Today (November, 10) the "Torture Never More" ("Tortura Nunca Mais") organization is petitioning the federal Attorney General to request to the courts the detention of Pinochet as soon as the plane that carries him stops in Brazil (the normal route from Europe to Chile). As I already informed, yesterday a federal representative of the Workers Party also petitioned on the same subject.
"Torture Never More" is an human rights NGO sponsored by the Roman Catholic Church. In Latin America, more than in Europe and North America, the church and the state have kept a curious hate-love relationship since 1492 and not seldom the most educated part of the church stands for progressive causes.
The best examples are the Communist Guarany Republic, that was exterminated up to the last child in 1756, and, since the Vatican II Council (1963), the fight against what conventional wisdom calls social injustices. This has often put an important part of the church and the communists in the same side: in Brazil, among other examples, during the military dictatorship the "Albanian" PCdoB worked in close contact with the Dominican Order (ironically, the former administrators of the Holy Inquisition) and one of the main armed revolutionary organizations was the "guevarist" People's Action, that evolved from the catholic youth activism. It is also worthwhile to mention priest Leonardo Boff, the best known author of the "liberation theology", which tries to link catholicism to marxism.
"Torture Never More" has been playing a very important role throughout the Southern Cone in dealing with the bloody repression of the years 1964/ 1990, that started in Brazil, with the help of both Kennedy and Johnson administrations. This NGO has been recording details and publishing books on the subject (one of them was a best seller in Brazil for almost one year), gathering evidences, giving relief and supporting the victims and their families irrespectively of either political or religious (and atheistic) affiliation (for instance, a network of psychoanalysts who work for free or reduced rates, lawyers to assist in indemnification suits etc.), making public speeches and demonstrations, etc. Some of its recent feats are the revoking of the nominations of a Brazilian military attaché in Britain and of a military doctor (a general) who had been nominated to command the army medical system, both of them having been linked to torture during the black years.
"Torture Never More" also keeps the files of Operation Condor, the terrorist military ring of South America, which were found in a derelict house at Asunción del Paraguay. It has been rumored that Jair Kirschke, its Porto Alegre office director, would file a judicial suit in Brazil against the last Brazilian dictator, general J.B. Figueiredo (also a former commander of the main military intelligence service, under the general Ernesto Geisel dictatorship), since his signature is said to have been found in many documents as a coordinator of the Condor's actions. By the way, Figueiredo also suffers from a chronically aching back like Pinochet, what caused a humorist to propose a "charitable" public collection of funds to pay his travel expenses to the same London Clinic...
"Torture Never More" does not limit itself to deal with the past but also with the present. It is very active, for instance, in fighting police brutality which, as in USA, is directed against the poor people and the black people, or some clandestine outbursts of anti-semitism. It is not astonishing that its directors are once upon a time menaced with non-indentified death threats. Cecilia Coimbra, the NGO director who is subscribing the aforementioned petition, had to recevive a special protection between the months of March and June of the current year and the offices at Rio de Janeiro were vandalized by night some months ago.
Allow me to repeat myself: to make Pinochet stands a regular trial anywhere is somehow comparable to the kidnapping of Eichmann ---the inventor of the "final solution" --- in Argentina in 1960 or the near imprisonment of Mengele in Brazil --- the Auschwitz's "Angel of Death", as well as comparable to the justice made against other less famous nazist war criminals who were caught here (very few of them, unhappily). Both were important symbols of the nazist barbarism, as well as Pinochet is the hero _par excellence_ of the Southern Cone deranged fascist right-wing.
In solidarity, Roberto
1848 / 1998: Proletarier aller Länder, vereinigt euch !
Paix entre nous, guerre aux tyrans (....) Ouvriers, paysans, nous sommes Le grand PARTI DES TRAVAILLEURS. (L' Internationale)