British Government Welcomed Chilean Coup
comrade josh | 02.01.2004 01:15 | Repression | World
New documents released by the government archives show that the British government welcomed the 1973 coup in Chile. At least 3000 people (mainly left wingers) were killed soon afterward. The Pinochet regime that took over was in power until 1990.
The British Government welcomed the 1973 coup in Chile according to documents released by Britain's national archive yesterday.
British ambassador Reginald Seconde wrote a report just three weeks after the September 11 coup took place.
He wrote, "The current regime has infinitely more to offer British interests than the one which preceded it."
"The new leaders are unequivocally on our side and want to do business in its widest sense with us."
He described the military officers in charge of the country as "decent professionals, with no political experience, and little subtlety or idea of public relations."
"Their twin aims are to root out Marxism and to restore order."
"Their instinct will be to do this by disciplinary means and they are likely to be heavy-handed."
Documents relating to the actual day of the coup itself have been withheld, fueling speculation that they contain incriminating evidence about the role countries like the United States played in the coup.
More than 3000 people were killed after the democratically elected Salvador Allende government was overthrown.
Pinochet's regime particularly targeted students, trade unionists and left wing intellectuals. Many were tortured and their bodies dumped in the Pacific Ocean or in the Mopocho River which flows through the Chilean capital of Santiago.
The regime went on to implement an extreme form of neo-liberal economic policy - one which was later emulated by Pinochet's admirers Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan.
Here is an excerpt from Chris Harman's Book - "A Peoples History of the World." (Bookmarks, London, 1999). It gives some context to the events:
'In Chile the parliamentary Socialist Party was the beneficiary of the new militancy. One of it's leaders, Salvador Allende, was elected president in 1970, and the right wing majority in parliament agreed to him assuming office in return for a constitutional guarantee that he would not disturb the military chain of command.
Important US business interests were not happy at this, and two years into Allende's term of office they were joined by major sections of the Chilean ruling class. There was an attempt to drive him from office in the autumn of 1972 through a 'bosses' strike' spearheaded by lorry owners. It was thwarted by workers seizing their factories and setting up cordones - similar to the workers councils of 1917 and 1956 - to link the factories.
An attempted coup in June 1973 failed due to splits in the armed forces and massive street protests. But the Communist party and main sectors of the Socialist party told people to wind down the cordones and trust in the 'constitutional' traditions of the army. Allende brought generals, including Augusto Pinochet, into his government, believing this would placate the right and maintain order.
In September Pinochet staged a coup, bombarded Allende in the presidential palace and murdered thousands of worker activists. While the workers movement was being lulled to sleep in Europe by it's own leaders, it was drowned in blood in southern Latin America.'
British ambassador Reginald Seconde wrote a report just three weeks after the September 11 coup took place.
He wrote, "The current regime has infinitely more to offer British interests than the one which preceded it."
"The new leaders are unequivocally on our side and want to do business in its widest sense with us."
He described the military officers in charge of the country as "decent professionals, with no political experience, and little subtlety or idea of public relations."
"Their twin aims are to root out Marxism and to restore order."
"Their instinct will be to do this by disciplinary means and they are likely to be heavy-handed."
Documents relating to the actual day of the coup itself have been withheld, fueling speculation that they contain incriminating evidence about the role countries like the United States played in the coup.
More than 3000 people were killed after the democratically elected Salvador Allende government was overthrown.
Pinochet's regime particularly targeted students, trade unionists and left wing intellectuals. Many were tortured and their bodies dumped in the Pacific Ocean or in the Mopocho River which flows through the Chilean capital of Santiago.
The regime went on to implement an extreme form of neo-liberal economic policy - one which was later emulated by Pinochet's admirers Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan.
Here is an excerpt from Chris Harman's Book - "A Peoples History of the World." (Bookmarks, London, 1999). It gives some context to the events:
'In Chile the parliamentary Socialist Party was the beneficiary of the new militancy. One of it's leaders, Salvador Allende, was elected president in 1970, and the right wing majority in parliament agreed to him assuming office in return for a constitutional guarantee that he would not disturb the military chain of command.
Important US business interests were not happy at this, and two years into Allende's term of office they were joined by major sections of the Chilean ruling class. There was an attempt to drive him from office in the autumn of 1972 through a 'bosses' strike' spearheaded by lorry owners. It was thwarted by workers seizing their factories and setting up cordones - similar to the workers councils of 1917 and 1956 - to link the factories.
An attempted coup in June 1973 failed due to splits in the armed forces and massive street protests. But the Communist party and main sectors of the Socialist party told people to wind down the cordones and trust in the 'constitutional' traditions of the army. Allende brought generals, including Augusto Pinochet, into his government, believing this would placate the right and maintain order.
In September Pinochet staged a coup, bombarded Allende in the presidential palace and murdered thousands of worker activists. While the workers movement was being lulled to sleep in Europe by it's own leaders, it was drowned in blood in southern Latin America.'
comrade josh
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comradejosh@riseup.net
Comments
Hide the following 6 comments
Release ALL the documents!
02.01.2004 10:43
It would seem that the British government can just make up the rules on such matters as it goes along. The British Establishment is a law unto itself and relaeases only the information that it wants us to see.
Jim
Yes release everything
02.01.2004 16:37
For example let everyone see the amount of funding received by the CPGB from Soviet Russia during the 70s and 80s.
