By Brendan Oliver Bergh
Impunity Watch Reporter, South America
SANTIAGO, Chile – While 3,500 Chileans marched on Sunday in memory of the estimated 40,000 casualties of the Pinochet dictatorship, a hundred masked figures used the opportunity to riot.
Chileans March in Support of Former President Allende. (Photo Courtesy of Cooperativa)
On the 39th anniversary of the military coup that overthrew President Salvador Allende in 1973 and installed General Pinochet; thousands marched through the streets of Santiago. Beginning in in the Hero’s Square in the center of Santiago, marchers placed lit candles to places that were used as detention centers by agents of the Pinochet dictatorship. Many of the marchers carried photos of missing relatives who disappeared during the 17 year reign of the dictatorship. Officials estimate that more than 3,000 people were killed during the 17 years of military occupation, and another 37,000 were detained as political prisoners, or were the victims of torture or exile.
General Augusto Pinochet was eventually arrested and kept under house arrest for two cases of human rights violations, but died in 2006 before receiving any conviction for the thousands of victims who died under his dictatorship. Today more than 700 retired military officers face trial for human rights violations and some 70 have been convicted and 67 of them have been incarcerated for their compliance with the military dictatorship. The Chilean courts still have over 350 open cases of concerning the disappearance of political opponents, and incidents of torture dating back to the period of the dictatorship.
Lorena Pizarro, president of the Association of Relatives of the Disappeared used the opportunity to lay a wreath on the grave of Salvador Allende and criticize the current ruling party and in light of reports of police repression, demand an “end impunity and advance truth and justice.”
While overwhelmingly a peaceful rally, there were incidents of hooded and masked individuals who rioted. There are reports of vandalized public offices and community property as rioters clashed with police and barricaded intersections and lit fires near the general cemetery. Police met the rioters’ stones and firebombs with water cannons and gas canisters.
The riots resulted in eight arrests for the destruction that occurred in the building that housed the regional secretary for education, the looting of a bank, and for the possession of Molotov cocktails.
The march ended peacefully at the general cemetery where marchers laid wreaths on the graves of the executed and disappeared. The general cemetery houses the Memorial of the Disappeared, which stands in remembrance of the victims of the dictatorship.
For further information, please see:
Univision Noticias – Chile recordara a Salvador Allende – 9 September 2012
Cooperativa – More than five thousand people marched through the disappeared – 9 September 2012
Fox News Latino – Procession by relatives of Chile dictatorship victims ends w/ incidents – 9 September 2012
Google – Thousands march in Chile in memory of victims of the Pinochet dictatorship – 9 September 2012
Terra – Thousands march in Chile in memory of victims of the Pinochet dictatorship – 9 September 2012
Cooperativa – With eight detainees ended up in memory of the disappeared – 9 September 2012
