Chile’s Bachelet Honors Human Rights Victims At Lonquen

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Santiago Times

Chile’s Bachelet Honors Human Rights Victims At Lonquen
Written by Charles Pham
Friday, 11 December 2009 04:27
As she leads Human Rights Day celebrations

President Michelle Bachelet on Thursday acknowledged Chile’s past crimes as a major human rights violator during the 17-year military regime of Gen. Augusto Pinochet. The president made the statement during a memorial held at the Lonquèn (30 minutes south of Santiago) and as part of Human Rights Day memorials world wide.

Fifteen people were killed at Lonquèn by Pinochet supporters and then buried in a kiln. The bodies were uncovered in 1978 by a group of farmers. Of the 15 bodies uncovered, four were children.

~snip~
Bachelet suffered her own personal tragedy during the coup. Her father, a member of the military but a supporter of President Salvador Allende, died in 1974 as a result of repeated torture. Later, in 1975, she was tortured and then exiled along with her mother to Australia.

Read more: http://www.santiagotimes.cl/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=17837%3Achiles-bachelet-honors-human-rights-victims-at-lonquen&catid=43%3Ahuman-rights&Itemid=39

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NEW KISSINGER ‘TELCONS’ REVEAL CHILE PLOTTING
AT HIGHEST LEVELS OF U.S. GOVERNMENT

Nixon Vetoed Proposed Coexistence with an Allende Government
Kissinger to the CIA: “We will not let Chile go down the drain.”
National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 255
Posted - September 10, 2008
Washington D.C., September 10, 2008 - On the eve of the thirty-fifth anniversary of the military coup in Chile, the National Security Archive today published for the first time formerly secret transcripts of Henry Kissinger’s telephone conversations that set in motion a massive U.S. effort to overthrow the newly-elected socialist government of Salvador Allende. “We will not let Chile go down the drain,” Kissinger told CIA director Richard Helms in one phone call. “I am with you,” the September 12, 1970 transcript records Helms responding.

The telephone call transcripts—known as ‘telcons’—include previously-unreported conversations between Kissinger and President Richard Nixon and Secretary of State William Rogers. Just eight days after Allende's election, Kissinger informed the president that the State Department had recommended an approach to “see what we can work out .” Nixon responded by instructing Kissinger: “Don’t let them do it.”

After Nixon spoke directly to Rogers, Kissinger recorded a conversation in which the Secretary of State agreed that “we ought, as you say, to cold-bloodedly decide what to do and then do it,” but warned it should be done “discreetly so that it doesn’t backfire.” Secretary Rogers predicted that “after all we have said about elections, if the first time a Communist wins the U.S. tries to prevent the constitutional process from coming into play we will look very bad.”

The telcons also reveal that just nine weeks before the Chilean military, led by Gen. Augusto Pinochet and supported by the CIA, overthrew the Allende government on September 11, 1973, Nixon called Kissinger on July 4 to say “I think that Chilean guy might have some problems.” “Yes, I think he’s definitely in difficulties,” Kissinger responded. Nixon then blamed CIA director Helms and former U.S. Ambassador Edward Korry for failing to block Allende’s inauguration three years earlier. “They screwed it up,” the President declared.

Although Kissinger never intended the public to know about these conversations, observed Peter Kornbluh, who directs the National Security Archive’s Chile Documentation Project, he “bestowed on history a gift that keeps on giving by secretly taping and transcribing his phone calls.” The transcripts, Kornbluh noted, provide historians with the ability to “eavesdrop on the most candid conversations of the highest and most powerful U.S. officials as they plotted covert intervention against a democratically-elected government.”

More:
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB255/index.htm

[fasttense]

1. I guess Chile was the country Obama was referring to when he mentioned wars with democratic

countries. When President Obama accepted the Nobel Peace Prize, while running 3 wars (3 if you include Pakistan), he said the US had been in a war with a democratic nation, Oh, wait, he said no wars.... never mind.

[Number9Dream]

2. President Michelle Bachelet is a great leader

Whale sanctuary becomes law in Chile:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/topstories/2008-10-15-3809440330_x.htm

[Octafish]

3. What Henry Kissinger did to Chile, his bosses are doing to the USA.

"I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves."

Same goes, I believe, by whatever name it goes by today, for Operation CONDOR.

Most important: Thank you for the heads-up on President Bachelet. She really has what it takes.

[WhiteTara]

4. Yes, that is how Iran got the Shah

and Lumumba (sp) had to go. Can't have democratically elected people who are for the people! That's not how we do it here! Look at us, we have shills for the corps.