Pinochet under arrest again

Adios General was the title of a song by the Chilean folk band Sol y Lluvia in the late 1980s. It was still being played when I visited Chile in 1990 after Pinochet had been ousted as dictator.

Pinochet is now under house arrest in Chile after the decision of the Chilean Supreme Court that he could be tried for murder and kidnapping. It's great news for democrats and human rights campaigners worldwide. And it's a slap in the face for those like Norman Lamont who ran a nauseating campaign to free the General when Jack Straw had him under house arrest in the UK.

The atrocities of the Chilean military junta were a cause celebre for all of us growing up in the 70s. I can recall Chilean students in exile in Bangor and there were many in exile in Wales and the UK as a whole. In 1990 in Chile I witnessed a society slowly starting to come to terms with its past but still under a great shadow. Ariel Dorfman's play Death and the Maiden, which opened at the Royal Court in the summer of 1991, and later became a movie, told that story.

What will happen now? It's too early to say. But perhaps the real healing can begin. Link