Release the details of East German contributions to CND in 1987 and 1988
Provide the background to the infamous "contributions" received by the Greenham Women from the Polish embassy in return for photographs of the base. (An action that would have been considered treason at any other time)
What ever happended to the $2 million that came from North Korea in 1999 that the Socialist Workers Party received. Many SWP members have been asking this, perhaps the two month "fact finding" trip to Cuba by three leading commitee members could provide some clue.
Dave
Kissinger covered up Chile torture
02.01.2004 17:14
The cable, describing their only meeting in 1976, shows how Kissinger bolstered Pinochet while hundreds of political prisoners were still being jailed and tortured.
The then American Secretary of State assured Pinochet that President Gerald Ford's administration would not punish him for violations of human rights. He told him he was a victim of Communist propaganda and should not pay too much attention to American critics.
The cable is among files being declassifed for the Spanish prosecutor seeking Pinochet's extradition from London to face trial in Spain. The Law Lords' revised judgment is expected within three weeks.
Pinochet led the coup which overthrew the democratically elected President Salvador Allende in 1973. Kissinger's complicity has always been suspected, but the cable reveals details which will cause him deep embarrassment.
The cable shows, too, that in 1974 he rejected the advice of his own officials that he should publicly denounce the plan by Chile and other repressive regimes to set up a covert office in Miami for the notorious terrorist Operation Condor.
Had he done so, prospective victims would have been warned. Although the office was not in fact opened, the conspiracy continued to target and murder the regime's enemies.
After hits in Buenos Aires and in Rome, the operation came to Washington with a vengeance. A car bomb killed Orlando Letelier, former Chilean Foreign Minister and ambassador to the US, and his Institute for Policy Studies colleague, Ronni Moffitt.
Pinochet could feel confident that such activites would cause few problems. After all, he had had a warm private meeting with Kissinger a few months before.
The meeting occurred in Santiago on 8 June 1976, during a gathering of the Organisation of American States. Kissinger and the Assistant Secretary for Inter-American Affairs, William Rogers, met Pinochet in the presidential suite in Diego Portales - an office building used during repairs on La Moneda, the presidential palace Pinochet had bombed.
Kissinger, dogged by charges he had promoted the military coup against an elected Chilean government, sought to maintain a cool public distance from Pinochet. But at his confidential meeting, he promised warm support.
Kissinger made clear how much he backed Pinochet, saying, 'In the United States, as you know, we are sympathetic with what you are trying to do here. I think that the previous government was headed toward Communism. We wish your government well.'
He dismissed American human rights campaigns against Chile's government as 'domestic problems' and assured Pinochet that he was against sanctions such as the proposed Kennedy Amendment to ban arms aid to governments that were gross human rights violators.
Kissinger had a proble because the OAS report to the Santiago meeting said that mass arrests, torture, and disappearances continued in Chile. The speech he would give that afternoon could not ignore human rights but must not offend or weaken Pinochet.
Kissinger wanted Pinochet to know that the speech should not be interpreted as a criticism of Chile. He told him: 'I will treat human rights in general terms and human rights in a world context . . . I will say that the human rights issue has impaired relations between the US. and Chile. This is partly the result of Congressional actions. I will add that I hope you will shortly remove those obstacles.'
He added: 'I will also call attention to the Cuba report [on human rights there] and to the hypocrisy of some who call attention to human rights as a means of intervening in governments.'
But Kissinger suggested to Pinochet that his statements on Chile were calibrated to avoid greater damage to the country. He told him: 'I can do no less without producing a reaction in the US which would lead to legislative restrictions. The speech is not aimed at Chile.'
And he emphasised that he did not believe the charges. 'My evaluation is that you are a victim of all left-wing groups around the world, and that your greatest sin was that you overthrew a government which was going Communist. But we have a practical problem we have to take into account, without bringing about pressures incompatible with your dignity, and at the same time which does not lead to US laws which will undermine our relationship.'
Dave
UK and US in Chile
02.01.2004 17:25
Some of the relevant documents released this week:
* UK policy on Chilean refugees FCO 7/2421, FCO 7/2421/1, FCO 7/2422, FCO 7/2422/1:
* Internal political situation in Chile FCO 7/2410, FCO 7/2410/1
* Export of military equipment from the UK to Chile FCO 7/2433:
The Foreign and Commonwealth Office have reportedly held back all documents relating to the day of the coup, however. I assume they are waiting until Kissinger and other US parties who supported and assisted the coup die of old age, before these are released.
The overthrow of President Allende in Chile presented the Foreign Office with a refugee problem. "The usual fellow-travelling civil rights organisations will do their best to confuse the distinction [between] respected democratic socialists and undesirables further to the left," a department minute noted. "In view of the growth of terrorism in this country we really cannot knowingly risk admitting terrorists as refugees."
So calling inconvenient refugees "terrorists" is nothing new, e.g. abandoning thousands on the Chilean left to be murdered by the Pinochet regime, and slamming your doors to legitimate asylum seekers fleeing from "valued trading partners".
More on how the US supported the Pinochet coup, before during and after:
Yes, release all the documents, all of them. Let the world see the crimes committed by CND, the SWP, and the Greenham Common Women, then let the world compare them to the terrible butchery inflicted on tens of millions, by the US and Britain.
Ian
2032
03.01.2004 16:56
Lenanse
Documents for the war on terrorism
03.01.2004 21:37
Ian