Photographer risks losing eye after being hit by policeman during protest

Reporters Without Borders is outraged by the way a policeman on horseback struck photographer Víctor Salas several times with a metal riding crop while he was covering a protest yesterday in Valparaíso, a city to the west of Santiago. Salas, who works for the Spanish news agency EFE, has been hospitalised and risks using the use of his right eye as a result of the blows.

Yesterday's incident occurred while political and union activists, students and health workers were staging a march near the national assembly building in Valparaíso during a visit by President Michelle Bachelet to address parliamentarians. Gen. Jaime Vasconcelos, the head of the local mounted police unit, was quoted in press reports as saying the clashes took place when demonstrators tried to get through security barriers. Three people were injured in the course of the police operation and around 100 arrests were made.

Salas, who was photographing the events, was hit in the eye and over the eye by a riding crop during a mounted police charge. He was rushed to a hospital in the nearby town of Viña del Mar where doctors diagnosed "severe bruising to the right eye, with risk of functional and organic loss, and uncertain prognosis."