Chile Funeral for U.S. Resident Disrupted

Riot police firing tear gas and water cannon Wednesday disrupted a funeral procession of 2,000 mourning a U.S. permanent resident who was allegedly burned to death by soldiers during a demonstration.

Four people were reported injured after police moved in while the coffin of 19-year-old Rodrigo Rojas de Negri, a Chilean-born resident of Washington, D.C., was carried out of a building housing the Chilean Human Rights Commission after the funeral.

Mourners shouting “We want justice” and “Fascism killed him” began yelling “assassins” as the police fired tear-gas canisters and jets of water into the crowd, which was packed into the narrow street to await the start of the funeral march.

Hearse Speeds Away

The hearse carrying the coffin sped off, followed by mourners who managed to get into cars. Eight motorcycle policemen and two police buses quickly joined the cortege, whisking it to the city cemetery 25 blocks away.

Eyewitnesses said police also used tear gas to disperse another crowd that planned to join the funeral march along its route.

U.S. Ambassador Harry G. Barnes Jr. and his wife, Elizabeth, along with diplomats from France, Italy and Spain, watched from the offices of the Human Rights Commission as the trouble flared.

They were later escorted out of the building through a back door as youths shouted: “Ambassador, help us get rid of Pinochet,” referring to Chile’s military president, Augusto Pinochet.

Witnesses have charged that Rojas and Carmen Quintana Arancibia, an 18-year-old student, were seized by soldiers, beaten to the ground with rifle butts, doused with a flammable liquid and set afire last week during anti-government protests.

Military Denies Role

The Chilean military has denied any involvement in the burning incident.

Rojas, a free-lance photographer who spent the last decade in the United States, died Sunday after allegedly being denied a transfer to a first-class hospital. Quintana was still fighting for her life Wednesday.

On Monday, a civilian judge was appointed to investigate the incident.

In Washington, the State Department bluntly warned Chile’s military government that it views the investigation as a major test of the Pinochet government’s intention to improve its human rights record.

“If there is evidence of criminal wrongdoing, we expect to see prosecutions and convictions,” department spokesman Bernard Kalb said Wednesday.

Meanwhile, the Human Rights Commission reported another torching.

A spokesman charged that a man named Mario Antonio Araya Marchant was seized late Tuesday by men dressed in civilian clothes in Valparaiso, driven to a suburb and soaked with flammable liquid and set afire. He was reported to be in serious condition. Authorities declined comment.