![[FPRI]](/images/logo.png){kind=logo}
October 30, 1998
Michael Radu is a Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute.
On October 16, Augusto Pinochet Ugarte, Chile’s president from 1973 to 1990 and now Senator for Life, was arrested while he underwent surgery in a London hospital. British authorities decided to honor an Interpol warrant signed by Baltasar Garzón, a Spanish judge. Subsequently, the British High Court ruled the warrant illegal, a decision still subject to a final appeal to a House of Lords committee. Whatever transpires, the episode is worthy of scrutiny in light of its wider implications for the expansion of international jurisdiction over human rights cases. That said, the Pinochet case has little to do with law, and everything to do with the rewriting of history — this time by the losers.
The legal case for the British decision is as weak as it is political. Judge Garzón, a former Socialist member of the Spanish parliament, is a well-known publicity-seeker whose expansive notion of appropriate jurisdiction would make the most liberal American judge proud. Acting independently, he decided to formally accuse Pinochet (as well as former Argentine military leaders) of “the delict of genocide,” no less — and provided a list of 91(!) alleged victims of illegal arrest, assassination or disappearance, none of them Spanish. There is no ground in international or Spanish law for the accusation; indeed, Garzón’s claims are so bizarre that the office of the Spanish State Prosecutor itself is appealing his arbitrary expansion of his court’s jurisdiction. That appeal is based on the fact that whatever crimes may have taken place in Chile more than two decades ago were neither committed in Spain nor by Spanish citizens. Moreover, the appeal questions Garzón’s use of the term “genocide” — legally defined as actions intended to eliminate an entire group because of its ethnicity, race or religion.
Garzón himself identified the presumed victims mostly as members of the totalitarian Communist Party or the Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR). To call actions against such people “genocide” is worse than bizarre — it is an insult to the victims of real genocide — Jews, Gypsies, Armenians, Tutsis. Garzón’s accusation lowers not just legal standards, but moral ones. Unfortunately, it is also part of an emerging pattern and an eventual success for Garzon’s “case” against Pinochet would only accelerate it. It has indeed become a habit in the media and the Left everywhere
to qualify as “genocide” any real or alleged large-scale abuse of human rights, whether by Serbs in Kosovo or Bosnia, or by military forces fighting insurgencies in Mexico, Peru or Colombia. But just as most murderers are not Stalin or Hitler, most killings in wartime are not genocide. To make the accusation against Pinochet is, however, politically correct and thus an appropriate focal point for media attention and public applause. And herein lies the true meaning of the entire episode.
Garzón’s other accusation against Pinochet — that of “terrorism” — is positively Orwellian. A state defending itself against well-known Marxist terrorist organizations — MIR and the Communist Party’s armed branch, the Manuel Rodriguez Patriotic Front, both responsible for hundreds of crimes in Chile — becomes “terrorist” while totalitarian terrorists are transformed into “innocent victims.”
Pinochet’s real problem is not legal: he has visited London before, without difficulty and with the same diplomatic passport. What has changed is the nature and ideology of the British government. Indeed, one could only be amused at the righteousness of the official position of Tony Blair’s government, which pretends that the issue is simply legal, not political. Meanwhile, Blair’s Trade Secretary and close confidant Peter Mandelson described the idea of respecting Pinochet’s diplomatic immunity as “gut wrenching “-a mild statement compared to those coming from the Labour backbenchers. And all this from the very same government that does not seem to find it “gut wrenching’ to negotiate with IRA killers of children and women. Nor is it surprising that Margaret Thatcher has publicly attacked London’s decision. Thus has the episode cast doubts upon Tony Blair’s commitment to the rule of law and reinforced the suspicion that, where human rights are concerned, “international law” is merely a a code word for political correctness.
Through these contradictions it becomes obvious that the real battle, in Britain and Spain as well as for the Left worldwide, is not over legality or morality, but history itself. Pinochet, though long ago replaced as leader of a small and remote nation, remains the most hated man in “progressive” circles throughout the world. The reason is simple: his 1973 coup against the government of Salvador Allende was the first successful overthrow of a Marxist regime by internal forces. It shattered the long-prevailing myth of the historical inevitability and permanence of communist regimes, institutionalized at the time by the Brezhnev Doctrine. Furthermore, during its seventeen years in power, the Pinochet regime not only removed Marxism as a serious political and cultural force in Chile, it also inaugurated a capitalist, and ultimately democratic, revolution which made that country a model for Latin America and beyond. Much to the chagrin of the soundly defeated Left, Pinochet enjoys lasting popularity in former communist countries, and more than two thirds of Chileans today either support or do not condemn him.
And now the Left, from Judge Garzón to the left wing of the Labour Party to Spanish Socialists to the Chilean Communist party (whose leader is Pinochet’s most vocal accuser), sees a chance to recover moral ground and “correct” the historical record. If the general could be convicted of “genocide” and “terrorism,” in some court by some judge somewhere—in fact anywhere, and no matter how Orwellian the proceedings—the Left could alleviate its long-simmering frustrations, rewrite history, and turn its moral and political defeat into victory at last. What those on the left seek, in other words, is not the trial of a dictator — would they arrest Castro? — but of anti-communism.
You may forward this email as you like provided that you send it in its entirety, attribute it to the Foreign Policy Research Institute, and include our web address (www.fpri.org). If you post it on a mailing list, please contact FPRI with the name, location, purpose, and number of recipients of the mailing list.
If you receive this as a forward and would like to be placed directly on our mailing lists, send email to FPRI@fpri.org. Include your name, address, and affiliation. For further information, contact Alan Luxenberg at (215) 732-3774 x105.
Foreign Policy
Research Institute
1528 Walnut St, Ste 610
Philadelphia, PA 19102
Tel. 215-732-3774
Fax 215-732-4401
fpri@fpri.org
On November 15th at the FPRI annual dinner Fouad Ajami was presented with the Seventh Annual Benjamin Franklin Public Service Award. The event was attended by over 360 people.
Dr. John M. Templeton, Jr. was dinner chairman.
Video of keynote address
Reflections on the Arab Spring
Fouad Ajami
Special Partner Event
Al Qaeda and Jihadi Movements After Bin Laden
Christopher Swift
Special Partner Event
The Longest War: The Enduring Conflict between America and Al Qaeda
Peter Bergen
Current Issue
Follow FPRI