Chile's Pinochet victims testify

[emad]

Chile's Pinochet victims testify

By Clinton Porteous
BBC News, Santiago


<SNIP>


More than 30,000 Chileans have said they were victims of torture or political detention under the 17-year Pinochet regime that ended in 1990.

The public was invited to testify to a government commission that is examining human rights abuses.

There were many reports from men and women of sexual abuse, with about 10% of the testimonies coming from women.

Most said they were victims in 1973- soon after the military coup that brought Gen Augusto Pinochet to power.
<SNIP>

More( including "Sexual torture"):
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3709875.stm

30,000 Chileans can't ALL be wrong....

[dArKeR]

1. Here's an American who's murdered more people than Saddam H

http://home.iprimus.com.au/korob/fdtcards/Cards_Index.html

Don't hear the American Media Whores and Politicians and Franken bashing him!

[fudge stripe cookays]

5. Great link dArKeR.

I plan on sharing it wit tons of people who think the US is lily white.

This country has so much blood on its hands that it's pathetic.

[Say_What]

2. Project Desaparicidos--Chile

<clips>

Chile

During the Pinochet regime, thousands of people were "disappeared" by the security forces. Their families and friends continue to look for them and for answers as to what happened to them and why.

This is a place where to remember the people disappeared in Chile, and where to learn about what Pinochet and his followers did. We appreciate any information that we can add to these pages.

http://www.desaparecidos.org/chile/eng.html

[emad]

6. The hand of George P Bush is forever stained with the blood of

Pinochet's victims.

He used him to further his own career and covered up US complicity in Pinochet's massive crimes.

He was subsequently aided and abetted by Margaret Thatcher who told the world that Pinochet was a statesman of enormous stature to whom the whole world should be grateful.

The people of Chile deserve better than this.

[Say_What]

9. George HW Bush

I think you mean--George P Bush was George Bush I's grandfather ;-)

Bush was asked to testify about the assasinations and he REFUSED. Some of those convicted now walk the streets of Miami FREE thanks to the CANF. Poppy Bush also pardoned ex-Cuban terrorist Orlando Bosch Avila, but that's another story.

<clips>
George H.W. Bush, the CIA & a Case of State Terrorism

In early fall of 1976, after a Chilean government assassin had killed a Chilean dissident and an American woman with a car bomb in Washington, D.C., George H.W. Bush’s CIA leaked a false report clearing Chile’s military dictatorship and pointing the FBI in the wrong direction.

The bogus CIA assessment, spread through Newsweek magazine and other U.S. media outlets, was planted despite CIA’s now admitted awareness at the time that Chile was participating in Operation Condor, a cross-border campaign targeting political dissidents, and the CIA’s own suspicions that the Chilean junta was behind the terrorist bombing in Washington.

In a 21-page report to Congress on Sept. 18, the CIA officially acknowledged for the first time that the mastermind of the terrorist attack, Chilean intelligence chief Manuel Contreras, was a paid asset of the CIA.

The new report was issued almost 24 years to the day after the murders of former Chilean diplomat Orlando Letelier and American co-worker Ronni Moffitt, who died on Sept. 21, 1976, when a remote-controlled bomb ripped apart Letelier's car as they drove down Massachusetts Avenue, a stately section of Washington known as Embassy Row.

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2000/092300a.html

[Say_What]

3. Villa Grimaldi; La Esmeralda: The Torture Ship; US participation

<clips>

The Rettig report, chronicling the deaths of 2,279 people -mostly
innocent civilians, and 49 of them under 16- which occurred in the
aftermath of Pinochet's putsch of 11 September 1973, confirms the
worst reports of horror that filtered out during the dictatorship.
The dry detail confirms that few, if any, of the accounts of torture
and death were exaggerated.

Truth has turned out to be worse than the Amnesty International
reports. Most Chile-watchers had known about the 2ft-square cells
built to house two people, the mock executions, the torturing with
electricity on steel beds, the near drownings in baths of excrement
and dogs especially trained to violate prisoners.

News to some of us were the report's revelations of routine use of
two-tier beds, where wives, mothers and grandfathers were tortured
within inches of their husbands, sons and grandchildren. And how
jailers called for boiling water and oil to pour over particularly
ill-regarded prisoners.

