- Image via Wikipedia
AMY GOODMAN: This past Saturday, there were memorials [Gedenkfeiern] held across the United States to mark the ninth anniversary of the attacks of September 11, 2001.
But the 9/11 attacks were not the only September 11th remembered that day. In Chile, many people spent the day reflecting on another 9/11:
September 11th, 1973, when a US-backed coup [Staatsstreich] led by General Augusto Pinochet ousted [umstürzen] the democratically elected president, Salvador Allende. He died in the palace on that day.
Juan Garcés was a personal adviser to Salvador Allende. Juan Garcés was with the president when revolting troops bombed the presidential palace and found himself the sole survivor among Allende’s political advisers when the coup had run its course.
More than twenty years later, Juan Garcés has led a legal effort to sue [verklagen / verfolgen] Augusto Pinochet for crimes against humanity in the Spanish courts.
JUAN GARCÉS: Well, we should remember that Chile was, in the ’70s, beginning of the ’70s, the most democratic country in the Spanish-speaking world—Latin America and Spain and Portugal included.
And this day, for the first time in history, of the Chilean history, the army revolted against the legitimate government. That was unexpected. And this army overthrew [umstürzen] the government and changed the regime and established, in place of the parliamentarian democracy, a dictatorship, and through force, through massive arrests, through killings.
The president Salvador Allende, a Democrat for forty years in the public life of Chile, a convinced Democrat, that fought until his last moment of life for defending the law and defending the freedom of all the Chilean citizens.
AMY GOODMAN: It is now well known that President Nixon, that the Secretary of State Henry Kissinger were deeply involved with the support of Augusto Pinochet’s rise to power and the overthrow of the democratically elected president.
But it was you who pushed, under developing this case against Pinochet, for the Clinton administration to declassify thousands of documents that proved this. What did you learn about our role, the US role, in Chile?
JUAN GARCÉS: Well, I justified what was already known to me, that without the decisive backing [entschlossene Unterstützung] of the Nixon administration to the coup d’état in Chile, this coup d’état would not have taken place or would have been defeated by the Chilean Democrats.
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Wiki: Nachdem Pinochet am Putsch gegen den damaligen sozialistischen Präsidenten Salvador Allende beteiligt war, regierte er Chile vom 11. September 1973 bis zum 11. März 1990 diktatorisch, erst als Vorsitzender einer Militärjunta und später als Präsident (ohne jemals gewählt worden zu sein).
Auf die enorme Zahl an Menschenrechtsverletzungen, darunter mehrere Tausende Ermordete und ‘Verschwundene’. während seiner Regierungszeit reagierte ein Teil der Weltöffentlichkeit mit Anklage und Kritik. Dagegen wurden die wirtschaftsliberalen Strukturreformen, die während seiner Regierungszeit stattfanden, international vor allem von US-Wirtschaftsexperten viel beachtet.
1990 wurde Pinochet aufgrund des in der Verfassung von 1980 festgelegten Volksentscheides vom chilenischen Volk aus dem Amt gewählt, was demokratische Wahlen zur Folge hatte. 2001 wurde Pinochet aus gesundheitlichen Gründen für nicht verhandlungsfähig erklärt; er starb, bevor er verurteilt werden konnte.
— Schlesinger
Photo: Salvador Allende von Revista Argentina “Siete días ilustrados” / Mágicas Ruinas (Wikipedia CC Lizenz)
Text des Interviews auszugsweise übernommen von Democracy Now (CC Lizenz)
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