Chile Turns Against Once Untouchable Pinochet

SANTIAGO, Chile (Reuters) - Chileans are turning more and more against ex-dictator Augusto Pinochet (news - web sites), making courts more likely to put the ailing retired general on trial for human rights abuses during his 1973-1990 regime, political scientists said.

The Supreme Court will make a key ruling in the coming days over whether murder and kidnapping charges against Pinochet can proceed in a human rights case, a decision preceded by a string of court rulings against Pinochet this year.

"Public opinion is more and more negative regarding Pinochet ... and that obviously influences the judges as they review their own past rulings," said Oscar Godoy, a political analyst with Chile's Catholic University.

The mood contrasts with the 1990s when Chile returned to democracy but the ex-dictator remained untouchable, shielded by conservative courts, the military and millions of Chileans who lauded him for saving the country from economic chaos.

But this year Pinochet's support faded even among conservatives when it came out he stashed $8 million in secret accounts.

A report this year from the center-left government that detailed systemic torture of more than 27,000 people during military rule was another blow for Pinochet's reputation.

"Pinochet's unexplained riches ... together with the report on imprisonment and torture, have generated an environment in which people are more accepting of Pinochet being charged (with crimes)," said Guillermo Holzmann, a political analyst at the University of Chile.

A poll in September showed that Pinochet had lost credibility even among his strongest supporters. Two thirds of Chileans do not believe Pinochet's explanation that money in secret accounts was legitimate savings, the poll showed.

Pinochet, 89, went home from the hospital on Wednesday four days after a stroke. Rights attorneys said the hospitalization was a defense ploy but his family said the stroke was so severe he was given Catholic last rites.

Three consecutive center-left presidents have lead Chile and Pinochet, who came to power in a 1973 military coup, has been growing more isolated. More than 3,000 people died in political violence during his regime.

This month Judge Juan Guzman charged Pinochet with murder and kidnappings in the cases of 10 Chileans who died or disappeared under Operation Condor -- a joint repression of leftists by South American military leaders in the '70s.

On Monday the Santiago Appeals Court gave the green light to the Operation Condor charges, a turnaround from 2001 when the same court said he was too ill to stand trial.

However it rules, cases are building up. Earlier this year the appeals court also stripped Pinochet of immunity in a case involving the 1974 assassination of a Pinochet rival.

Courts are probing accusations of tax evasion and fraud in the case of his secret bank accounts.

Pinochet seemed untouchable until 1998 when he was detained in London on international arrest warrant from Spain on charges of crimes against humanity.

When Pinochet returned to Chile in 2000 he had to confront a flood of rights cases against him and other military members. Many officers have been convicted of rights abuses but Pinochet has thus far avoided trial.

Two years ago it looked like he was close to trial on murder charges in the Caravan of Death case -- a 1973 tour of the country by officers who executed dozens of political opponents. But in 2002 the Supreme Court ruled he was not in condition to stand trial because of his mild dementia.

Pinochet has diabetes, heart problems, and frequent strokes that make him somewhat disoriented.

Pinochet has undermined his own mental health defense strategy, analysts say. Late last year he gave a lucid interview to a Miami television station. Then he was spotted buying history books in Santiago.

"Pinochet has clearly shown his lucidity and shown his mental illness is a farce. In that sense there has been a big change in the courts," said Juan Bustos, a member of the lower house of Congress who has also brought cases against Pinochet.

FRom Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augusto_Pinochet

General Augusto José Ramón Pinochet Ugarte1 (born November 25, 1915) was head of the military government that ruled Chile from 1973 to 1990. He came to power in a violent coup that deposed Salvador Allende, the first Socialist to be elected president of Chile. The coup ended a period of strained relations between the United States—which had actively sought Allende's removal—and the South American country. (See also 1970 Chilean presidential election; Chilean coup of 1973; List of Presidents of Chile.)

On September 11, 1973, the military stormed the presidential palace and seized power from president Allende, who was found dead soon after. A junta headed by Pinochet was established, which immediately suspended the constitution, dissolved Congress, imposed strict censorship, and banned all political parties. In addition, it embarked on a campaign of terror against leftist elements in the country. As a result, approximately 3,000 Chileans were executed or disappeared, more than 27,0002 were imprisoned or tortured, and many were exiled and received abroad as political refugees.

