Chilean President Gabriel Boric signed a decree launching the National Search Plan for victims of forced disappearance during the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship (1973-1990). There are 1,469 victims during this period, of which, so far, only 307 have been found and identified. The president’s plan is to hold the state accountable through a permanent national policy that transcends the governments that take power.
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Chile is about to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the 1973 coup and with this date that revives the pain of the dictatorship, proposals are coming to advance in the reparation of the families of the victims.
This Wednesday, August 30, the Chilean president gave way to the unprecedented policy of searching for victims of forced disappearance under a great National Plan.
An announcement that came as a balm for many families, since they were the ones who bore almost all the responsibility for the searches for the disappeared.
in that process only the remains of 307 people have been found and the whereabouts of the other 1,162 registered victims are still unknown. The majority were workers and peasants of about 29 years of age on average.
“This figure should hurt us and make our blood burn, because it accounts for the magnitude of the debt that we have as a State and as a society,” Boric said when launching the National Plan for the Search for Truth and Justice, the first official initiative of this guy.
The measure, which will be deployed with state money, It intends to carry out a reconstruction of the route of the victims after their arrest and disappearance.
It will be the first time in almost half a century that the families of the victims will have a technical and professional body to follow the trail of their loved ones. A mechanism that vindicates the struggle of the surviving relatives who have made all kinds of protests, from hunger strikes to legal appeals that they brought before the courts.
On social networks, the Chilean Presidency published the objectives of its plan. The list is headed by clarifying the circumstances of the disappearance of the victims, followed by the step that seeks to guarantee access to information for the next of kin and, finally, the implementation of reparation measures and guarantees of non-repetition.
According to the president, one of the goals is to “locate, recover, identify and restore the mortal remains of the victims of forced disappearance.”
We take charge as a State, not only as a Government, to remove all barriers to clarify the circumstances of the disappearance and/or death of the victims of forced disappearance, Boric said during the ceremony outside the La Moneda presidential palace, an event that was not attended by members of the right-wing opposition.
For his part, the Minister of Justice and Human Rights of Chile, Luis Cordero, stated in an interview with ‘The New York Times’ that “the State separated them from their families and it is the State that must be responsible for the reparation, punish those responsible and support the search.”
“A pact of silence since the dictatorship”
The relatives of the victims raised their voices at the event, which is part of the commemorative date of the International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances, to remind the Chilean Government that the main obstacle in the entire process has been the little collaboration of the Forces Armed. The families denounce that it is a “pact of silence” that the uniformed men have made since the dictatorship to date.
“No other government had this political will that was necessary so that this ordeal is not only for the relatives, but for the entire society and the State that made our relatives disappear,” Gaby Rivera, president of the Association, said at the ceremony. of Relatives of Disappeared Detainees.
“I am convinced that democracy is memory and the future, and one cannot be without the other,” said the Chilean president during an emotional ceremony in which he continued to be visibly moved. Boric was surrounded by politicians, human rights activists and relatives of the victims.
The process also includes a rendering of accounts to Chilean society on any progress achieved during this search process. In addition, reparation measures were promised and there were commitments to guarantees of non-repetition by the commission related to this type of crime.
With EFE and Reuters
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