Taking Advantage of Chile's Moment in the Sun to Commemorate Letelier and Moffitt

[Judi Lynn]

Taking Advantage of Chile's Moment in the Sun to Commemorate Letelier and Moffitt
By Russ Wellen, October 17, 2010

This week, with its flawless mine rescue operation, the occasion on which Chile has captured the attention of the world has been an uplifting one. (Overlooking for the moment the poor safety record of the company that owned the mine and bribe-susceptible mine inspectors.) It's a far cry from what once thrust Chile on the world stage -- the junta which staged a coup over socialist president Salvador Allende in 1973.

Its leader, Gen. August Pinochet, ruled until 1990, all the while generating human rights abuses by the bushel. It also turned out to be yet another instance in which the United States positioned itself on the wrong side of not just the law, but human decency, by directing money to anti-Allende elements before the coup and then supporting the government that emerged.

Serendipitously, with Chile in the news, October 13 was the day that the Institute of Policy Studies (IPS) issued its annual Letelier-Moffitt human rights awards. For those new to reading Focal Points or Foreign Policy in Focus, it might be a good time to revisit IPS's encounter with Chilean politics and pay tribute to the namesakes of those awards.

Orlando Letelier served as President Allende's ambassador to the United States, minister of foreign relations and the minister of defense. When Pinochet seized power, he was arrested and tortured. Upon his release in 1974, he moved to Washington, D.C., where he became an IPS senior fellow and a leading voice of the Chilean resistance. Ronni Moffitt was his 25-year-old assistant at IPS.

More:
http://www.fpif.org/blog/taking_advantage_of_chiles_moment_in_the_sun_to_commemorate_letelier_and_moffitt?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+FPIF+%28Foreign+Policy+In+Focus+%28All+News%29%29

Editorials:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x565249

[Judi Lynn]

1. More concerning this assassination from "The CIA's Ghosts of Tegucigalpa":

Reference to Letelier and Moffitt within the article:

Jerry Meldon: The CIA's Ghosts of Tegucigalpa
Wednesday, 22 July 2009, 4:18 pm

~snip~
A 1978 State Department document, discovered by Prof. McSherry in 2001, provides evidence that the U.S. government facilitated communication among the intelligence chiefs who were collaborating in Operation Condor.

In the document, a cable from U.S. Ambassador to Paraguay Robert E. White to Secretary of State Cyrus Vance says Washington’s link to Condor might be exposed by an ongoing investigation into the Sept. 21, 1976, assassination of former Chilean foreign minister Orlando Letelier and his American colleague Ronni Moffitt in broad daylight in Washington, D.C.

Letelier, like Prats, had been an outspoken critic of Chilean strongman Pinochet. And like Prats, Letelier was murdered in a car bombing that Pinochet’s intelligence agency, DINA, had assigned to Michael V. Townley, an American expatriate closely linked to CIA-trained anti-Castro Cuban exiles and European neo-fascist terrorists.

Notably, George H.W. Bush was CIA director at the time of the Letelier murder and Agency informants had attended a meeting three months earlier at which the terror operations were discussed. Bush then helped stonewall the ensuing FBI investigation. (For details, see Robert Parry’s Secrecy & Privilege.)

More:
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0907/S00240.htm

[Judi Lynn]

2. Honduran Human Rights Defenders “Profoundly Honored” to Receive Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Award

October 14, 2010
10:34 AM

Honduran Human Rights Defenders “Profoundly Honored” to Receive Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Award in Ceremony Last Night

WASHINGTON - October 14 - The Honduran Platform on Human Rights was awarded the Institute for Policy Studies' Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Award last night at the National Press Club. The platform received the International Award, while the National Day Laborer Organizing Network received the Domestic Award, and the Guatemalan National Police Archives received Special Recognition. The award honors the memory of two Institute for Policy Studies staffers - the former Chilean diplomat Orlando Letelier and Ronni Karpen Moffitt - who were murdered in Washington, D.C. on September 21, 1976 as they drove to work in what, at the time, was considered one of the worst acts of foreign terrorism on U.S. soil

"We, my organization - COFADEH - and the Human Rights Platform of which we are members, receive the Letelier-Moffitt award with sincere happiness," said Bertha Oliva de Nativi, the director of the Committee of Family Members of Detained and Disappeared people in Honduras (COFADEH), who is in D.C. to accept the award on behalf of the Platform, along with Juan Almendares Bonilla, the director of the Center of Prevention, Treatment and Rehabilitation of Victims of Torture (C.T.P.R.T).

"We've come from a country with institutions broken by impunity, corruption and violence; threatening the lives and freedom of all," Oliva said.

More:
http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2010/10/14-9
"We are profoundly honored to receive this prestigious recognition in the name of two exemplary human beings, Orlando Letelier and Ronni Karpen Moffit and we extend our warmest thanks to the organizers of this event and reaffirm our permanent struggle, as the Human Rights Platform of Honduras, in defense of human rights," Almendares said.