In 1980 the military junta passed a new constitution which prescribed a single-candidate presidential plebiscite in 1988 and a return to civilian rule in 1990. Pinochet lost the 1988 plebiscite, which triggered multi-candidate presidential elections in 1989 for his replacement. Pinochet transferred power to Patricio Aylwin, his successor, in 1990 but retained his post as commander-in-chief of the army until 1998, when he assumed what could have been a lifelong seat in the Chilean Senate. He was forced to abandon his senate seat in 2002 due to a supreme court court ruling that he suffered from "vascular dementia" and therefore could not stand trial for human rights abuses, claims that had been formally filed against him by the hundreds, for more than a decade, but never acted upon. In May 2004 the supreme court stripped him of his dementia status, opening up the possibility of prosecution once again.

Supporters of Pinochet credit him with staving off what they saw as a beginning of communism, and for implementing neoliberal market policies that laid the groundwork for rapid economic growth that continued into the '90s. His opponents charge him with destroying Chile's democracy, killing and torturing thousands of opponents, catering exclusively to private interests, and adopting economic policies that favored the wealthy and hurt the middle- and low-income sectors in Chile.

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Military coup of 1973

Pinochet (left) and Allende in 1973General Pinochet came to power in a military coup d'état on September 11, 1973, in which rebels bombed the Presidential Palace with British-made Hawker Hunter fighter jets. Rebels also had eight Sherman tanks, two 75 mm cannons and some 200 infantry on site. Allende's personal doctor claims that he committed suicide as the palace was being surrendered, but others believe Allende was killed by military forces.

Since Pinochet was the chief of the oldest branch of the military forces (the Army), he was made the head of the victorious junta's governing council—this position was originally to be rotated among the four branches, but was later made permanent. He immediately moved to crush Chile's left-wing opposition, arresting approximately 130,000 individuals in a three-year period. Internationally, Pinochet became the symbol of severe human rights abuse, including many "disappearances".

In his memoirs, Pinochet affirms that he was the leading plotter of the coup and used his position as Commander of the Army to coordinate a far-reaching scheme that was coordinated with the other three branches of the military. In recent years, however, high military officials from the time have said that Pinochet only reluctantly got involved in the coup a few days before it was scheduled to occur, and followed the lead of other branches (especially the Navy) as they triggered the coup.

Once the Junta was in power, Pinochet soon consolidated his control, first retaining sole chairmanship of the Junta (originally agreed to be rotated among all members), and then was proclaimed President of the Republic on June 27, 1974. He also became Capitán General (Captain General), evoking independence hero Bernardo O'Higgins, and designed flashier uniforms for himself and his senior officers.

Pinochet's economic policy

Chile's military junta of 1973Once in power, Pinochet immediately set about making market-oriented economic reforms. He declared that he wanted "to make Chile not a nation of proletarians, but a nation of entrepreneurs". To formulate his economic policy, Pinochet relied on the so-called Chicago Boys, who were economists trained at the University of Chicago and heavily influenced by the monetarist policies of Milton Friedman.

Pinochet launched an era of economic deregulation and privatization. To accomplish his objectives, he abolished the minimum wage, rescinded trade union rights, privatized the pension system, state industries, and banks, and abolished taxes on wealth and profits. Supporters of these policies (most notably Milton Friedman himself) have dubbed them "The Miracle of Chile", due to the 35% increase in real per capita GDP from 1960 to 1980 (later, from 1980 to 2000, it increased by 94%, but Pinochet was no longer in power after 1990). Opponents dispute this "miracle" label, pointing out that the unemployment rate increased from 4.3% in 1973 to 22% in 1983, while real wages declined by 40%. However, Pinochet did manage to address at least part of these problems during his final years as President, since unemployment was down to 7.8% in 1990. The shortage problems during the final years of Allende's administration were also remedied.

The privatizations, cuts in public spending and anti-union policies generally had a negative impact on Chile's working class and a positive one on the country's more wealthy strata.

The former President Allende's economic policy had involved nationalizations of many key companies, notably U.S.-owned copper mines. This had been the primary reason for the external (mostly American) opposition to Allende's government. Much of the internal opposition to Allende's policies was from business sectors, and it has been alleged that the U.S. funded the lorry driver's strike ([1] (http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,260382,00.html)), which was to a significant degree responsible for the chaotic situation just before the coup.

