PARAGUAYAN ACTIVIST KILLED, 30 HURT IN RAID AFTER PROTESTERS STORM PARLIAMENT

Rodrigo Quintana, leader of the Opposition Liberal Party’s youth branch, was shot and killed as police searched the party’s premises in Asuncion

Asuncion, April 1: Police apparently shot dead a Paraguayan Opposition political activist on Saturday in a raid after rioters stormed Congress in anger at a contested electoral reform, officials said.

Authorities said 30 people, including some opposition leaders, were injured in unrest in the capital after senators approved the bill in a secretive vote.

Opposition leaders denounced the vote on Friday as a “parliamentary coup”, saying it could clear the way for a return to dictatorship in the landlocked South American nation of 6.8 million people.

Protesters broke into the Congress late on Friday, ransacking lawmakers’ offices and starting fires

after senators approved a proposal to allow the President to run for re-election. President Horacio Cartes is seeking to amend the Constitution to enable himself to run for office again in 2018 after his current term ends.

Rodrigo Quintana, 25, leader of the Opposition Liberal Party’s youth branch, was shot and killed as police searched the party’s premises in Asuncion, party leader Efrain Alegre said.

The interior ministry said “the authorities are investigating the circumstances of the death, which is presumed to have occurred at the hands of a member of the National Police... We are going to establish what happened, and those responsible will be brought to justice.”

Police raided the party offices after activists took refuge there during a night of riots, Mr Alegre said.

The injured included three lawmakers, according to firefighters and an opposition senator. Police said 211 people were arrested, some of them minors.

Hundreds of protesters clashed with riot police, who used mounted units and water cannon to disperse them.