The Grim Reeper Catches Pinochet, Government of Chile Seeks arrests for alledged Human Rights Violations

It was to many civilians; on December 10th, 2006, a celebration, as dictator Augosto Pinochet passed away. Reflections on Pinochet's Death. At this link read a story about a man that "In 1973, in the weeks following Pinochet's coup, my uncle, Cristián Montecino, was abducted from his apartment by the military police and executed in a military barrack for no reason other than taking pictures." This is just one of countless disappearances to have occurred during the period 1973-1990. Pinochet was unbelievably never actually convicted of any human rights abuses although there was mounting evidence to support the allegations. Human Rights activists around the world insisted that his dictatorship was one of the worst in history.
But now amazingly enough, the link to this post will take you to some relatively good news! That of course is that members of his regime are going to be arrested and held accountable for various human rights abuses during Pinochet's rule in Chile. There is a global sigh of relief in the air for many that were traumatized by this mans "leadership". When CNN takes the time to report it even on headline news programming you know it is a significant occurrence of the rest of the world. I came across some other interesting information to share with this post. Chile Us State Department March 2006 Death of Pinochet.
While perusing the US State department archives I came across an article about Pinochet. Interestingly enough, it presents the fact that "At the time of his death on December 10, former military dictator Augusto Pinochet was under investigation or indictment in at least six cases involving extrajudicial executions, kidnapping, and torture dating from the military government of 1973-89. However, Pinochet was never brought to trial or convicted on human rights charges." How interesting I thought to myself. Here is a guy that's been in power for 17 years or so, and no one could ever put the "hammer down" so to speak on a dictator for the types of crimes he had been alleged of committing. And only six cases of extrajudicial executions? That's it?In 17 years? But, when you look around in modern times, lets say the past few years or so, things are not so easy to get away with in the name of human rights abuse anymore i.e. dictators like Saddam Hussein? He had "gassed" his own people and buried them in mass graves?
Likely I will get a nod when "some" people read that little tidbit, but whatever as I say. How did Pinochet and his regime get away with the horrendous human rights abuses the world will never know. I posted another excellent link to help you unravel this "mystery" maybe. Chile: Political and Economic Conditions and U.S. Relations.
This link will take you to a pd f document which gives quite a little bit of detail regarding present relation between the US and Chile. The part I am most interested of course is the history of Pinochet and of course the human rights violations for Chile as of today:"Chile is also a source, transit, and destination country for trafficking in persons for commercial sexual and labor exploitation. The U.S. Department of State’s 2008 Trafficking in Persons (TIP)
Report states that Chile does not fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of
trafficking because its statutory framework does not specifically prohibit labor trafficking. Chile
made significant efforts to fully comply with the U.S. standards during the 2007-2008 reporting
period, however, introducing anti-trafficking legislation, opening a significant number of
trafficking investigations, and improving assistance for trafficking victims. As a result, the U.S.
Department of State designated Chile a “Tier 2” country".
This is interesting as yesterday we were talking about" trafficking" in the United States. Anyways, the good news is justice is to be served maybe not for Pinochet but maybe for members of his ruthless regime!

William