Stills/B&W footage Dictators

Music

01.00.00.00

Byrne:  The faces of modern evil. Men who got away with murder - and worse.

00.17

Now one dictator is being called to account, accused of crimes against humanity. Justice is stalking General Augusto Pinochet.

00.27

Matthei: Certainly it's not the Spaniards who have to tell us how to behave in the country.

00.41

Matthei

That is a problem we have to solve, we the Chileans here. And certainly not the Spaniards.

Letellier:  This isn't a problems for Chileans -

00.54

Letellier

this is a problem of humanity. We're all co-responsible for what happens on this planet. We can't look the other way. Those times are over.

Theatre/play

01.04

Byrne:  In a Santiago theatre, Chileans act out a ritual of torture and degradation. An attempt to cleanse themselves of the savagery that haunts their past.

01.15

But the voices of Pinochet's accusers can be heard throughout the world.  In Argentina, in Rome, in the United States, and in the Spanish capital of Madrid.

01.28

Santiago

Byrne to camera

Byrne:  The Pinochet case started here in the courts of Spain. Why is Spain pursuing a Chilean dictator? Well partly it's because a fair number of Pinochet's victims were Spanish citizens. But mostly because Spain had the will and the crusading lawyers to take up the challenge. It could have been any country, it just happens to be Spain. And it is a case of enormous international significance, asking fundamental questions about justice, about morality, about the limits of human cruelty. Are there limits? And if there aren't, if Pinochet goes free, what does that say about where we are at the end of the 20th century?

1.52

Soria in Park

Byrne:  In 1976, Laura Soria was living in Santiago with her husband, Carmello, a Spanish citizen who worked with the United Nations.  Like Pinochet now, Carmello had diplomatic immunity. But in July that year, Laura's husband disappeared. Or was disappeared, as they say in Chile.

02.35

Laura interview

Laura:  ... and at midday they told me that his car had turned up in a canal in the suburbs. The car's doors were completely blocked.  His corpse and the back seat were found near a bridge.

02.55

Byrne:  When they dredged up Carmello's body, still strapped to the car seat - the officials suggested suicide. The autopsy found otherwise.

03.18

Laura:  Carmello Soria was dead when he went into the river.  The cause of death was a broken neck.

03.29

Fire/photos of Carmello

FX:  Bomb

Music

03.39

Newsreel footage

Reporter:  He and Moffitt were killed when a bomb blew up their car as the two were driving to work along Washington's posh embassy row.

03.52

Byrne:  Another case on the list is Orlando Letellier, a former foreign minister, blown away in the very heart of American government, Washington, DC.

04.02

Letellier's gravestone

Orlando's son, Juan Pablo, was 15.

Letellier:  It was mid morning, I was called by the loudspeakers to the principal's office. I went to the principal's office, and he said my family had been in an accident, in a car accident.

04.11

Letellier interview

One of my brothers who I have always been closest to, he asked me, ‘Do you know what happened to the old man?' I said ‘No, I don't.' He said ‘They put a bomb in the old man's car.' There was type of silence for the next twenty, thirty minutes while we drove into downtown Washington, listening to the radio with different types of news bulletins, very confusing.

04.28

We encountered my mother. She hugged us and the only thing she told us was ‘I hope that after all this is over, you don't hate anybody.' That's when she told us that they'd killed my father.

04.54

Theatre performance

Byrne:  The stories of Carmello Soria and Orlando Letellier are well known because of their international links. But there are more than 4,000 individual cases of murder, torture and kidnapping brought against Pinochet and his colleagues.

05.18

Court hearings

Woman:  After several hours of receiving electric shock --  especially in the head, the genitals and the ankles - I was taken back to gaol.  I was in a coma for many days.

05.34

Byrne:  Now a left wing parliamentarian, Juan Pablo Letellier uses public hearings to remind modern Chile of the horrors experienced during the Pinochet regime.

05.49

Man:  I was tortured together with a large number of people.  On six different occasions I was put in front of mock firing squads.

06.00

Woman 2:  I have never been able to tell exactly what is more painful - to hear a human being tortured for hours on end, or to be tortured oneself.  I can say to you that I can't tell the difference. When they thought he was dead they threw him at us and said "Here's a present for you."

