Pinochet arrest: an outrage
Reform of the Lords apart, if anything was required to demonstrate the still strong influence of the malignant left in the Labour Party, it was provided by leading Government spokesmen's gleeful reaction to last month's (October 1998) arrest in London of former Chilean President General Augusto Pinochet on the pretext of proceedings in the pipeline to have him extradited to Spain for alleged crimes against Spanish nationals in Chile.
Pinochet is 82 years old and had come to Britain to undergo treatment at a Harley Street clinic for back trouble. The arrest and extradition proceedings a so far unanswered legal question of how a person can be extradited to one country for crimes committed in another, and therefore how he can be arrested in yet a third country pending the granting or refusal of that extradition. This, however, has not prevented a London court granting a warrant for the arrest of the former General. We would like to hear on what legal grounds this was thought to be in order.
General Pinochet was the leading light in a military junta that seized power in Chile in 1973 in a bid to forestall the setting up of a full-blooded Marxist regime by the former President Salvador Allende. He and fellow officers promptly became hate figures among lefties the world over. As happens with all-powerful right-wing leaders (but almost never left-wing ones), legends grew and prospered concerning the alleged 'brutality' of Pinochet's Government, with stories of oppression, tortures and mass murders of opponents. Since 'evidence' of acts like these is so easy to fabricate given modern techniques of media propaganda, we will probably never know the full truth of what happened in Chile under Pinochet. But even assuming that he did not employ kid-gloves in dealing with the opposition in Chile - a country situated in a continent where roughhouse politics are traditionally common-place - this puts him no worse category than the various dictators and terrorists whom British Governments have wined and dined over past years, including Nikita Kruschev, Fidel Castro, Robert Mugabe, Nelson Mandela and a host of other African tyrants, Nicolae Ceausescu of Romania, Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness and the of the I.R.A gang.
Against Pinochet's brutalities, real or imagined must be set a number of accomplishments. He restored stability and order to Chile. He rooted out official corruption. He reinvigorated the country's economy. He introduced a state pension scheme that many have acknowledged as a model to the world. By comparison, the majority of the others named have only destructive achievements to be remembered by.
So why the whoops of delight from Government members when Pinochet was arrested? Simple. We live in an age of gesture politics - and also politics of resentment and hate. As Daily Mail columnist Simon Heffer remarked (21st October 1998), many members of the current Labour Government were "hairy foaming student radicals" in the 1970s, when Pinochet was perhaps the world's leading figure in left-wing demonology. Today these politicians wear smart suits and employ 'moderate' political language, but underneath they remain the same bigots as they were in the past. They have never forgiven the former Chilean leader for saving his country from communism. And that matters, to them, much more than Britain's dignity, decorum and reputation for civilised behaviour - not least her interests, which Chile has never threatened.
So it is alright to get an old man out of bed in the middle of the night and subject him to the degrading treatment of arbitrary arrest in a country where he has committed no crimes, and where evidence of any criminality on his part anywhere rests on the word of left-wing fanatics who hate him with an intensity bordering on hysteria.
What a truly revolting and disgusting spectacle does the Britain of 1998 present under the control of these nasty little men!
Webmaster's note: This article was originally published in 'Spearhead' magazine No.357, November 1998.
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Visit the campaign for justice and freedom for General Pinochet at Reconcile Chile