Word: chiles
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...opening session of the 23-nation conference,* Secretary of State Henry Kissinger walked to the podium in the steel-and-glass Diego Portales building and warned the junta that "the condition of human rights has impaired our relationship with Chile and will continue to do so. Human rights are the very essence of a meaningful life, and human dignity is the ultimate purpose of government. A government that tramples on the rights of its citizens denies the purpose of its existence." It was by far the strongest statement on the subject that he had ever made anywhere...
Prison Network. The Secretary's statement was his carefully calculated response to the main topic of the meeting, a report on the hemisphere by the Inter-American Human Rights Commission detailing allegations of violations by 16 nations. The commission also filed a 191-page separate report on Chile and an 85-page brief against Cuba (which was finished too late to be included on the agenda). The OAS charge against Chile cited numerous examples of people murdered, tortured and unlawfully arrested by the regime of Chilean President Augusto Pinochet...
...Santiago) was something of an innovation for the OAS-and for Kissinger. As one member of the American delegation put it, "Henry has come a hell of a long way on human rights in the last 18 months." The Secretary's awakened concern about civic morality in Chile has coincided with strong signals from Congress that as far as the Pinochet regime is concerned, national security, economics and human rights are closely interrelated. Rejecting Administration requests, Congress has not only banned new military sales to Chile but has also cut aid from $70 million to about $30 million. Last...
...enough. Among the critics was outspoken Foreign Minister Dudley Thompson of Jamaica, an island nation where there are widespread fears that recent outbreaks of violence involve U.S. efforts to "destabilize" the moderately leftist government. "He didn't go far enough," said Thompson. "Those kind of comments run off Chile's back like water off a duck." More sharply, Thompson wondered how a German-born Jew like Kissinger could not be more sensitive to the brutalities of Pinochet's regime. "That's how it started in Nazi Germany -government by fear," said Thompson. "No one took...
Kissinger could not have been much tougher without totally alienating the Santiago regime and other Latin American countries where a right-wing military trend is currently running strong. The meeting and speech nonetheless did have their impact in Chile. In a startling move, the conservative daily El Mercurio even printed the entire text of the OAS report on Chile. The issue containing it sold, as one American journalist put it, "like the Watergate transcript...