In June 1971, a small group known as the Vanguardia Organizada del Pueblo (VOP), founded among others by two former MIR militants expelled from the Organization in 1969, conducted the abduction and murder of the former Minister of Interior Affairs during the Christian Democratic government, Edmundo Pérez Zujovic. The Minister had been singled out by sectors of the oppositional left and worker-unions as the top government politician supposedly ordering the repressive actions which culminated in the Masacre de Puerto Montt on March 9, 1969. At this massacre, nine working-class men and woman were killed by police in Southern Chile. Following the assassination of Perez Zijovic, the MIR Political Bureau condemned this action in "categorical" terms in a special issued communiqué.