Editorial Justice at last nips at Pinochets heels
The arrest of Gen. Augusto Pinochet,
the former Chilean dictator, provides a glimmer of hope to those who have known
oppression and torture: hope that the world will continue to pursue justice,
however imperfectly, even years after the crimes.
It is a heartening message because so much blood has been shed, so
many lives broken and, in the Latin American context of the late 20th century,
so many persons disappeared under brutal regimes that appear above
the law.
Pinochet came to power in a bloody coup in 1973. More than 3,000
people were shot in the streets or kidnapped, never to be seen again, during
his 17-year dictatorship. Pinochets crimes take on added significance for
Americans since the United States played a pivotal role in aiding the coup that
brought Pinochet to power and ousted the leftist president, Salvador Allende,
who had been elected in 1970. Allende died in the takeover.
That fact raises some sticky questions for Americans about how
international law is applied and about U.S. culpability for its support of
regimes that could easily come under similar scrutiny for gross human rights
violations. But those are longstanding questions. The United States has never
settled on how powerful international law should be, except in those cases
where the U.S. government would benefit. When hauled before international legal
bodies in the past -- for instance, during the Reagan administration for crimes
alleged against Nicaragua -- the United States simply ignored the charges and
demeaned the international courts authority.
The 82-year-old Pinochet was arrested Oct l6. at a London clinic
where he had gone for surgery. The charges that are the basis for the arrest
were brought by Judge Baltasar Garzón of Spain, who has been conducting
investigations into the military regimes in Argentina and Chile for a number of
years. Pinochet has reportedly vowed to fight extradition to Spain for trial.
Whatever the outcome of the expected international legal
wrangling, it is a promising first step that could lead to the old
dictators finally being held accountable for the horrible crimes of
torture, killing and disappearances that wracked Chile while he held the
country in the grip of terror.
National Catholic Reporter, October 30,
1998
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