Chile president vows action on youth's killing

SANTIAGO: Chilean President Sebastian Pinera pledged Sunday to get to the bottom of the killing of a teen during a mass protest as student leaders agreed to meet with the president on their grievances.

Manuel Gutierrez was shot to death Thursday during clashes between police and protesters in the town of Macul, east of Santiago, one of hundreds of places around the country where violence broke out during the general strike.

"The government is doing everything necessary to shed light on the circumstances and the responsibility for that death," Pinera said at a public event.

Pinera's conservative government has faced a wave of social protests, including massive marches by students demanding major educational reforms to make a free, quality university education available to all Chileans.

The unrest culminated in a 48-hour general strike Wednesday and Thursday called by the country's largest labor federation that quickly turned violent.

In addition to the death of the 16-year-old Gutierrez, hundreds of people were injured and 1,400 detained.

Pinera called for a "constructive dialogue aimed at finding solutions," and announced he was rescinding a seven percent health insurance tax on the pensions of poor senior citizens.

The Confederation of Students of Chile accepted Pinera's invitation to meet on Tuesday.

"We hope it is not just words and that the intention is to put something new on the table," said Grigorio Jackson, a student leader.

The student union has called a day of "national mourning" for Gutierrez on Monday.

Camila Vallejo, another student leader, vowed to confront the government "face to face" over the death.

"They have to take responsibility for this, one way or another, because it cannot go unpunished," she said.

Witnesses said the youth was pushing his brother in a wheelchair on a crosswalk when he was hit in the chest by a bullet.

His family blamed the police, but they denied it and turned over the weapons carried by the local police to investigators.

The publicly funded National Human Rights Institute demanded an internal investigation by the Carabineros, Chile's national police force, warning that public confidence in the police and the government was at stake.

Copyright AFP (Agence France-Presse), 2011