Chile - protestos - 22/05/2011

22/05/2011 - 13:20 | Luciana Taddeo | Buenos Aires

Violência em protestos aumenta no Chile
Enquanto o presidente chileno Sebastián Piñera realizava, neste sábado (21/05), um discurso de prestação de contas públicas, segundo manda a tradição desta data no Chile, as ruas das principais cidades do país foram tomadas por manifestações. Inicialmente programadas como pacíficas, elas irromperam em cenas de destruição de patrimônio público, saque a um estabelecimento comercial, dezenas de feridos e centenas de detidos.
Entre as principais reclamações dos membros de organizações sociais, sindicais, estudantis e outros cidadãos que participaram dos protestos, estava a aprovação de um megacomplexo hidroelétrico na Patagônia, conhecido como HidroAysén. Eles também reivindicavam melhores condições trabalhistas, o fim da privatização da educação, e a criticavam a ineficácia na reconstrução do país após o terremoto de fevereiro do ano passado.
http://operamundi.uol.com.br/conteudo/noticia/VIOLENCIA+EM+PROTESTOS+AUMENTA+NO+CHILE_12094.shtml

21 May 2011
Chile: Valparaiso protesters in clashes with police
Many said they had come to protest against a hydro-electric dam project in southern Chile, which they say will destroy 6,000 hectares of forest.
Tradução livre
[Muitos disseram que vieram protestar contra um projeto de uma hidrelétrica no sul do Chile, a qual eles dizem ira destruir 6.000 hectares de floresta.]
Daniel Fernandez, the CEO of HidroAysen, says that the project is sustainable - and virtually unavoidable if Chile wants to meet its growing energy needs.
"The people who oppose the dams are people who don't share in the vision of development that Chile has adopted," says Mr Fernandez.
"They want conservation, but they don't take into account other citizens."
According to Mr Fernandez, by 2030 Chile will require three times as much energy as it does today.
He says the bulk of that new demand is due to home use, and public works projects, such as street lighting.
(...)
But Lily Schindele and others in the anti-dams movement say that the bulk of Chile's energy consumption is due to the country's vast copper mines in the northern Atacama Desert.
Environmentalist Juan Pablo Orrego has calculated that new mining projects will require approximately 12,000 additional megawatts of energy.
"Mining is the energy tension in Chile; without mining, there is no energy crisis," says Mr Orrego.
Scientists are concerned that dams will drastically alter the ecosystems of Patagonia, which oceanographer Giovanni Daneri says are unlike anything else on Earth.
"These are pristine places; some of them, no-one has ever even set foot there," he says.
The organisation Mr Daneri works for, Center for Research on Ecosystems of Patagonia, has calculated that Patagonia's fjords alone absorb the same amount of carbon dioxide that the entire country emits.
And those fjords are dependent on the health of the rivers that are now set to be dammed.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-13487338