Letellier:  The problems aren't of the past,

06.16

06.43

Letellier

the people who were tortured are alive. They're still asking for justice. My father was killed. I am alive. I have the right for claim for justice. And those who created the crimes, who were responsible for the crimes, are alive. That's today. That's not the past.

Pinochet in parade

Military music

07.05

Byrne:  Some 38 members of Pinochet's regime have been named in the Spanish courts, any of whom could have been arrested and charged with crimes against humanity had they left Chile.

07.18

Inside Chile, they're not just safe from prosecution, they can count on a degree of understanding.

07.29

Evelyn playing piano

Many believe the deaths, the disappearances and the torture were not so much crimes as the price of stability.

Evelyn: I think the first years it was inevitable. I don't say that they must be accepted. I think that is for each individual

07.45

07.53

Evelyn interview

to see in his or her own heart, and say whether you accept it or not. I'm just saying it was absolutely inevitable.

08.01

Byrne: And do you accept it?

08.10

Evelyn: Yes, I do. Yes, I do. I think the alternative would have been much worse.

08.11

Evelyn in parliament

Byrne:  Evelyn Matthei is a right wing senator, who sits in the same chamber as Pinochet himself. Although the general's seat has been empty for some time.

08.28

As a young woman, she knew the dictator behind the dark glasses.

08.41

Evelyn interview

Evelyn: He's a strange figure. He has these very kind blue, blue-blue eyes. Sometimes very loving eyes, and sometimes they can be hard as steel. You never know whether he's really a very intelligent man, or whether he's just very clever, or whether he just has an incredible sense, smell of what to do, and what power is.

08.47

Newsreel footage Allende celebrations

Music/singing

09.24

Byrne:  The rise and rule of Pinochet is linked inextricably with the election in 1970 of Salvadore Allende, the world's first democratically elected Socialist leader. A time of intense jubilation for the left, frustration and increasing outrage from the right.

09.37

Within a few years, the dream had soured. There were shortages, food queues, a capital strike, labour unrest. In the dying desperate days of his government, President Allende promoted Augusto Pinochet to the post of army commander in chief. Three weeks later, the army launched a coup.

09.57

Coup footage

FX:  Machine gun fire

10.19

Evelyn: Let me just say what the climate was before the military coup.

10.26

Evelyn interview

Farms were overrun, taken violently from the hands of the people who lived there and who worked them and not paid anything. Industries were overrun and taken from the people. Congress stated that Allende's government was not abiding constitution nor the laws,

10.33

And what I'm saying is that now nobody can really understand the enormous hatred that existed between the people who opposed communism and the people who were for communism regime to install in Chile.

10.23

Letellier interview

Letellier:  Let's get the story straight. Allende was elected by the people. And in democracies, the people choose their governments. And the responsibility of those who are a minority is to respect the decision of the majority. Now what happened in Chile is that those sectors which are not democratic, who don't believe in majority rule - they didn't then and they still don't know - what they did, and that's why I think one has to get the story very straight, they created destabilisation. There was economic turmoil in Chile. There was a trucking strike which was very important for Chile, because we are a very long country. We're like a spaghetti we're so long, and our highways are basic and trucking is basic. And trucks stopped. Because they were paid not to work, and they received more pay not working than working. And let's remember that the day after the coup, all the supermarkets were full of food.

11.10

Newsreel footage Stadium

Music

12.12

Byrne:  After 150 years of democracy, the terror came to Chile. The persecution extended to anyone suspected of left wing sympathies. Politicians of course, but also union leaders, students, musicians.

Music

12.28

Concentration camps

Byrne:  The fear grew of the midnight knock or a neighbour's denouncement. Those who didn't simply disappear were sent to torture houses and concentration camps around the country.

12.56

Elena's village

Now, beneath the surface of every community in Chile, lie the grim memories of those days.

13.11

Inside Elena's home

Byrne:  Elena Maureira lost her husband and four sons all on the same night, three weeks after the coup in late 1973.

13.30

Elena interview

Elena:  First they came to get my husband - it would have been about ten at night...

13.39

Photo of Elena and her husband

Byrne:  This was a farming family, not political, but the police returned for her children.

13.44

Elena interview

Elena:  They dragged one out by force. They hit him in front of me.  They treated him in the lowest way.  They clubbed one in the arm so hard that I think they broke it - because it made a hollow sound.

