Pinochet's
Arrest Should Be Allowed to Become a Warning to Saddam
Hussein and Slobodan Milosevice
By JONATHAN POWER
LONDON--Watch out Slobodan Milosevic, watch out Saddam
Hussein and Hun Sen. As Martin Luther King said, "The arm of
the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice."
One day you too may be old and ill and want to use your
ill-gotten gains to go to the best medical treatment money
can buy--in London, New York orGeneva--and they will get
you. Just as the British police have now pounced on Chile's
82 year old ex-dictator lying in a London hospital. They'll
pull you out of bed a few days after your operation, and
slam you behind bars, just when youthought you'd go and
recuperate under the warm sun in an exclusive hotel in the
Seychelles.
Whether the arrest made in London on the request of a
Spanish magistrate willstand up in court remains to be seen.
If only the World Criminal Court, created in Rome in July
(but without America's vote), were ratified and up and
running there'd be no doubt about it. The Spanish
government, with the connivance of parts of the British
government, would not now be looking for a way to diffuse
the issue, shortsightedly worried that it would affect their
growing economic stake in Chile.
It will be interesting to see how the British courts,
which now may be asked to rule on an extradition request,
will weigh up the extra-territorial reach of European human
rights law and the relevance of such international
obligations as the Genocide and Anti-Torture Conventions.
Moreover, Spain has a law that allows foreigners to be tried
in Spain for genocide against its citizens even when the
crime was committed outside the country, which they must
also take into consideration.
The Spanish magistrate, Justice Baltasar Garzon, can be
assumed to have done his homework. He has just successfully
had put away Spain's former Minister of the Interior in the
recent Socialist government and the chief of the security
forces for killing Basques terrorists in an undercover
operation. Especially if he limits the prosecution to cover
only the murder of Spanish citizens by the Pinochet
dictatorship, a small fraction of the 4,299 political
opponents killed or disappeared according to a Chilean
government report, he seems to have a strong case for being
allowed to go ahead and have Pinochet transferred for trial
in Madrid.
Twenty-five years ago and one month after the military
coup that deposed the legitimately elected leftist
government of Salvador Allande is not a day too late.
Pinochet, with the financial support of the American
telecommunications giant ITT and the political nod from
Henry Kissinger, President Richard Nixon's National Security
Advisor, ordered the storming of the presidential palace
which led to the death of Allende and 17 years of iron-clad
rule, in which, until towards the end, not a whisper of
dissent was tolerated.
However, it has to be said, unlike many dictators, his
economic legacy was benign--he revamped and modernized the
economy and erected South America's most effective social
safety net for the poor. And in the end he did voluntarily
withdraw from direct political power and allow new
elections. But he stayed on as commander-in-chief to ensure
no legislation was passed that would affect him and,
finally, stepping down from the post he got himself elected
senator for life to ensure his legal immunity.
Why did the post-Pinochet government let him get away
with all this manoeuvre, and why is it shouting for his
release now? Although the new democratically elected
president, Patricio Aylwin, promptly established a National
Commission on Truth and Reconciliation which meticulously
documented the abuses, it did not refer for prosecution
those responsible. Unlike its near namesake in South Africa
it did not even demand a quid pro quo for granting immunity
from prosecution. At the least, as in South Africa, it could
have traded immunity in return for a confession of crimes
and the asking of a public pardon. The murderers in Chile
got off scot free.
According to Ayreh Neier, the former head of Human Rights
Watch, writing in his just published book "War Crimes", it
was a mistake to believe that consolidating democracy was
more important than doing justice. The two, he argues, must
go hand in hand. He points to Honduras in Central America
where Carlos Roberto Reina, a human rights lawyer, became
president in 1994. He immediately initiated a prosecution of
officers for torturing six leftist college students thirteen
years earlier. Both democracy and the law have emerged
stronger.
Now, belatedly, the past is catching up with Chile. True
to previous form the government of Chile has protested the
arrest of Pinochet. This is going too far. Rather Chile
should recall their response when Erich Honecker, the former
dictator of communist East Germany, was overthrown and he
took refuge in the Chilean embassy in Moscow. Chile decided
to return him to Germany for trial for the shoot-to-kill
policy he had ordered for those trying to escape over the
Berlin Wall.
If Chile, in more detached mode, was able to recognize
the right to extradition for a human rights crime in the
Honecker case, it mustn't indulge in nationalistic,
protective, reflexes now. A change in the Chilean
government's stance would speed procedures in the London
courtroom. Pinochet deserves to be seriously punished both
for its own sake and, even more important, as a warning to
war criminals still practising their craft. There are
standards in place that didn't exist two decades ago. The
world has moved on, and Chile must move with it.
October 21,
1998, LONDON
Copyright © 1998 By JONATHAN POWER
Note: I can be reached by phone +44 385 351172
and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
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