Put Thatcher with Pinochet
By Mary Nelis
It is fifty years since the United Nations adopted the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights.
Since then, the second half of this century has been characterised by
every possible violation of human rights, from mass murder to mass
starvation, to mass torture, rape, social and economic slavery.
Most of man's inhumanity to man has been carried out by governments
and excused on the grounds that the state has a duty to protect its
inhabitants from communism, terrorism or some other `ism'.
During Argentina's `Dirty War' the Governor of Buenos Aires was most
forthcoming on how those in power dealt with resistance movements or
individuals who were of no use to the government. He said ``first we
kill all the subversives, then we kill all their collaborators, then
their sympathisers, then those who remain indifferent, and finally we
kill the timid.''
These sentiments are still shared and practised worldwide by
governments and dictators who enjoy the patronage of faceless global
decision-makers. Thousands have died in unconventional warfare to
defend and progress the strategic interests of the status quo without
having to address the legal, moral or human consequences.
Until last month most of the world's dictators and military heads of
state thought, like Pinochet, that they would enjoy forever that
status reserved for political bureaucrats - diplomatic immunity -
which is a sort of world privilege credit card, especially those in
Florida, enjoying the hospitality of the US government. All that has
changed with the request for the extradition of Pinochet. What these
tyrants and those who went before them have never learnt or
understood, is that the scythe swings and at once the grass starts to
grow again.
The scythe swung in Chile in 1973 but the `grass' stood with their
placards in London, in Santiago, in Spain as the British Law Lords
delivered their verdict. These were the mothers, the relatives and
the survivors of the regime which set out to destroy them. They have
not remained silent. In every country in the world, including our
own, they have confronted the dictators, the torturers and the
soldiers, often at great personal risk to themselves. As one woman
said of the Pinochet regime, ``why our children have died we do not
know, but no one shall deny they lived.''
The Pinochet extradition has blown a large hole in the comfort of
those who thought people had forgotten. When the tortured may need to
forget, to survive, there is an imperative on the rest of us to
remember.
We in Ireland, as in Chile, have much to remember as we near the end
of the century. Those who have lived through and suffered at the
hands of the British regime in the north over the past thirty two
years have not forgotten the hard-won truths of our own struggle for
freedom and democracy.
While the great powers engaged in unconventional wars, to suit their
own interests, the Soviets in Afghanistan, Reagan's Contras in
Nicaragua, Pol Pot and the Chinese in Cambodia, the CIA-supported
death squads in EL Salvador and Chile, the French in the bombing of
the Rainbow Warrior, during which time every conceivable human right
was violated, the oppressed people of the north were condemned and
labelled terrorists by the British for resorting to armed
insurrection, when peaceful change in Ireland, like Chile, was
violently suppressed.
The outworking of Britain's dictatorship in Ireland, which suppressed
the 1918 election results and the partition of the country under the
threat of war to promote Britain's own selfish and strategic
interests, is the root cause of all armed insurrection movements in
this country. The institutionalised injustice and state terrorism of
the British government in Ireland has been directly or indirectly
responsible for 3,000 deaths, the imprisonment, detention, torture
and all treatment of thousands more.
During Thatcher's term as head of state 10,000 individuals in the
north were convicted in non-jury courts on confession evidence
obtained by torture and ill-treatment in interrogation centres. In
1979, the British government inquiry, the Bennett Report disclosed
that 1,600 formal complaints of assualt backed up by medical evidence
had been lodged. Not one RUC officer was questioned, charged or
convicted.
The death squads operating the now well-documented shoot-to-kill
policy, have been more militarily discreet and politically expedient
than their counterparts in South America, but just as lethal. They
operated, as one learned judge stated, ``the final court of justice''.
Britain's history in Ireland has been one long violation of human
rights, no more so than during the Thatcher era. Perhaps the present
Argentinean government may ask for her extradition to face charges of
causing the deaths of 368 young men in the sinking of the Belgrano.
The IRA are now on ceasefire. We're still progressing the peace, but
we hope that somewhere down the road there will be a Nuremberg Trial,
or a United Nations Truth Commission, for the truth of England's
terrorism and denial of rights to generations of Irish people needs
to be told.
Thatcher and Pinochet would make a fine couple together in the dock.
![[An Phoblacht]](http://republican-news.org/graphics/title_gifs/aprn.gif)