Places of torture, hurriedly camouflaged by Pinochet in his last
months as President, are listed in the Rettig report and are easy
to find. Villa Grimaldi, the largest secret police establishment,
has been largely demolished. Its address, 8200 Avenida Jose Arrieta,
now a building site, no longer exists.

http://www.rrojasdatabank.org/crime1.htm

---

<clips>

What is the Esmeralda?


SOURCE- Amnesty International - New Zeland

The Esmeralda is a Chilean tall ship used to train Navy cadets and has sailed extensively, docking at more than 300 ports throughout the world. This year it is on a "goodwill" voyage, from 25 July 2001 until February 2002.

The ship is a symbol of the cruel fate of political prisoners in Chile's recent history, particularly the indiscriminate use of torture by government officials. Respect for human rights and international law is being debased by the "Esmeralda's" unacceptable past.

What was the Esmeralda used for?

La Esmeralda was used in 1973 as a floating torture chamber and prison during a period of systematic and widespread torture following General Augusto Pinochet's coup d'etat of the democratically elected Allende government.

Gross human rights violations were committed in Chile during the military government (1973 - 1990).

http://www.chile-esmeralda.com/documents/what_is_the_esmeralda%202001.htm

---

<clips>

U.S. implicated in Chilean coup

By Vijay Prashad

When Gladys Marín, the secretary general of the Chilean Communist Party (CPC), came to Washington last month, she was testing the waters for a legal claim against the U.S. government’s activities in Chile over the past 30 years.

The CPC’s action comes in the aftermath of the release of 16,000 secret U.S. records that document Washington’s role in the 1973 overthrow of socialist President Salvador Allende as well as in the military junta’s rise to power.

The Chile Declassification Project documents spurred not only the CPC’s consideration for a case in the United States, but also emboldened a Chilean judge to frame charges against General Augusto Pinochet, head of the dictatorial junta. (This week a judge dismissed kidnapping and murder charges against Pinochet.)

The 50,000 pages released last month from the U.S. State Department, CIA, White House, Defense and Justice Departments are the third and final collection of documents (the Declassification Project released the first two sets of 8,000 documents in 1999). Peter Kornbluh, a senior analyst of the non-profit National Security Archive, hailed the release as "a victory for openness over the impunity of secrecy." He said the documents "provide evidence for a verdict of history on U.S. intervention in Chile, as well as for potential courtroom verdicts against those who committed atrocities during the General Augusto Pinochet dictatorship."

The records provide the documentary evidence to support the findings of the 1975 Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities (also called the Church Committee). There is little here that is not known, except that now there is evidence for what was previously hearsay.

http://www.pww.org/past-weeks-2000/U.S.%20role%20in%20Chile.htm

[Judi Lynn]

10. There's a real education available in the links you posted

From the first link:

In the slums of Santiago the publication of the Rettig report, which
recorded that the largest number of Pinochet's victims were manual
workers.

I had never heard this before, but it follows the pattern in other countries in which the target is often the union workers, union leaders, union organizers, then students, clergy, educators, etc.

Meanwhile, the establishment press, led by the conservative daily
El Mercurio, whose support for Pinochet was unwavering, and which
never uttered a word of criticism, is now campaigning against the
"wave of violence" said to be sweeping the country.

As Juan Pablo Cardenas, a leading journalist imprisoned for
opposition to Pinochet, said: "It's hard to accept such
disingenuousness when one realises journalists and judges were
invited to witness the bloody acts of Pinochet's secret police".

Isn't this remarkable? Makes you sick.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Your second link:

One of the most renowned victims of torture on the Esmeralda is Father Michael Woodward, a British-Chilean Catholic priest who died as a result of torture on board the Esmeralda.

According to the Rettig Report, Michael Woodward was arrested by a naval patrol in Valparaiso on 16 Sept 1973. He died on 22 September, in the Naval Hospital in Valparaiso as a result of the torture he was subject to by members of the security forces.