Suppression of opposition

Pinochet (sitting) as head of the military junta.Pinochet engaged in brutal and bloody political repression. Once in power, Pinochet ruled with an iron hand. Dissidents who were murdered for speaking out against Pinochet's policies are said to have "been disappeared." It is unknown exactly how many people were killed by government and military forces during the 17 years that he was in power, but the Rettig Commission listed 2,095 deaths and 1,102 "disappearances." Torture was also commonly used against dissidents. Thousands of Chileans fled the country to escape the regime. In 2004, The National Commission on Political Prisoners and Torture produced the Valech Report after interviewing an estimated 35,000 people, who claimed to have been abused by the regime. About 28,000 of those testimonies were regarded as legitimate.

Pinochet's presidency was frequently made unstable by riots and isolated violent attacks. Assassination attempts were common, which increased government paranoia and in the eyes of some contributed to the cycle of oppression.

In contrast to most other nations in Latin America, Chile had, prior to the coup, a long tradition of civilian democratic rule; military intervention in politics had been rare. Some political scientists have ascribed the bloodiness of the coup to the stability of the existing democratic system, which required extreme action to overturn.

The situation in Chile came to international attention in September 1976 when Orlando Letelier, a former Chilean ambassador to the United States and minister in Allende's cabinet, was murdered by a car bomb in Washington, D.C. General Carlos Prats, Pinochet's predecessor as army commander, who had resigned rather than support the moves against Allende, had died in similar circumstances in Buenos Aires, Argentina, two years earlier.

[
End of the Pinochet regime
From May 1983 the opposition and labour movements organized demonstrations and strikes against the regime, provoking violent responses by the security forces. In September 1986, an unsuccessful assassination attempt was made on Pinochet's life by the Manuel Rodríguez Patriotic Front (FPMR), thought to be connected to the outlawed Communist Party. Pinochet suffered minor injuries.

According to the transitional provisions of the 1980 constitution approved in a tightly controlled plebiscite by 75% of voters, a plebiscite was scheduled for October 5, 1988, to vote on a new eight-year presidential term for Pinochet. The Constitutional Tribunal ruled that the plebiscite should be organized according to all the disposition of the Law of Elections. That included an "Electoral Space" during which all positions, in this case two, the Sí, and the No, would have two free slots of equal and uninterrupted TV time, simultaneously broadcasted by all TV channels, no political propaganda could be made outside those spots. The allotment was scheduled in two off-prime time slot: one before the afternoon news and the other before the late-night news, from 22:45 to 23:15 each night (evening news were from 20:30 to 21:30, and prime time from 21:30 to 22:30). The opposition, headed by Ricardo Lagos, took full advantage, producing colorful, upbeat advertisements, telling the Chilean people to vote "No". Lagos, in an interview, boldly called out Pinochet for all the "disappeared" persons. The Sí, spots, instead, were dark and tried to instill fear of a return to the chaos of the UP government, telling citizens that voting "no" was equivalent to voting for a return to those days.

In the plebiscite the advocates of a "No" vote won with a 55% versus 42% from the "Sí" option, and, again according to the provisions of the constitution, open presidential elections were held the next year, at the same time as the election of the congress that would have happened in either case. Pinochet left the presidency on March 11, 1990.

Due to the transitional provisions of the constitution, Pinochet remained the Commander-in-Chief of the Army until March 1998. Upon leaving that post, he took a senatorial position for life, granted by 1980 constitution to all former presidents with at least six years in office. His senatorship made his prosecution in Chile more difficult and the process only began after Pinochet had been arrested in Britain.

Arrest

Pinochet is visited by Margaret Thatcher during his house arrest in London, in 1998While traveling abroad, Pinochet was arrested in October 1998 in London. The arrest warrant was issued by judge Baltasar Garzón of Spain, and he was placed under house arrest in the clinic where he had just undergone back surgery. The charges include 94 counts of torture of Spanish citizens and one count of conspiracy to commit torture. Britain had only signed the International Convention against Torture recently, so all of the counts were from the last 14 months of his regime.

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