Let Chileans Handle Their Own Tyrant

The U.S. government should prevail on Britain to set free immediately the former president of Chile, Augusto Pinochet. Since Oct. 16, this 83-year-old man, who abided the results of an election and stepped down from power, has been under arrest in Britain pending an extradition warrant issued by a Spanish court. The United States should immediately call a meeting of the Organization of American States to craft a united policy of protest at the aggressive intrusions of Britain and Spain, both former colonial powers of this hemisphere, into the domestic affairs of Chile.

The case stems from Spanish judge Baltazar Garzon’s ruling that Pinochet should stand trial in Spain for alleged crimes of genocide, terrorism and torture committed against Spanish citizens in Chile during the 1970s. These crimes allegedly took place in the aftermath of Pinochet’s successful September 1973 military coup toppling the radical Marxist dictatorship of Salvador Allende. According to Garzon, Pinochet’s actions constituted crimes against humanity as defined by the Geneva Convention and the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal in the aftermath of World War II.

It is all well and good for the Spanish judge to cite the post-WWII Geneva and Nuremberg conventions in going after Pinochet. But these international treaties and authorities are not so clear. The crimes of Nuremberg included conspiring to wage aggressive war, waging aggressive war, atrocious conduct on the part of the Germans, and crimes against humanity, including genocide.

Laying aside the bona fides of the Soviet Union to sit in judgment due to its own colossal aggressions, the powers of Nuremberg recognized the need to fight just wars and urgent military necessity in waging them. The countries providing the judges for Nuremberg had already justified the carpet bombing of Dresden and the use of atomic weapons on Japan as necessary in order to bring about more quickly the end of a war that saw 50 million people die. These bombings, without understanding the context, appear a terrible injustice done to noncombatants. The same may be said of some of the actions, although on a much lesser scale, taken by the Pinochet government during the Cold War.

Nonetheless, let us concede that Pinochet, or some in his government, committed grave wrongs in overthrowing the tyrannical government of Allende. The Chilean people are working out ways now of dealing with past injustices. Some of the efforts are analogous to those going on in South Africa and involve fact-finding and reconciliation. Others involve further changes in the Chilean constitution that currently gives weighted authority to the military. The possibility for some form of justice in a democratic Chile is far greater when compared to the former Soviet Union or the current People’s Republic of China. The body count of citizens killed by those two regimes approaches 100 million. The international silence toward this monstrous evil is deafening. Meanwhile sadistic tyrants and their representatives from North Korea, Cuba and Vietnam enjoy trips to New York for U.N. meetings. They walk freely, while an old man traveling to have back surgery in Britain is arrested. This is international justice?

Bill Clinton and Tony Blair have washed their hands of the Pinochet affair, leaving others in their administrations to speak.

Perhaps it time for someone in the U.S. Senate to stand up in the spirit of the Monroe Doctrine and Pan American Union and cite the the Rio Pact, signed in 1947. By this treaty, the U.S. and the other signatories of North and South America are bound to come to one another’s aid. One passage of the treaty states, “If the inviolability or the integrity or the sovereignty or political independence of any American state should be affected by an aggression which is not an armed attack, the Organ of Consultation shall meet immediately in order to agree on the measures which must be taken in case of aggression to assist the victim of aggression.”

Let us call the meeting.

Americans of both the North and the South should gently but forcefully remind the political leadership of both Britain and Spain that the time of European empire is over and the colonies are now independent sovereign nations. Arresting former leaders who travel on diplomatic passports is a two-way street. Granting such immunities is also an ancient international custom not lightly shed.