Summary: This September will mark the 50 year anniversary of the CIA-backed coup that led to Augusto Pinochet, a ruthless despot, to assume power in Chile. Over 40,000 were tortured during his reign and over 3,000 were killed, with over 1,100 still declared missing after they were forcibly disappeared. Chilean President Gabriel Boric plans to launch the National Search Plan, an initiative to investigate and find these missing persons to fulfill a campaign pledge to resolve Chile’s pending human rights investigations from Pinochet’s regime and bring justice to families affected by the atrocities committed by Pinochet. However, Pinochet himself died essentially unpunished despite having over 300 pending charges against him as he lived in comfortable prison facilities with weekend parole, while neighbors such as Argentina had swiftly prosecuted generals from its dictatorships harshly. Very few from his regime have been prosecuted, which has prompted the National Institute of Human Rights to criticize the democratic government for not charging or taking against former regime members at least in comparison to their abuses of human rights. Unfortunately, the forensic testing agency assigned to the task, SML, has mishandled the bone and body evidence by misplacing them, leading to them being damaged and harder to test on.
Analysis: Chile wants to move on from the Pinochet regime, but the only way to do this is to resolve remaining ties to it, which include the missing persons. While the new administration cannot absolutely bring true justice to the families, as Pinochet basically avoided true punishment before his death, solving the cases of the murders or disappearances of family members is another way for Chile to move on from his brutal administration. Ironically, Chile’s Boric comes from a left-wing party reminiscent of the one that was elected prior to the Pinochet coup. Pinochet priorly was a military general who acted as a regional commander for Santiago and eventually had supreme authority over the province to crack down on protests, however, he had eventually used this influence and power given to him by Allende, the president at the time, to overthrow Allende. Beyond this fact, I believe Chile needs to do more to prosecute former members of the Pinochet government, there is no reason such atrocities should be ignored well knowing actual justice could be served. Investigations are a good start for the families, but for the country the true perpetrators need to be punished.
Connection to Class: This entire situation revolves around the abuse of human rights and violations of the Declaration of Human Rights and UN conventions. The United Kingdom had priorly in 1998 arrested Pinochet for abuses of natural human rights and nullified Pinochet’s claims of “immunity” as Chile had signed the UN convention against Torture, meaning Pinochet could not claim immunity as a function of a head of state is not to abuse human rights, which nullifies immunity. Unfortunately, he was released for being in a bad mental state and was sent home to Chile, where he died unprosecuted.