What can the European Union do to help the people of Myanmar?
Keep applying pressure, because the generals have to know that the world is watching and will not allow them to commit more heinous crimes with impunity.
*****
Aung San Suu Kyi was finally released for good on 13 November 2010. In 2012, she won a seat in the Burmese parliament, and on June 16 of the same year, she was finally able to receive her Nobel Peace Prize in person. Finally authorised to travel abroad, she went to the UK to visit the son she had not seen for several years.
On 6 April 2016, she became State Counsellor (equivalent to Prime Minister) of Myanmar.
While it is true that Myanmar is not yet a totally free country, and its dictatorial past weighs on both its history and its future, there is no doubt that freedom and democracy are now more than just pipe dreams in the Land of A Thousand Pagodas.
7
LucÃa Pinochet
Death, torture and disappearance
Santiago, March 1999 .
â Pinochet? Chileans see him as a cancer. A hidden and painful illness. You know itâs there, but you're afraid to talk about it...to even say its name. So you end up pretending it doesnât exist. Maybe you think that by ignoring it, it will just go away without you having to confront it.â The waitress at Café El Biógrafo , a popular hangout for poets and students in the picturesque bohemian Santiago barrio of Bellavista, known for its colourful houses, couldn't have been much more than twenty years old. She may not even have been born when General Augusto Pinochet Ugarte, the â Senador vitalicio â [Senator-for-life] as he is known here, was either giving orders that would see his opponents âkilled, tortured and forcibly disappearedâ - as the families of the more than thirty thousand desaparecidos claim - or ruling with an iron fist to ensure that Chile was free from the threat of communism - as his admirers insist. And yet she is keen to talk to me about Pinochet, and she has some forthright views: âItâs all about Pinochet here. Whether you're a fan of his or not, you can't deny that he is present in every part of Chilean life. He's part of our politics, clearly. He lives large in everyone's memories, in my parentsâ stories, in teachersâ lessons. Heâs in novels, non-fiction books, the cinema. That's right, in Chile even films are either for or against Pinochet. And yet somehow we continue to pretend that he isnât there...â
This stubborn old man, who faced up to the British justice system âwith the dignity of a soldierâ, this âpoor old guyâ (as whispered into my ear by the concierge at the CÃrculo de la Prensa , where during the shadowy years of the military dictatorship, people loyal to the General would come to âpick upâ pesky journalists right in front of the Palacio de La Moneda, where Salvador Allende died in the midst of the coup) had become a lumbering giant whose presence was felt in every corner of every street of every quarter of Santiago, a city that seemed to me uncertain and inward-looking
He is the living memory of this country - a colossal, ubiquitous memory that embarrasses those who supported him and irritates those who opposed him. A vast, sprawling memory that clings to people's lives, hopes and fears, to Chile's past and to its future.
In October 1998, having retired as Commander-in-Chief of the Chilean army and been appointed Senator-for-life, Pinochet was arrested while in London for medical treatment and placed under house arrest. First at the clinic where he had just undergone back surgery, and then in a rented house.
The international arrest warrant had been signed by a Spanish judge, Baltasar Garzón, for crimes against humanity. The charges included nearly a hundred counts of torture of Spanish citizens and count of conspiracy to commit torture. The UK had only recently signed the United Nations Convention against Torture, meaning that all the charges related to events that occurred during the final fourteen months of his rule.
The Chilean government immediately opposed his arrest, extradition and trial. Thus began a hard-fought, sixteen-month battle in the House of Lords, then the highest court in the UK. Pinochet claimed diplomatic immunity as a former head of state, but the Lords refused in light of the severity of the charges and authorised the extradition, albeit with several restrictions. However, shortly afterwards, a second ruling by the Lords enabled Pinochet to avoid extradition on health grounds (he was eighty-two years old at the time of his arrest), for âhumanitarianâ reasons. Following medical assessments, the British Home Secretary Jack Straw authorised Pinochet to return to Chile in March 2000, nearly two years after he was put under house arrest.
It was at the end of March 1999, in the midst of this complex international legal battle, that I went to Santiago to monitor the situation for the daily Il Tempo and to interview Pinochetâs eldest daughter, LucÃa. The House of Lords had just rejected Pinochetâs claim for immunity, and the plane that the generalâs family and supporters had hoped would bring him home to Chile returned without him.
The reaction on the streets of Santiago was immediate. On March 24, the Chilean capital had awaited the ruling with bated breath. The city may not have been in lockdown, but there was a discrete Carabineros - military police - presence at potential flashpoints: the presidential seat at La Moneda, the British and Spanish embassies, and the headquarters of pro- and anti-Pinochet organisations. There was blanket media coverage, enabling Chileans to follow events minute by minute. With live satellite links to London, Madrid and various locations in Santiago starting at seven in the morning and lasting all day, it felt like a truly historical event. At around midday local time, less than an hour after the Lords had issued their ruling, two afternoon dailies were published in special edition. The headline of one of them put it very neatly: âPinochet loses but winsâ.
In the morning, the residents of Santiago had crowded round televisions in public places, from McDonald's to the smallest of bars, to follow all the crucial developments. Angry customers in one large city-centre store beseeched the manager to tune the TV into the live feed from London.
The situation had remained broadly calm until the late afternoon, when the first signs of tension began to surface. At four oâclock local time, there were the first clashes between students and the police in the city centre, at the crossroads between La Alameda [2] and Miraflores, with a dozen or so people injured and around fifty students arrested.
There were plenty of appeals for calm, mainly from members of the government. The inflammatory remarks from General Fernando Rojas Vender (the pilot who bombed La Moneda during the 1973 coup dâétat and the commander of the Chilean Air Force), who on the previous