13.50

Elena in home

Byrne:  Elena searched, unaware of her family's fate, for five years, until the accidental discovery of their mutilated bodies in a disused mine. She's 75 now, but her sons are forever young. And she prays for them each day.

14.07

Elena:  They are resting now.  Let them one day rest in peace.  God has them in heaven... and when Pinochet dies, let the devil have him and burn him for being evil.

14.34

Church/church service

Church singing

Byrne:  Like countless others, Elena sought comfort and consolation from the church. The one institution in Chile which resisted Pinochet.

15.09

Church singing

Byrne with Father Jose

Byrne:  Father Jose Aldonate has actively ministered to thousands. Victims of torture, families of the disappeared. The country's wounds will heal he believes, only when Chile acknowledges the truth of what happened during the years of the General.

15.22

Father Jose interview

Father Jose:  We haven't worked enough for justice to be done. This dictatorship is really an act of pride, an act of oppression on all the country, we've all been victims, and this situation hasn't been acknowledged.

15.39

Byrne:  Are the divisions, do you believe, as deep now as ever? Has time made it any easier?

16.05

Father Jose:  As deep as ever I would say. What has happened with Pinochet has shown that under the surface, well, still the situation is boiling.

Demonstration

Demonstration chanting

Byrne:  Despite the emotion, despite the protests that have lasted 26 years, Chileans have never really believed the Generals would face justice. After all, they'd passed an amnesty law officially forgiving themselves for their crimes. They were, under Chilean law, untouchable.

16.33

Byrne to camera

Byrne:  The era of the General ended in Chile in 1990. That's when Pinochet stood down from the presidency, called general elections, and restored democracy. But before he went, he made sure it was democracy Pinochet style. He stacked the Supreme Court with his political allies.  He changed the electoral rules so that the right had a stranglehold on the constitution. And he retained the post as commander in chief of the armed forces for another eight years. The very day after he hung up his uniform, he walked into the national parliament as a self-appointed senator for life.

16.54

Letellier interview

Letellier:  This is the only country that I know of in which an ex-dictator, a ferocious dictator, ends up being in the senate, as a life term senator. This is a very tilted democracy. We are a restricted democracy. We are a conditioned democracy. We have institutions which don't let the majority of the people take the decisions.

17.28

Byrne:  You have in fact the democracy that Pinochet gave you, don't you?

17.58

Letellier:  We have the democracy we've been able to rip away from the right, against their will.

18.02

Evelyn interview

Evelyn: He will be for, I think, at least a century, in the fabric of our politics. And in the fabric of our economics. And in the fabric of everything in Chile. Because he just was a president who changed everything in Chile. He was a very powerful person, and he used that power to really give Chile a new face.

18.11

Byrne: Are you proud of Pinochet? Proud of President Pinochet?

18.36

Evelyn:  I'm never proud of people. I am proud of his government, yes. I think it was a great government in many senses.

18.39

Our country was broken economically, socially, politically. He restored the constitution, he restored order, he restored law, and of course our economy is envied by everybody.

Beach scene

Singing

19.02

Byrne:  Chile's democracy may be flawed, but its economy is the healthiest in South America, another side of the Pinochet legacy. Prosperity has sweetened memories. And helps explain why a solid third of the Chilean people still support a man the world reviles.

19.18

Santiago

Byrne:  These were not atrocities, the argument runs, but excesses. What hard men need to do to restore order and attain economic success in a harsh environment.

Singing

19.40

Evelyn and Byrne in car

Evelyn: We are about 500 kilometres, 600 kilometres north from Santiago. This part is already becoming desert. A bit further up north, then it becomes real desert, then you don't even see bushes, nothing, it's just desert, desert, desert.

20.03

Evelyn visiting electorate

Byrne:  Evelyn's electorate of Serena is in the north, not a wealthy region, but he majority of people here agree with Evelyn's views. They vote for her.

20.24

There may be dissent, but many see Pinochet as responsible for their economic progress, and resent the intrusion of their former colonial masters.

20.38

Evelyn interview

Evelyn: I think there's a lot of abuse by the British and by the Spanish governments. They did not help us to get out of communism. They did not help us to rebuild our country. They did not help us, you know, to go back into democracy. Why do they want to help us now? Stay away from our country.