Information pieced together by his relatives has established that following his arrest, he was taken to the "Esmeralda" where he was interrogated and tortured. A ship's doctor was sent to the Esmeralda to attend a "dying priest".
(snip)

In June 2000 the Armed Forces disclosed information on 200 cases of victims of human rights violations. The information was submitted on 5 January 2001 to the President of the Republic, Ricardo Lagos. The list contains 180 names of victims arrested between 1973 and 1976, and 20 unidentified victims. The majority of victims are listed as thrown into the sea, rivers and lakes in Chile.
(snip)

That number is outrageously low, incidently, but it's the one the Armed Forces will allow itself to admit.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Your third:

On Sept. 14, 1973, the military beat and killed the folk singer and theatre director Victor Jara, a premonition of the destruction of Chile’s active independent theatre.
(snip)

Crucially, the newly declassified documents show that the U.S. may have colluded in the 1976 Washington, D.C. assassination of Orlando Letelier, a Chilean leader in exile. In 1978, Michael Townley, a U.S. national, confessed that he killed Letelier under orders from the Chilean secret police.

CIA Director George Bush gave an assurance that the CIA had nothing to do with the murder. It now appears that this was a lie, and we shall learn more of this in a pending court case around the murder. Incidentally, intelligence records that could implicate Pinochet in these matters remain classified.
(snip)

When Clinton asked that the reports on Chile be declassified, the CIA tried to block him. "I think you’re entitled to know what happened back then and how," said Clinton in response. Only after concerted struggle within the administration did the CIA release the documents. Of course, they are heavily censored and the National Security Archive pledges to continue to press for full disclosure.
(snip)

U.S. newspapers met the declassification with silence. No one seemed interested.
(snip) (What else is new, eh?)

Thank you for getting these GREAT links out. They are excellent.

[Say_What]

4. Charles Horman and Frank Teruggi

<clips>

New Information on the Murders of U.S. Citizens Charles Horman and Frank Teruggi by the Chilean Military

Document 1: Federal Bureau of Investigation, "Frank Teruggi," December 14, 1972
Among the hundreds of newly-released records is an FBI report from late-1972 on Teruggi's attendance of a conference of the Committee of Returned Volunteers in 1971, and his membership in the "Chicago Area Group on the Liberation of the Americas." This document makes it clear that Teruggi was, at a minimum, under surveillance while in the United States and raises the question as to whether or not this information was shared with the Chilean military.

Document 2: U.S. Embassy Santiago, " Reports on GOC Involvement in Death of Charles Horman, Asks Embassy for Asylum and Aid," April 28, 1987
Nearly fourteen years after the coup, an informant seeking political asylum at the U.S. Embassy in Chile offers an account of Horman's death. Horman was picked up in a routine sweep, the informant suggests, and was found in possession of "extremist" materials. He was then taken the National Stadium where he was interrogated and later executed on the orders of Pedro Espinoza. Embassy officials note that his story "corresponds with what we know about the case and the attempt to cover up their involvement," suggesting that the informant is probably telling the truth.

Document 3: U.S. Department of State to Embassy Santiago, " Reports on Death of Charles Horman," May 14, 1987
In response to the embassy's previous cable (Document 2), Michael Armacost, the under secretary of state for political affairs, questions the credibility of the informant who provided the account of Horman's death. Even if the new information proves to be accurate, Armacost sees no new prosecutorial advantage in the new information. Nevertheless, the State Deparment maintains a "fundamental interest" in investigating the deaths of American citizens abroad and "would consider it a very serious matter if senior officials had been aware of the circumstances of Horman's death and attempted to conceal this information from the and Horman's family." Armacost directs that the informant be interviewed by State Department officials stationed in Uruguay to determine his credibility.

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB33/

[fudge stripe cookays]

7. For anyone who might not know...

The movie "Missing" with Sissy Spacek and Jack Lemmon is based on Horman's death.

[Say_What]

8. An excellent movie that the US tried very hard to prevent the release of

On edit: more info
<clips>

...The 1982 film Missing generated widespread controversy by alleging the US government had been involved in his murder.

Files handed to widow

At the time it drew vigorous objections from State Department officials, including Nathaniel Davis, then the US ambassador to Chile.

The newly released two-page document was handed to Mr Horman's widow, Joyce, by the National Security Archive, a research group at George Washington University.

