Clashes as 100,000 Chilean students rally in protest

Aug 9, 2011, 20:06 GMT

Santiago - Around 100,000 Chilean youths marched Tuesday through central Santiago to demand free education, part of a movement that has been organizing protests for months.

Hundreds of masked people clashed with police just a few blocks from the presidential palace, vandalized private property and set a car ablaze.

Chilean Interior Minister Rodrigo Hinzpeter condemned the violence, which he linked to the student movement.

'It is not just students who have rights. All other Chileans have them too,' he said. 'The time has come for students to reconsider. They are calling to marches that are beyond their control.'

Leaders of the student protest distanced themselves from the violence.

'They are not us!' university student leader Camila Vallejo wrote in her Twitter account.

Outside the capital, similar rallies were held in Valparaiso, Concepcion, La Serena and Copiapo.

Earlier, peaceful marchers walked past the Dario Salas School, where three minors have been on a hunger strike for 21 days to support student demands. Twenty-nine other schoolchildren are on hunger strikes across Chile.

Chilean student protests started three months ago and have already led to a change of minister in President Sebastian Pinera's government.

In Chile, most school education and all universities require monthly fees.

Last week, close to 900 people were arrested and 90 police officers were injured in student protests. In recent months, hundreds of thousands of people have poured onto the streets to support the movement, whose rallies have drawn the biggest crowds for protests in Chile since the end of the military dictatorship in 1990.

The ongoing protests have eroded Pinera's approval rating, which sank to 26 per cent according to an opinion poll published last week, the of any Chilean president since 1990.