General Augusto Pinochet in perspective.

• Author: Jasper, William F.
• Position: 83374708
• Pages: 41(13)

According to the collective wisdom of the Washington political classes, the media "experts," and the self-anointed champions of human rights, a great new day has dawned for the "rule of law". One of the most vicious villains of all time, they say, now awaits his day before the bar of justice. The verdict is already foreordained, it would seem, and virtually unanimous. Who would dare voice support for one universally accused -- and so obviously guilty -- of such heinous offences as genocide, murder, torture, terrorism and crimes against humanity?

We are speaking, of course, of General Augusto Pinochet Ugarte, former President of Chile. According to reports by various anti-Pinochet activists, the Chilean strongman is guilty of the torture, murder, and/or disappearance of some three thousand persons during his seventeen-year rule, from 1973 to 1990. Very serious charges. And worthy of righteous outrage -- if true. But really, does it take a certified geopolitical genius to recognise that there is something terribly wrong with this picture?

Should not any reasonable, fair-minded person be asking: "Why is there such a blatantly disproportionate allotment of wrath focussed on this man? And why such intensity and depth of feeling on the part of his detractors?" After all, by world standards today, General Pinochet, it must be admitted (even by his harshest critics) does not qualify even for entry-level status to the rogues' gallery of butchers and terrorists who enjoy worldwide approbation and honour. Fidel Castro, Hun Sen, Yasser Arafat, Nelson Mandela, Mikhail Gorbachev, Boris Yeltsin, and Red China's merciless Li Peng and Jiang Zemin all know they have little to fear from the "human rights" activists who prattle ceaselessly about Chile's uniquely odious record.

Even as Spanish authorities sought to extradite Pinochet, Spain was playing host to Cuba's Castro at the Ibero-American Summit. Comrade Fidel's Stalinist legacy includes an estimated one million refugees and tens of thousands of political prisoners in his brutal gaols. Survivors of those hellholes, like Armando Valladarez and Anthony Bryant, testify that sadistic torture is routine and systemic throughout the Cuban gulag. More than 60,000 of Castro's victims have drowned fleeing his "workers' paradise." According to Cuban scholar Dr. Armando Lago, Castro's regime has executed an estimated 30,000 opponents.

The "human rights" hypocrisy of the "liberal" political elite is shared (and is made politically acceptable) by the "liberal" media elite. A study of media reporting on human rights more than two decades ago found that in 1976 "The Washington Post" ran nine human rights articles on Cambodia, four on Cuba, one on North Korea -- and fifty-eight on Chile. "The New York Times" conditioned its readers with four human rights stories on Cambodia, three on Cuba, none on North Korea, and sixty-six on Chile! The same kind of grotesque imbalance held true for much of the rest of the media. And the same holds true today.

The incredible double standard operating here is candidly explained by Willy Meyer, a parliamentary spokesman for "Izquerida Unida" (United Left), Spain's renamed Communist Party. "We do not consider that Fidel Castro is a dictator," says Meyer. "We respect the Marxist-Leninist legality by whose definition political persecution, torture, and disappearances cannot exist in Cuba." "We are dividing the world between good guys and bad guys," Comrade Meyer declared. "There is a vacuum in the international enforcement of human rights and we realise that whoever seizes the initiative to punish violators wins the high ground."

Unfortunately, such candour is all too rare among the fanatical opponents of Pinochet. But it is easy to see that Meyer's explanation neatly fits the transparent double standard that is applied to Pinochet and all others "on the Right." A fair assessment of the facts in the case of Augusto Pinochet will reveal that the current round of demonisation is a continuation of the furious campaign launched against him in 1973 when he and the Chilean military overthrew the Marxist regime of Salvador Allende. He has never been forgiven by the Communists or the international Marxist Left for that heroic act, or for saving the economy that Allende had ruined and turning it into an economic showcase. For the past twenty-six years, the same international network of Communist and Marxist-Left organisations and their supporters -- the Institute for Policy Studies, the Washington Office on Latin America, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, et al -- and their political and media allies, has relentlessly attacked Pinochet and his remarkable achievements. They are the force behind the black propaganda offensive aimed at Pinochet.

The truth, in short, is this:

* Salvador Allende and his Marxist-Socialist coalition party "Unidad Popular", employing massive electoral fraud and with financial backing from the Soviet Union, barely succeeded in obtaining a plurality of 36 per cent in Chile's 1970 presidential elections.

* With an army of some 14,000 foreign Communists, Allende began to transform Chile into a totalitarian dictatorship.

* Allende's administration was thoroughly packed with Cubans, Soviets, and other international Communists.

* In short order, the Allende forces had depleted the treasury, destroyed the economy, illegally expropriated thousands of private farms, homes, and businesses and unleashed a wave of terror.

* Chile's judiciary and legislature, as well as prominent leaders of all sectors of Chilean society, repeatedly condemned Allende's actions and called upon the military to intervene.

* The Pinochet-led coup was supported overwhelmingly by the Chilean people, who also voted to approve the new constitution offered by the junta.

* Documents and arms captured when Allende was overthrow, on 11 September 1973, proved that Allende was planning to stage his own coup on 19 September, and to kill large numbers of his opponents.

* The international Communist apparatus has continued an unceasing war of terrorism, subversion, and propaganda against Pinochet's Chile ever since.

* The Pinochet junta reacted with remarkable restraint toward its violent opponents.

* The Pinochet junta has never received credit for the peace and freedom it delivered to the Chilean people, or for the marvellous economic and social reforms it accomplished.

* President Pinochet, as he promised, voluntarily stepped down from power, returning the reins of government to civilian control, after establishing stability, security and constitutional reform.

Now, let us expand on the above points. General Pinochet's accusers always begin with the charge that his military junta overthrew the "democratically elected" government of President Allende. This seems to offer proof, right from the outset, of an autocratic, dictatorial bent that lends credibility to later, more ugly, charges. Some of the Allende champions will admit that their hero was "Marxist" (which carries a warmer, fuzzier, less threatening ring than "Communist"), but all of his camp followers deny that he intended to turn Chile into a Cuban-style dictatorship.

But Salvador Allende was no fuzzy "social reform" Marxist. His "Unidad Popular" and his government were filled with hard-core Communist revolutionaries like Luis Fernandez Ona, Orlando Letelier, Luis Corvalan, Daniel Vergara, Pedro Vuskovic, Jacques Conchol, Carlos Altamirano, Pablo Neruda, Hernan del Canto, Volodia Teitelboim...