In less than 24 hours, three Chilean universities have suspended in-person activities due to a bomb threat and threats received through social media and emails of armed attacks against the student community. The messages were sent by unknown individuals and one of them, titled “I will carry out a massacre,” warned that the attack would be carried out “with a gun and a knife” at the University of Santiago de Chile (Usach) this Friday, August 21. “I am a member of a satanic terrorist organization,” said the email that contained a photograph of a firearm and a bladed weapon.
The authorities of Usach decided to close the campus, located in the municipality of Estación Central, during this day. In a statement, Vice-Rector Carlos Yévenes Ortega said the decision was due to “security reasons and with the purpose of safeguarding the integrity of our community.”
The threat was joined by a notice of the installation of explosive devices in different areas of the academic premises, which caused a massive police operation and the evacuation of students, teachers, and other workers on Thursday. Officers from the Special Police Operations Group (GOPE) of Carabineros ruled out the presence of explosive devices.
The episode gained greater relevance this Friday, after two other universities, Diego Portales and Alberto Hurtado, decided to hold remote activities instead of in-person ones for security reasons. The intimidating messages occur the same week that a student from the Instituto Nacional de Santiago, one of Chile’s emblematic public schools, was detained by Carabineros for threatening a shooting, which led to the interruption of classes on June 12. The 20-year-old young man showed in a video sent via WhatsApp the ammunition with which he supposedly intended to carry out the shooting.
The anonymous threats are similar to those received by several schools in Chile and Argentina in April, which according to investigators could have been due to a viral challenge among young people. In that case, they were not only sent through social media or emails but also painted on the walls of educational establishments with messages such as, for example, “Thursday, shooting, do not come.” This caused educational institutions to suspend their classes preventively.
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It also happened at a university in Coquimbo, where a 19-year-old student was detained after claiming on social media that there would be a shooting. It occurred in mid-April and the man, when questioned by the police, said he had not taken the situation seriously and that his intention was to joke.
In Chile, the event has caused alarm, especially after an 18-year-old student stabbed a teacher to death in Calama, a mining city 1,500 kilometers north of Santiago, and injured several people at the end of March. This crime was followed by other violent events involving children and adolescents within schools, such as a 13-year-old student who attacked another student, seven years old, with a bladed weapon at a school in the La Granja commune at the end of July.
The crisis over school violence has led to the creation of a law called Protected Schools, promoted by the government of José Antonio Kast and passed by Congress in early June. The initiative includes measures such as backpack checks for students and the loss for five years of social benefits such as access to free university education for students who have been convicted of serious crimes.