Chile's leftist president vows to seek repeal of dictatorship-era amnesty law

By NAYARA BATSCHKE
Updated 6:21 PM CDT, September 11, 2024

SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) — Chile’s left-wing president President Gabriel Boric on Wednesday promised to push for the repeal of an iron-clad amnesty that has for years ruled out most investigation of crimes against humanity committed by Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s military dictatorship.

President Boric’s vow — during a speech commemorating the 51st anniversary of Gen. Pinochet’s bloody U.S.-backed putsch that ended Chilean democracy and ushered in a 17-year reign of terror — escalates efforts to achieve a legal reckoning for Pinochet’s repression and bring those accused of human rights abuses to trial in local courts, as has happened in neighboring Argentina and elsewhere in the region.

“We renew our commitment to democracy and human rights, always, in our country and everywhere in the world,” Boric said from La Moneda Presidential Palace in the capital of Santiago, the center of authoritarian power in Chile over three decades ago. “Today’s date is a day that moves us, that invites us to remember and also to act.”

Boric, a millennial former student protest leader, pledged to speed up the passage of a bill that would revoke the amnesty that has shielded most military officers from prosecution for the torture and killing of thousands of opponents and critics during the first five years of the dictatorship, 1973-1978.

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https://apnews.com/article/chile-dictatorship-boric-socialism-pinochet-court-crimes-958ccb43b6b2695eb65ec786c97d23be