The senator of Frente Amplio (FA) Charles Carrera made a request for reports to the Prosecutor’s Office Over the homicides that took place in Uruguay during 2023. The request falls within the doubts that the left coalition has regarding the official figures presented by the Ministry of Interior last week in the Parliament.
In it Wide Front there are doubts. This is what the deputy had already expressed Nicolas Viera regarding the figures of crimes and complaints presented by the Ministry of the Interior within the framework of the appearance of its owner, Nicolas Martinelli; and that’s what Carrera also maintained.
The senator’s belief is that either there were recording or counting errors; or the figures were “made up” to show greater achievements of the management in a sensitive topic for the Uruguayan population such as security. For this reason, he requested reports from the Prosecutor’s Office on the number of homicides registered by the justice system during 2023, in order to contrast the number with the 382 murders counted by the Crime Observatory of the Ministry of the Interior.
“Journalists who follow security issues have reported 399 homicides. It turns out that the Minister of the Interior presented 382. We presented a request for access to public information to the Attorney General’s Office because we have detected that in 2022, for example, the ministry told us that 383 homicides had unfortunately been committed, and then we made a request for access to the Prosecutor’s Office and we saw 389,” Carrera noted in this regard.
The legislator was not only struck by the difference of 17 murders between the media and the government, but also by the increase in deaths classified as doubtful — which do not fall within the homicide count. According to him, during the administration of the Wide Front This category represented 20% of violent deaths, while today they are almost 60%.
Due to these discrepancies in the information, Carrera also stated that the Crime Observatory should leave the orbit of the Ministry of the Interior, and that it would give more guarantees that it would function within the National Institute of Statistics (INE).
The FA’s distrust in official figures
Already last Friday, before Martinelli’s appearance in Parliament, the Broad Front deputy Nicolas Viera made public the doubts that the left-wing coalition maintains regarding the official figures of the Ministry of the Interior: “For us, homicides continue to grow, the numbers we have are much higher,” he said in dialogue with Telemundo.
Although he did not dare to give a specific explanation as to what the reason for this difference could be—at least, prior to the appearance of the head of the Interior—the legislator, for Cologne He maintained that they will be attentive to “what is the way they register them.”
“I think there is a big difference there. We know that there are prosecutors who have complained because the numbers of the Ministry of Interior do not agree with Prosecutor’s Office, among other things because they are miscalculated. What is recorded in the ministry as theft is sometimes plunder,” he considered, and insisted on the possible presence of a “mistake”.
According to the government report, last year there were 382 homicides, just one less than in 2022. The plunder, For their part, they fell from 23,427 to 22,390 in 2023 – an annual reduction of 4.5%; and the thefts They also decreased, from 115,883 to 112,747—2.8% less.
Already at the venue, Viera questioned the figures and pointed out that “reality comes face to face with the speech or the story that the government came to plant today,” and ironically: “According to the government’s story, now they steal less from you because supposedly the The robberies went down, but they kill you more.”
On the other hand, the Broad Front considered that there are more seizures of drug “because it circulates more” than in previous administrations and stated: “This government has a record of increasing the number of dubious deaths. From 102 to 203 they went from 2020 to 2023.”
Source: Ambito
