Chile: Church Amnesty Call Rejected

As a follow-up to my last post, Piñera has rejected calls for an amnesty for human rights criminals. This is good news, and shouldn't really be too surprising - I agree with Greg that there wasn't much to gain politically from a pardon - but with the influence of the military in the Southern Cone, you can't always be sure.

Chile denies pardon for dictatorship-era crimes (Reuters)
Chile rejects pardons proposed by Catholic Church (AP)
Piñera rejects Bishops plea to pardon military involved in human rights abuses (Mercopress)

Chile: no amnesty for you (Two Weeks Notice)

Chile: Church Calls for Amnesty

Chile's bishops' conference is calling for an amnesty which could affect some members of the military imprisoned for Pinochet-era crimes. They describe this as a "humanitarian act which will contribute to reconciliation".

According to the BBC, the Catholic Church in Chile is suggesting that "any members of the country's military who show repentance for the crimes they committed under military rule" should be pardoned, but AP specifies that "the church's proposed amnesty would apply to prisoners who are sick or older than 70 or those who have served half their sentence". The prospective amnesty is in fact not exclusively for or limited to military criminals, but includes them, and this is the group which will receive attention from the media and rights groups.

The president of the bishops' conference, Alejandro Goic, has defended the appeal in the face of outrage from relatives and human rights group, demanding, "Do they want us to call for hate?" (La Tercera).

Sigh... I don't know. I accept that my position on organised religion in general and the Roman Catholic leadership in particular is not unbiased, to put it mildly, but it still gets to me: how do they manage to be on the wrong side every single time?! Where are they with their demands for justice for the victims? Why do they insist on confusing justice with "hate" or revenge? It just seems like a wilful attempt to misrepresent the struggle of the victims' families, to be honest. Please, go ahead and forgive the torturers, if you want - give them all the Christian love you like. I just don't see why you have to fight for their freedom when there are innocent people out there waiting for a fair deal from the Chilean judicial system. But honestly - if anyone wants to explain to me how this will assist reconciliation, fire away.

Chilean Church seeks clemency for aging prisoners (AP)
Church call for pardon angers Chile rights groups (Reuters)
Chile bishops seek pardons for military-rule crimes (BBC)
Indulto: Iglesia pide que se estudie caso a caso situacion de condenados por delitos de Derechos Humanos (La Tercera)
Obispo Goic defiende propuesta de indulto: 'Querian que llamaramos al odio?' (La Tercera)

Peru Round-up

1)
U.S. State Department offers reward for Shining Path leaders (Peruvian Times)
US offers up to $5 million for Peru's "Artemio" and "Jose" (Living in Peru)
Here are the official wanted pages for Artemio (real name Florindo Eleuterio Flores Hala) and Jose (real name Victor Quispe Palomino).

2)
Guilt, repentance and innocence: Lori Berenson and her baby might be going back to prison (Peruvian Times)
The English-language media has largely moved on, but legal wranglings over Berenson's future continue.

3)
Tejen Chalina de la Solidaridad por las Victimas de la Violencia (CNDDHH)
"Ellas tejen para no olvidar a sus seres queridos" (La Republica, via APRODEH)

A group of indigenous women has been knitting a giant scarf as a visual symbol of their struggle for justice and memory of their relatives, who were lost in the political violence. I find the combination of the homely act of knitting with human rights activism quite striking, and somewhat analogous to the mothers of the Plaza de Mayo in Argentina, who have also spoken of their leaving the private space of the home to struggle in public.

4)
Finally, from Jo-Marie Burt,
Reflexiones, a 18 años de La Cantuta (Noticias Ser)

Peru: Consequences for Children of Imprisoned Mothers

The recent Peruvian film La teta asustada focused on how violence inflicted on a Peruvian woman continued to have repercussions in the next generation, on her daughter. In the real world, Peru's Centro de Atencion Psicosocial has carried out a study on the children of women imprisoned during the civil conflict, concluding that these children have suffered a negative psychological impact.

The mothers reported that their offspring had displayed various negative effects in including emotional changes (sadness, crying and depression 44%), problems at school (34%), consumption of drugs and alcohol (10%) and suicide attempts (8%).

This was a relatively small study and I don't know enough of the details to know whether these issues are more severe than those suffered by the children of women incarcerated at other periods or for other reasons. Nevertheless, it's a further reminder of the continuing legacy of a violent era in a society. Especially under Fujimori, many thousands of Peruvians were imprisoned, often with very little evidence against them and without having undergone a fair trial, so although the study cohort was fairly small, there must be a lot more people out there whose family life was disrupted in this way.

Hijos e hijas de madres detenidas durante etapa de violencia politica presentan consecuencias negativas en su salad mental (CNDDHH)

Argentina: Gay Marriage

- The Chilean Church wants an amnesty for the [military] human rights abusers.
- What odd people... you kill a load of people, they want to give you an amnesty... You marry someone of the same sex and they send you to hell.

(from today's Pagina/12)

Spain: Against Impunity

Here's a video from Spain with famous figures including Pedro Almodóvar and Javier Bardem drawing attention to the disappeared from the Franco era (Spanish only). Very moving.



Thanks to decolonizing solidarity for drawing my attention to this one.

Peru: Lugar de la Memoria

Here's an interview with Fernando Carvallo, who is involved with the development of the Lugar de la Memoria in Peru. He discusses the point of the project and its link with the photographic exhibition Yuyanapaq (Spanish only).