[Mb-civic] After Pinochet, Prosecute Kissinger

Thu Dec 16 18:39:53 PST 2004

After Pinochet, Prosecute Kissinger

By Paul Cantor and Roger Burbach, Pacific News Service
 Posted on December 15, 2004, Printed on December 16, 2004
 http://www.alternet.org/story/20761/

The Chilean government has arrested Gen. Augusto Pinochet, who led a brutal
military coup in 1973 and ruled the country with an iron hand until 1990.
The United States should now follow suit by prosecuting Henry Kissinger,
President Richard Nixon's former national security advisor, for breaking
U.S. and international law by helping foment the coup that brought Pinochet
to power.

Before Pinochet, Chile had a well-deserved reputation as one of the most
vibrant democracies in the world. It had a democratically elected president
and a Congress just as we do. It had a wide range of political parties from
the far right to the far left, all of which participated in the political
process. It had numerous newspapers, magazines and radio stations that
together represented the views of people across the political spectrum. All
of its citizens, including illiterates, had a right to vote.

Pinochet, with Kissinger's help, changed all that.

The military junta Pinochet led dissolved Congress, outlawed political
parties and the largest labor union in the country, censored the press,
banned the movie "Fiddler on the Roof" as Marxist propaganda, publicly
burned books ("on a scale seldom seen since the heyday of Hitler," according
to the New York Times), expelled students and professors from universities,
designated military officers as university rectors and arrested, tortured
and killed thousands who opposed the regime.

Among those who died in the coup and its aftermath were: Salvador Allende,
Chile's democratically elected president; Victor Jara, its most famous folk
singer; Carlos Prats, the commander in chief of the Chilean armed forces
until the coup plotters forced him out of office; Jose Toha, a former vice
president; Alberto Bachelet, an air force general who opposed the coup; and
two North American friends of ours, Charles Horman and Frank Terrugi.

The Pinochet regime was condemned for torturing political prisoners and for
other human rights abuses by the United Nations, the Organization of
American States, Amnesty International and many other respected
international organizations. Among those tortured was a 24-year-old young
man who, according to the Wall Street Journal, "was stripped naked and given
electrical shocks ... They started with wires attached to his hands and feet
and finally to his testicles." Newsweek magazine wrote on March 31, 1975,
"Each day Chileans are picked up for interrogation by the secret police.
Some are held for weeks without charge, many are tortured, a few disappear
altogether."

 Chile, in sum, became a nightmare society. Even when Pinochet finally gave
up power in 1990 to an elected government, he continued to dominate the
country's politics as commander in chief of the military.

 Only recently has the country demonstrated a determination to face its past
head-on and bring those responsible for murder and torture under the
Pinochet regime to justice, including the ex-dictator himself. Indeed, up
until only a short time ago, Pinochet in Chile used to be like Kissinger in
the United States. He was the Teflon man. No charges against him could be
made to stick.

Three events provided Chileans with the resolve to take on the former
tyrant. The first was his arrest in England in 1998 on a warrant issued by a
Spanish judge charging him with human rights abuses. The second was the
publication by the news media of documents indicating that he enriched
himself at the expense of his own people in a variety of illicit ways. The
third was a report by a government-sponsored commission detailing the
torture of 45,000 people that took place under his regime.

 So now, the 89-year-old ex-dictator  his former friends deserting him in
droves, his cultivated image of the tough but honorable savior of his
country in tatters  is under house arrest in his own country. He's trying
to avoid prosecution by claiming he is too old and too feeble-minded to face
a trial. What about Kissinger?

Innumerable reports in this country, beginning with a 1975 U.S. Senate
document titled, "Covert Action in Chile," have made it clear that Kissinger
was responsible for directing the CIA and other intelligence agencies to
destabilize the Allende government. Kissinger's motivation was to prevent
what he considered a communist government from gaining a foothold in Latin
America. "I don't see why we need to stand idly by and let a country go
communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people," he said after
Salvador Allende was elected president.

Now, Pinochet's arrest reminds us that Henry Kissinger and others in our
country who are responsible for undermining democracy and condoning human
rights abuses need to be held accountable for their crimes. Until that
happens, the rest of the world has a right to be incredulous when our
leaders proclaim they want to spread democracy and human rights abroad.