Indonesia has many wounds to bind

For a number of years after its infamous American-sponsored overthrow of the democratically elected government, Chile's Pinochet regime would extend its sinister shadow across the world. The first weeks of September were its choice time, political opponents of all shades its quarry. A car bomb here, a gun attack there.

It is 25 years since Pinochet took power with the active cooperation of the CIA and Henry Kissinger, then Richard Nixon's secretary of state. In the years that have passed it may have been widely forgotten that the Chilean far right took its inspiration from those who carried out mass murders in Indonesia. The wall of Santiago de Chile and other Chilean cities were covered with the slogan Djakarta viene (Jakarta is coming), recalling this country's violent excesses in the 1960s.

Chile has to some extent bound its wounds, but not without the tireless efforts of human rights activists working to reestablish public morality. Indonesia still has much to do to bind its own wounds, but the efforts of civic society groups and legal aid institutes are a valuable beginning. One hopes these efforts are neither squandered nor extinguished.

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