It is part of a wider release of more than 1,000 classified US government files relating to events leading up to and following the coup in Chile.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/469648.stm

---

<clips>
...The revelation in the Horman case is particularly instructive because the people close to Charles Horman, like his father, Ed, have been saying something similar for 25 years. Thomas Hauser's The Execution of Charles Horman, on which the film Missing is based, describes both Charles's fate and his family's quest to find out the truth about it. Charles, in the coastal city of Vina del Mar on the day of the coup, may have heard too much for his own good about U.S. Involvement in the coup from U.S. Navy personnel stationed in nearby Valparaiso, where the coup originated. Chilean soldiers arrested Horman shortly after his return to Santiago a few days later. He was never seen alive again. The U.S. Embassy tried to convince his family that he had not been kidnapped by the Chilean military, even though neighbors testified that he had been. Ed Horman came to believe that U. S. officials knew before Charles's death that he had been arrested, and did not attempt to prevent his murder. Translating the state department memo from its bureaucratic language to plain English (keep in mind that, instead of saying the Chilean Armed Forces intended to murder Charles, it says they "saw Horman in a rather serious light"), it says that the Chilean military asked the CIA or other U.S. intelligence agencies about Horman. Maybe the Chileans said they thought Horman was a dangerous individual, maybe they asked whether he was a dangerous individual, maybe they just asked what U.S. Intelligence agents knew about him. Any which way, U.S. Intelligence agents told them he was a dangerous individual, and that sealed his fate. That is the "at best" scenario. The "at worst" scenario described in the memo is that U. S. government officials knew Horman was in grave danger and "did nothing" to prevent his murder. Really, the "at worst" scenario, implicit in all this, is that they actively encouraged his murder.

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Latin_America/USinChile.html

[fudge stripe cookays]

11. Thanks SayWhat.

I was about 15 or 16 when it came out-- didn't know about all the controversy behind it.

Very enlightening.

[Say_What]

12. BUZZFLASH:Similarities Between Nick Berg and Charles Horman (Chile)

<clips>



I couldn't help but be reminded today, while hearing the U.S. Gov't distance
themselves from the unfortunate beheading victim Nicholas Berg; of the case
featured in the 1982 Costa Gravis movie, "Missing".

As you may recall, the movie is about the murder, and search for information
regarding, American freelance writer Charles Horman. Horman went missing
in Santiago Chile shortly after the U.S. sponsored coupe de tat led by Pinochet
that began on, of all dates, September 11th, 1973.

As the U.S. government helped to obscure the ultimate fate of the missing
American, it came to light that police in Chile arrested Horman, interrogated,
murdered, then Dumped on the side of a road his body.

Justifications given by the Chileans, and our own State Dept. Representatives,
were that Charles Horman shouldn't have been where he was, when the coupe
was orchestrated. Further, he ran into many American's who were helping to
choreograph the coupe, and was seen taking notes on the conversations. In
short, Charles Horman was asking to be murdered.


http://www.buzzflash.com/contributors/04/05/con04212.html

[demgrrrll]

13. I read in passing that Chalabi, Perle and Wolfie

all attended U of Chicago around
the same time and somehow had something to do with Pinochet
and Chile and the overthrow. I will google and see if I can
come up with something.

[TrogL]

14. Wonder what Ralph's got to say about that

(note, Ralph Klein is Premier of Alberta, Canada)

His essay has now been found to be partially plagarized.

[CHIMO]

15. 58.7 per cent of the lines

On the last page of the report, the premier lists his sources, including 10 websites. Word for word passages from the essay are found on those sites ? and a count found 58.7 per cent of the lines in the essay are the same as those on the websites listed.

Liberal leader Kevin Taft, who is also a professor, wants Athabasca University to investigate the issue.

"The university has to show some leadership here," he said. "I have a pretty strong feeling if this was an ordinary Albertan, they'd be up on a really tough spot. I just hope Athabasca University has the courage to treat the premier the way they'd treat anybody else.

http://edmonton.cbc.ca/regional/servlet/View?filename=ed_klein20040513

Shucks, can't get peer review as there are no other kings around here.

Folks, if you have money and an internet connections, we can get you one good degree. Hurray while it lasts! You don't have to be here either. Correspondence courses.