Pablo Sepúlveda Allende: "The impunity in Chile is …

Those who accompany him during his stay in Argentina point out that he is a reserved man, speaking little, although his voice takes on intensity when he speaks of politics, perhaps his great pbadion for Medicine. Pablo Sepúlveda Allende, 41, arrived in the country to participate in the American meeting on the freedom of political prisoners. In dialogue with Page / 12, speaks in front of a new birthday, the 46th, of the brutal coup that overthrew his grandfather, former Chilean President Salvador Allende. Values ​​of the process of memory, truth and justice in Argentina, criticizes without nuance the President of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, and evokes the complex news of Chile.

A doctor by profession like his grandfather, Sepúlveda Allende expresses his concern at the recent words of Jair Bolsonaro, whom he calls "human misery". "Michelle Bachelet, without the people of Pinochet who defeated the left in 73, including his father, Chile would today be Cuba," said the current president of Brazil, showing his unrestricted defense To dictatorial governments For Allende, this kind of Bolsonaro speech has its direct antecedent in Donald Trump. "They are men who openly and unashamedly express their cruelty to the suffering of the people," he says. Later, he unequivocally defines the Brazilian president: "It is the true, blameless face of the greatest human misery to see in the expression of a human being".

Allende says that in Chile, there is a similar figure to Bolsonaro who became presidential candidate in the last election. It is José Antonio Kast, an influential lawyer and politician who has been a member of Parliament from 2002 to 2018, a historic activist of the Independent Democratic Union and the current leader of the Republican Party. "He comes from a German family, his father was a Nazi officer who had fled to Chile, his whole family was linked to the disappearance of about 80 peasants under the Pinochet dictatorship", recalls. "During the government of the People's Union (Salvador Allende), many of these farmers started to grow through agrarian reform.When the coup took place the next day, the Kast family cooperated to remove those leaders who made noise and made them disappear, "he added.

"Impunity is much greater in Chile"

Allende has been living in Venezuela for 10 years. He has provided primary medical care in indigenous communities and is currently the international coordinator of the Network of Intellectuals, Artists and Social Movements for the Defense of Humanity. He claims that the Venezuelan government is experiencing a process of destabilization that "has increased after the death of former President Hugo Chavez." It was the beginning of the US counter-offensive aimed at recovering his back -our, and we see it today with the hard blockages that it imposes ".

However, he never loses sight of the reality of the country where he was born. Faced with the new anniversary of the 11 September 1973 coup in Chile, he deeply values ​​the process of memory, truth and justice developed in Argentina, the awareness of society and the accompaniment, even if setback, justice in recent decades.

Unlike this model, he baderts that in Chile this is "much less important." As for the number of military perpetrators or the direct or indirect perpetrators of these heinous crimes, it is much less proportional to this. that it has been in Argentina, impunity in Chile, in every sense of the word.There are very few military prisoners and, in addition to the few prisoners, they live in privileged prisons, "he said. . Punta Peuco, located in the municipality of Til Til, is the prison where many "One of Michelle Bachelet's promises when she badumed the presidency was to close Punta Peuco and transfer the detainees to a prison less immoral, but he, too, I think this is due to a lack of political courage, "he said.

"There is total impunity and many accomplices of the Chilean dictatorship occupy positions in the Senate or are ministers of the Piñera government," he said. According to Allende, the practices of this disastrous era persist in the intelligence of the police or the army, and this is reflected especially in the Mapuche people. This year, Operation Hurricane was discovered, "a computer lab for Chilean police intelligence that invented evidence of conversations that never appeared in the Whatsapp messaging app, imprisoned Mapuches, and prosecuted them. justice on the basis of false evidence. It was found that everything was a lie and they had to release them, "he recalls.

Allende admits that the constant spying of social leaders and human rights defenders persists in Chile. "Camilo Catrillanca, for example, was shot in the back by a bullet that directly hit his head.There were deaths in strange circumstances, alleged suicides such as that of a leader. Mapuche, Macarena Valdes, who was fighting a hydroelectric company that he wanted to settle on an ancestral territory, "he said." In conclusion, the practices of yesteryear, though hidden, remain, just as the impunity.

Report: Guido Vbadallo.