Chile plans jail for Pinochet men

[Judi Lynn]

Chile plans jail for Pinochet men
By Clinton Porteous
BBC correspondent, Santiago



35,000 people suffered abuse at the hand of officers in the regime
Chile has announced it is to build a new military prison mostly for officers convicted of human rights abuses during Gen Pinochet's dictatorship.

The decision follows a landmark ruling by the Supreme Court that has paved the way for more officers to be condemned.

But relatives of victims criticised the government's decision, saying military prisons offered special privileges.

There is expected to be a growing demand for space in military prisons and Chile has decided to act now.
(snip/...)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4038873.stm



Nixon/Kissinger's puppet dictator

Pinochet liked to say that no blade of grass moved in Chile without his order.
http://www.time.com/time/europe/magazine/article/0,13005,901020701-265371,00.html

[Judi Lynn]

1. U.S. Regime Change, Torture, and Murder in Chile

U.S. Regime Change, Torture, and Murder in Chile
by Jacob G. Hornberger, November 24, 2004


President Bush’s recent trip to South America provides a valuable foreign-policy lesson for Americans.

The president was greeted in Santiago, Chile, by some 30,000 angry demonstrators. But it was not only Bush’s invasion and war of aggression against Iraq that Chileans were angry about. Unlike so many Americans, the Chilean people have not fallen for the “We invaded Iraq to spread democracy” line that U.S. officials moved up to rationale number one after failing to find those infamous weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The reason? Chileans have not forgotten — and are still angry about — the U.S. government’s role in bringing about “regime change” in Chile in 1973. (Just as the Iranian people have not forgotten the U.S. government’s “regime change” in Iran in 1953.)

Chileans still remember that in the 1973 “regime change” in their country, the U.S. government played an active role in ousting their democratically elected president because he was a communist and replacing him with a brutal military dictator, Augustin Pinochet, who ended up ruling Chile for almost two decades, until 1990. Yes, you read that correctly — the U.S. government, the paragon of democracy around the world, helped to oust a man who had been democratically elected by the people of Chile and helped replace him with an unelected, military brute.

What mattered to U.S. officials was not democracy in Chile but rather the same thing that matters to them today in Iraq — the installation of a ruler, brutal or benevolent, democratically elected or not, who was friendly to the U.S. government. If that meant supporting a cruel and brutal military dictator whose forces killed, tortured, or disappeared his own people, so be it.
(snip/...)

http://www.fff.org/comment/com0411i.asp

[struggle4progress]

2. Yes! Maybe Kissinger would like to tour the place. eom