Chilean Torture Chamber not welcomed in Canada
The use of federal funds to bring to Halifax a Chilean ship that was once used as a torture chamber is a bitter irony in the face of Canada's policy of promoting human rights abroad, Rights & Democracy said today.
Montreal, 20 July 2000 - The use of federal funds to bring to Halifax a Chilean ship that was once used as a torture chamber is a bitter irony in the face of Canada's policy of promoting human rights abroad, Rights & Democracy said today.
The Chilean Esmeralda, one of the participants in Tall Ships 2000, was the scene of the torture of a number of victims of the 1973 coup d'?tat led by General Augusto Pinochet, according to Chilean and international human rights commissions. Twenty-seven years later, the families of the victims of the Chilean coup d'?tat are still seeking justice.
"That Canada is welcoming a ship that represents impunity for all those who trample on human rights makes a mockery of Canadian foreign policy," Rights & Democracy said. The federal government is contributing $1 million in funds from the Canada Millennium Partnership Program and another grant of $800,000 has been made through the Economic Diversification Agreement to help pay for organization of this international event.
Canada has been at the forefront of world efforts to tackle the impunity traditionally enjoyed by human rights abusers through the creation of the International Criminal Court that will have the mandate to try human rights violators in cases where their own countries have failed to bring them to justice.
"The Esmeralda's presence in Halifax for Tall Ships 2000 is an insult to the thousands of victims of the Chilean military dictatorship."
In a letter sent to Chilean President Ricardo Lagos, Rights & Democracy urged him to order a judicial investigation of the use of the Esmeralda and several other sites as illegal detention centres during the military dictatorship. Both the Chilean National Commission of Truth and Reconciliation and the Interamerican Commission for Human Rights have recorded the use of the Esmeralda as a detention and torture chamber. Amnesty International also documented its use in a 1980 report.
