TORTURE
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The return of the right wing to power in Chile has come at the expense of those still seeking justice for crimes committed during the 17-year U.S.-backed dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, which ended in 1990. Former President Michelle Bachelet’s failure to close the luxury five-star prison of Punta Peuco that houses ex-torturers and military agents…
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“In this type of investigation, objectivity is non-existent.” Alejandro Solís Muñoz’s statement in his prologue to “Ingrid Olderock: la mujer de los perros” necessitates reflection. Objectivity, in the wrong hands, is a weapon of normalising violence and human rights violations. The end result would be normalising the dictatorship and its atrocities. It would also be…
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Chile’s struggle for memory against a dictatorship-imposed oblivion has braced itself for another sliver of discovery. On July 28, water works-related excavations in Las Brisas led to the discovery of human bone fragments. Buried just 10 kilometers south of the town of Santo Domingo, the location corresponds to the vicinities of the first dictatorship era torture…
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Reviewed: After Abu Ghraib: Exploring Human Rights in America and the Middle East, By Shadi Mokhati, (Cambridge University Press, 2011). In the book Abu Ghraib: Exploring Human Rights in America and the Middle East, author Shadi Mokhtari describes how the human rights violations at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and other secret prisons have created a new level of consciousness…
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Reviewed: The United States and Torture: Interrogation, Incarceration and Abuse, Edited by Marjorie Cohn, New York University Press, 2011. The United States and Torture: Interrogation, Incarceration and Abuse (New York University Press, 2011) is a treatise which, through detailed essays, recollections, evidence and testimonies, explores the subject of torture through three main sections – the history of…
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Stories of the torture, murder and disappearance of political opponents in US-backed South American dictatorships resurfaced again recently, with the declassification of documents revealing, among other issues, US knowledge of the multinational campaign of state terror known as Operation Condor. Dr Carolina Villella, a lawyer from the organisation Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, Grandmothers of the…
RAMONA WADI 