughter at school: those kinds of things are protecting human rights,” he argued.
The spread to Chile of organized crime gangs originating in Venezuela, Peru and other countries has sown terror among the population, causing a lurch to the right.
Kaiser added that he wanted to emulate US President Donald Trump by sending “illegal foreigners with criminal records found in Chile” to El Salvador’s sprawling Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) where prisoners are kept incommunicado, without being charged.
El Salvador’s iron-fisted President Nayib Bukele struck a pact with Trump earlier this year to incarcerate 252 Venezuela migrants deported from the United States at CECOT.
Some claimed they were tortured during their four months in the mega-prison before being freed and returning to Venezuela in a swap deal with Washington. AFP
