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Human Rights Developments Defending Human Rights The Role of the International Community The Supreme Court's decision stripping General Pinochet of his parliamentary immunity was a triumph for Chile's human rights movement, and especially for the victims of his rule who had campaigned for justice for twenty-five years. Often their work incurred personal risk. On December 15, 1999, Viviana Díaz Caro and Mireya García, president and secretary general, respectively, of the Association of Relatives of the "Disappeared" (Agrupación de Familiares de Detenidos Desaparecidos, AFDD) received a Christmas card with the inscription, "Lets hope that Father Christmas will give us the opportunity to meet face to face in the year 2000, so that we can blow your brains out. Enjoy your last Christmas. . . you will not be around for the next. Greetings to your family. . . . Merry Christmas to all. FNL-Villa Grimaldi Editions." Villa Grimaldi is the name of a former torture center in Santiago, now converted into a "park for peace." A group calling itself the Nationalist Front for Fatherland and Freedom (Frente Nacionalista Patria y Libertad, FNL), believed to be made up of pro-Pinochet fanatics and former military personnel, had menaced other individuals and groups during the year. After Pinochet's return to Chile, however, no further threats were reported. A group of young people known as the Funa, whose activities are dedicated to unmasking former torturers, was the object of a criminal complaint lodged in August by an opposition member of the Chamber of Deputies, who accused them of "criminal association." The group engaged in nonviolent vigils, accompanied by drums, whistles, and chanting, outside the homes or offices of individuals known from legal records to have participated in torture and killings. The evening newspaper La Segunda referred to them as "an ultra-left group that decided to exchange their molotov cocktails for a more sophisticated weapon: character assassination." |
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