U.S. Must Tie Hands of Chile’s Murderers

A recommendation to dictators the world around: When you’re going to kill somebody, first make sure that the person has no U.S. connections.

Gen. Augusto Pinochet, Chile’s strongman for almost 13 years, should know. On July 2, according to numerous witnesses, his troops beat up two youngsters in a Santiago slum, doused them with gasoline and set them afire. After letting them burn for a few minutes, the soldiers wrapped them in blankets, threw them onto a truck and dumped them four miles away on the other side of the city. Their only mistake was in picking on 19-year-old Rodrigo Rojas de Negri, a Washington, D.C., resident who was back home on a brief visit after a 10-year exile. His death four days later moved the U.S. government to demand a complete investigation into the incident and punishment for the guilty.

As a result of that pressure, the Chilean army, which had adamantly proclaimed for 16 days that no patrol had even been near the area, was forced to admit that 25 military men were involved in the incident. Their version was that the two youths had accidentally burned themselves and that the soldiers had done no more than come to their rescue. The designated judge was Alberto Echavarria, who had been notoriously pusillanimous and ineffective in the case of a student who was kidnaped and murdered four years ago. The judge dismissed the account of the 10 civilian eyewitnesses and ignored the testimony of Carmen Quintana, 18, the second victim, and of Rodrigo himself before he died. Echavarria released 24 of the soldiers, indicting Lt. Pedro Fernandez for manslaughter through negligence. He is not charged with burning the kids--merely with failing to take them to a hospital. He will be judged by a military tribunal. His defense is that Rodrigo and Carmen--with 62% of their bodies burned!--refused medical treatment.

This cover-up has everybody in Chile, including many former Pinochet supporters, aghast and outraged. It is clear to us all that troops have a license to maim, torture and kill, and to do it publicly, without ever being held accountable.

Human-rights lawyers representing the Roman Catholic Church call the army’s version false. There is objective medical evidence: Rodrigo’s bones were broken and Carmen’s teeth had been bashed out, which proves that they had been beaten before the burning. Their burns were of the second and third degree--the sort that come only after prolonged burning, not from accidental exposure to flames quickly snuffed out. And what about the witnesses? Even though threatened and intimidated by the secret police, they continue to swear that the burning was deliberate. The accusations could go on and on--the military has suppressed and supplanted evidence, changed its version, refused to submit to an independent investigation.

We Chileans are outraged, but not surprised. This is the sort of terror, mendacity and callousness that we have been suffering over and over since the 1973 coup ended democracy in Chile. What makes this case special is that, because of the U.S. residency of one of the victims, Americans are able to catch a glimpse, however fleeting, of the everyday horror that Chileans are now living. Thus when the mourners at Rodrigo’s funeral were beaten and tear-gassed, the State Department protested--because the American ambassador was present and witnessed how the police provoked and started the violence.

What happens in the thousands of other cases--when the troops raid shantytowns and shoot to death 13-year-old girls and 40-year-old priests, when masked men beat up university students inside a police station, when the daughter of a human-rights activist is kidnaped and her breast carved with a razor blade--and there is no U.S. representative to testify and confirm the Chilean people’s version of events?

The murder of Rodrigo Rojas is going to put U.S.-Chilean relations to a severe test. It will force the Reagan Administration--which has been slowly distancing itself from the dictatorship, at least in speeches--to publicly announce whose side it is on. Will it believe the victims, or will it believe their persecutors? Will it side with those who were set on fire, or will it side with those who lit and then hid the matches?

It is time, I believe, for the United States to choose well. It must tie Pinochet’s hands. Until the whole truth has come out and the murderers are prosecuted and punished, the United States should vote against the multilateral aid that is propping up the Chilean dictatorship.

But that is not enough. What of the countless other victims of atrocities who have no U.S. connections or protection?

There will inevitably be more of them every day. The only way Pinochet can remain in power is by escalating the savagery of his repression. Faced with a widespread movement of civil disobedience and an increasing possibility of a left-wing armed insurrection, if he wants to remain as president until 1997--as he recently announced--the general can do so only by burning more Rodrigos and Carmens.

Or is the United States going to say to the world that it is all right to burn people to death--just make sure that they are not residents of Washington, D.C.?