20.50

Letellier interview

Letellier:  He is a man in history, in the second part of this century, a century in which humanity demonstrated to ourselves all the evil we enclose as a species. I mean you have persons in history which has demonstrated that our species - we've done wrong. Now Pinochet, amongst those, perhaps is one who has best crystallised the evil, because he was evil to his society, in a society which on the one hand had a tradition, and additionally in a society which had democratically chosen its road. He is not only the boogie man, he's a very nasty boogie man.

21.12

Arrest of Pinochet

FX:  Car

Byrne:  When Pinochet was arrested in London, the deep divisions back home were reignited.

22.01

Chanting

22.07

Byrne:  On the streets of London, Madrid and Santiago, supporters and accusers took to the streets.

22.11

Evelyn interview

Evelyn: I find that the people who are in the left, because communism came tumbling down in all of the world, because all their dreams and all their dreams were shattered, they have almost nothing to cling to, except hatred.

22.18

Letellier

Letellier:  There's not much hate. There's not a desire of vengeance. But we do want to get rid of this guy once and for all. Get him off our back. Get this piece of history straight. Are we going to let these dictators just run away from their countries and be free if they've committed crimes against humanity, if they've committed genocide or torture.

22.38

Cemetery wall of names

Music

23.10

Byrne:  Chile is not the first country to deal with the past by trying to forget it. To build the odd memorial to the disappeared is less challenging than actively trying to find their bones or prosecute their killers. Move on says the right. Don't look back. Build a country for our children to play. But even if they should, can they?

Father Jose:  There are some crimes that are against humanity,

23.18

23.44

Father Jose interview

not only against one or other, but against all humanity. And then when these claims are made, all humanity can react and must react, and that reaction of humanity is international justice.

Volcano/lake

Music

Byrne:  It is time to meet one of the Generals, the number two wanted man on the Spanish list.  Pinochet's air force commander in chief, General Fernando Matthei, Evelyn Matthei's father.

24.20

Travelling to lodge

Byrne:   This will be the first time he's spoken to the media, local or international, since Pinochet's arrest. We travelled to his hunting lodge, some 800 kilometres south of Santiago, in Chile's beautiful lake district.

24.43

Greeting Matthei

Evelyn:  This is Jennifer.

Byrne:  It's nice to meet you.

Matthei:  Welcome here.

Byrne: Thank you very much.

Matthei:  I shouldn't say humble house, because it's not.

Byrne:  It is not.

Byrne:  We all know what he was, what he is still shocks - a kindly host, a loving father and grandfather, and a man who lived long enough to enjoy it all.

25.20

Matthei:  Nobody else could have done the job he did, making another country out of Chile. And the way he had the courage to do it.

25.35

Matthei interview

Byrne:  Does a self respecting dictator have to kill his enemies?

Matthei:  We come to that. We come to that. I gradually come to that point.

25.46

Matthei walking

Byrne:  Of course we never do really come to that. This retired General, this benign General, has a very different enemy in his sights. Spain.

26.00

Matthei interview

Matthei: Do we have inquisition again here now? Who has given that fool the right to put his fingers here in Chile? We never saw him here. He never gave us any advice. We certainly didn't get any money from Spain. We don't have to give them account of our - we are a sovereign state. We threw them out 1810. We kicked them out 1810. We were fed up with the Spaniards. What are they doing here now, when they do here.

26.13

Byrne:  Do you feel any connection, any responsibility for the murders, the torture, the disappearances.

26.50

Matthei:  Yes. Of course.

26.57

Byrne:  So you did know?

27.00

Matthei:  I did, of course I knew that something was not working. There were violations and I suspected, the air force had nothing to do with it. But there were services who depended directly from General Pinochet. Now I cannot inspect General Pinochet. I'm sorry, I could not do it, but does that clean my responsibility, no it doesn't.

27.01

Byrne:  You're retired now. But when you think about your participation in the junta, when you think about what happened then, is it painful for you?

27.26

Matthei:  That is a personal question. That is a personal question which I will keep. I will not answer. That is a very personal and deep question. Let us say that I'm conscience, I have a conscience of that.

27.37

Byrne:  Is it difficult?

Matthei:  And I - it is difficult, yes.

Theatre performance/General swimming

Theatre chanting

28.02

Byrne:  The cry for justice is a painful sound, for both wronged and wrongdoer. So painful that sometimes it's easier not to hear, to turn away. The point of the Pinochet case is that now we are all forced to listen and make a judgement.

28.10

Chanting

ENDS 28.37