Pinochet, the former murderous dictator of Chile, is dead.
In 1973 Pinochet, with the assistance of the CIA, staged a coup and overthrew the democratically elected government and murdered President Allende.
In the following fifteen years anyone who opposed him was dealt with brutally. Thousands were murdered. Tens of thousands were tortured. Hundreds of thousands were imprisoned for years without trial or simply “disappeared”. All of this happened with the explicit support of the “democratic world”.
Pinochet’s apologists argue that he saved Chile from going the way of Cuba and that he brought economic stability. If the people of Chile wanted to go the way of Cuba, let them. It was their right. It was not for Pinochet or the Chilean army’s to deny them their democratic will.
It was only the middle class who benefited from the “economic liberalisation” initiated by Pinochet. Most Chileans lived in abject poverty. Millions lost their jobs.
His apologists also argue that, by South American standards, Dictator Pinochet was a pussy cat. He only murdered three thousand people. Dare I say that this death toll is more than the death toll from the worst catastrophe in history, ever: 9/11.
As well as terrorising the Chilean people, Pinochet plundered the country’s wealth. The income from Chile’s vast mineral resources went into private Swiss bank accounts belonging to Pinochet, his family and his cronies. And there they still are.
There have been a number of attempts to bring Pinochet to justice since he gave up power in 1988 but he has evaded each of them. On a number of occasions he used his cronies, at home and abroad, to pull strings to get him off the hook. Sometimes he used the veil threat of another army coup to keep justice at bay. But most of the times he would just pretend to be ill and yet somehow when he was back home in Chile surrounded by his apologists he would make a miraculous recovery. And now by dying he has evaded justice one final time.
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