A question of justice
Posted by svolk on 20th August 2009
By Pascale Bonnefoy – GlobalPost.com
The consideration of military pardons reveals that Chile still has a lot of healing to do.
SANTIAGO — The possibility that human rights violators may be included in a general pardon next year is revealing how far Chile is from healing the wounds of its past of torture, executions and disappearances.
When the Catholic Bishops Conference announced last month that it would submit a proposal to the government for a massive pardon of prisoners on occasion of Chile’s Bicentennial celebrations, the right-wing opposition jumped on the opportunity to include its imprisoned military allies.
For years, these rightist parties, founded in the ’80s by civilians supporting the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, were accomplices to its well documented human rights atrocities, refusing to acknowledge they ever took place. With the return to democracy and their need to become politically palatable to the electorate, they timidly began to admit the truth, but have nevertheless worked hard to put an end to human rights trials.
Posted in: Chile, Dirty Wars, Human Rights, Legal Justice, Manuel Contreras, Villa Grimaldi | No Comments »