|
|
 |
|
 |
 |
| CONFRONTING THE PAST | |
 March 2, 2000 
|
||
|
|
Britain finds former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet unfit to stand trial on human rights abuses. Pinochet, who is in ailing health, is returning to his country. Some there are calling for the Chilean courts to decide his fate. Elizabeth Farnsworth provides a background report, then interviews president-elect Ricardo Lagos.
|
|
ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: The Chile that Augusto Pinochet returns to has changed greatly since his arrest in London a year and a half ago.
ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Chilean human rights lawyer Jose Zalaquett is a former chairman of Amnesty International. |
||||||||||||||||
| Judges taking action against Pinochet | |||||||||||||||||
|
JOSE ZALAQUETT: There's a new generation of judges, and they have been emboldened by the attitudes of their colleagues in Britain or Spain, so now they're taking a more active role; they have started prosecutions against Pinochet.
(LAGOS VICTORY RALLY) ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Now Pinochet returns to a country which has just
elected another Socialist as president. Ricardo Lagos won the election
last month as head of a coalition of center-left parties. He will be
inaugurated March 11th -- the third president since JOHN O'LEARY, U.S. Ambassador to Chile: That was a very significant thing and it said a lot about democracy in this country. ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: John O'Leary is the U.S. ambassador in Chile.
|
 |
||||||||||||||||
| Lagos has leadership potential | |||||||||||||||||
|
ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: A leading businessman who was a key advisor to the center-right candidate agreed that Lagos has the potential to be a good president. Sebastian Pinera owns LanChile Airlines, among other companies.
ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Do you mean 30 years ago? SEBASTIAN PINERA: Thirty years ago. But I think that he's a smart guy, and smart people can learn from their mistakes. So I hope that he will protect assets that we have been able to build in Chile in the last 10 years. And I hope also that he will be able to produce more justice in terms of social justice.
(VICTORY RALLY) ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Now Lagos is the president-elect and at his supporters chant -- without fear -- that Pinochet must be judged in Chile upon his return. I spoke with Ricardo Lagos in Santiago last week. He said Pinochet should return to Chile and then the courts should decide his fate. |
 |
||||||||||||||||
 |
        |
|
| Support the kind of journalism done by the NewsHour...Become a member of your local PBS station. | ||
| ||
| PBS Online Privacy Policy Copyright ©1996- MacNeil/Lehrer Productions. All Rights Reserved. | ||
| ||
JOSE
ZALAQUETT: When he was still in Chile, he was indeed a fearful figure,
and judges would hesitate before initiating any proceedings against
him. But now the situation has changed. 
ELIZABETH
FARNSWORTH: The prosecutions are for crimes like torture and murder
allegedly committed under General Pinochet's rule in the years after
1973 when he led a military coup that overthrew the democratically elected
President Salvador Allende. Some 3,000 people were summarily executed
then, and tens of thousands more were tortured and imprisoned. Pinochet
ruled
the country for 17 years, but even after 1990, when he became a senator
for life, he continued to wield enormous influence behind the scenes.
Pinochet
stepped down. Lagos barely defeated center-right candidate Joaquin Lavin,
who was a Pinochet advisor in the '80s but who rarely mentioned the
general in the campaign except to say that he should be subject to Chilean
law like any other citizen. Lavin showed up at the Lagos victory rally
to wish him well, an unusual sight in a country with Chile's recent
history.
JOHN
O'LEARY: And what was so remarkable about the 1999-2000 election is
you had in the governing coalition for the first time a Socialist --
not a Christian Democrat -- who won a competitive primary to get that
nomination -- held the coalition together; someone who I think will
be a great leader for Chile going into the new century, but someone
who plainly has historical roots that go back to 1970 and Allende.
SEBASTIAN
PINERA: Well, I know him very well. He's a very smart guy. He has a
tremendous sense of power and authority. He was very wrong 20 years
ago with his socialist ideas.
ELIZABETH
FARNSWORTH: Social justice -- economic growth with equality -- was the
president elect's key campaign promise. The free-market economic policies
implemented during General Pinochet's long government gave Chile one
of the fasting growing economies in the world -- until a recent recession.
But income disparity grew rapidly too, and Lagos vowed to do something
about it. The president-elect is an economist with a Ph.D. from Duke
University.
A
long-time opponent of the military government, he gained national fame
in 1988 when he challenged Pinochet on television. Pointing at the camera
as if at the general, Lagos said that it was time for him to go, that
the torture and repression must end. It was an electrifying event at
a time when few dared criticize the General publicly.