Louis’s Reviews > Exorcising Terror: The Incredible Unending Trial of General Augusto Pinochet > Status Update

“Up to what point am I responsible for the lack of justice in my country?”

Belgium has increasingly become the most vocal of contemporary nations in the fight against impunity, due to a law that gives its courts jurisdiction to pursue cases of genocide anywhere in the world that they might occur. That is, in theory, because in practice Belgium is not doing anything (if not pressured).

“Jessica Antonia was deprived of sleep as her nine-year-old daughter was repeatedly abused and interrogated while naked in the dark. The lawyers for General Pinochet, so called educated men who greet neighbors, wear suits, and enjoy a glass of wine, declared that all such cases are irrelevant, mere cases of ordinary police brutality.”

“Chile, Salvador, Bosnia, Rwanda, Palestine… the Western powers and the United Nations again stood by and did nothing.”

“The Americans who fought in Spain see Pinochet’s arrest as continuing the same tradition and concept of humanity that they held high when they volunteered, defining themselves as human beings first and as members of a nationality second.”

“The ruling that Pinochet had no immunity and could stand trial would influence human rights and international law for decades to come.”

“Under the arguments presented by the defense, Hitler himself would have been absolved.” Oh Israel - damn this reading is perfectly timed.

“If our foreign friends have intervened in our internal affairs, it is because we have not intervened in them ourselves. If they can remind us so shockingly of the terror of victims, it is because we have not, as a nation, remembered that terror sufficiently.” Poor Israel…