The right to form organisations is largely respected in Chile. Legislation enacted in 2013 introduced a simple registration system that is applied in a non-discriminatory manner. The government does not exercise any powers to arbitrarily deny registration, deregister, or interfere with CSOs. Harassment, intimidation and attacks on human rights defenders are infrequent. When such attacks do occur, they tend to target indigenous leaders. For example, human rights defender and indigenous leader Juana Calfunao was the victim of judicial harassment and in 2015 she was arbitrarily arrested and beaten by the police while protesting against the construction of a road in the Mapuche community's ancestral lands.

Although demonstrations in Chile are generally allowed in practice, legislation governing public gatherings does not comply with international standards. The Supreme Decree 1086, originally issued by military dictator Augusto Pinochet, imposes strict authorisation requirements and gives powers to the police to dissolve or impede protests in cases of late notification. The relevant authority may also deny protests in spaces that could disrupt public transit. In practice, protests are frequently subject to time and place limitations. Protests are often peaceful, but reports indicate that agents provocateurs frequently disrupt protests, causing violence and destruction of property. Documentation of the disproportionate use of force by the police against peaceful protesters highlights that indigenous protests in southern Chile are especially targeted. For instance, in September 2015, the police used excessive force to disperse Mapuche community activists peacefully occupying a government building in the city of Temuco.

Limits to free expression in Chile stem from media ownership by a small group as a result of legislation enacted during the military regime. This lack of diversity has reduced the space for independent media in the country.Chile adopted an Access to Information Law in 2008, and rates of response to information requests are generally satisfactory. Although violence against journalists is rare in Chile, topics such as human rights violations committed during the dictatorship remain extremely sensitive. For example, a journalist investigating such issues was threatened, harassed and robbed in 2012. Criminal defamation is still in place and recently a court in Santiago convicted the directors of the newspaper El Ciudadano to 540 days of incarceration for the crime of aggravated defamation.