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Wednesday, 17 January 2007 07:09 |
 "Hey Mr. Pinochet, youëve sown a bitter crop. Itës foreign money that supports you ǃÓone day that moneyës going to stop. No wages for your torturers, no budget for your guns. Can you think of your own mother dancing with her invisible son?"
ÇƒÓ Sting, "They Dance Alone."
ï
Sting wrote those words in 1987, in a song about the so-called Mothers of the Disappeared, a group of women whose sons and daughters had been kidnapped, never to be seen again, by the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet in Chile.
During the nearly 20 years after Pinochet seized power in a military coup, more than 3,000 people were executed and far more were kidnapped, tortured or exiled.
Last month, however, Pinochet met his own end, at the ripe old age of 91.
In Chile, news
of the former dictatorës death was marked with widespread celebrations
and demonstrations in the streets. Those protests quickly turned
violent, with police using tear gas and water cannons to deter
demonstrators.
Nontheless, the
country has enjoyed a steadily increasing degree of democracy and
respect for human rights in the years since 1988, when voters rejected
a plea by Pinochet to grant him another eight-year term in office.
Furthermore,
Chile has flourished economically, with an average GDP-growth rate of
six percent per year since the 1980s ÇƒÓ the strongest growth of any
country in Latin America.
Meanwhile,
Pinochet watched his influence steadily decline and in recent years has
been the subject of a number of investigations, both internationally
and within Chile, into his human rights abuses.
In many ways, it
must be less than satisfying to the Chilean people that Pinochet was
never brought to justice. Like Slobodan Milosevic, Pinochet died before
he could be convicted for his crimes against humanity.
Still, we
congratulate the people of Chile for reaching an end to their long
national nightmare. In a world where far too many people have suffered
the brutality of totalitarian governments, the success of Chile in
coming out of such a system should be seen as a positive example.
One significant
step ÇƒÓ and one which was also employed in post-Apartheid South Africa ǃÓ
was the establishment of a National Commission on Truth and
Reconciliation, which investigated and documented Pinochetës
atrocities, so that families of victims could know the details of their
loved onesë deaths and the public could confront the full scope of the
tragedy.
The country also
stands as an example to the world in another regard ÇƒÓ unlike Serbia or
Iraq, Chileës movement from dictatorship to democracy was not imposed
by force from the outside, but from the will of its people.
The world will
always have dictators and power-hungry despots with no concern for
human rights. Fortunately, it will also always have people willing to
stand up such tyrants, despite immense risks. Chile has much to teach
the world about the importance of democracy.
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