Pinochet case, a human rights victory?

By Joe L. Spartz

JAKARTA (JP): The extradition request by Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzsn and the resulting arrest and detention of Gen. Pinochet in England since October 1998 has set an important precedent in international law. Crimes against humanity no longer enjoy immunity and even more importantly, they may be tried outside the country where they have been committed.

Now that this historic and far-reaching jurisprudential milestone has been de facto recognized and accepted by the international community at large, it is high time to close the Pinochet case and to move on to a next stage where crimes against humanity can be prosecuted within a properly defined and internationally acceptable and enforceable legal framework.

Current efforts by Spain, Belgium and others to try Pinochet in their own countries may ultimately turn out to be counterproductive. Even under the best of circumstances, the 84- year-old general cannot be expected to live long enough to satisfy each and every country's request for extradition and trial.

A more realistic and expedient way to deal with the situation would be to transfer the case to the International Crime Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague. Vested with ad hoc prosecutorial powers it would find General Pinochet guilty and either impose prison terms equivalent to the time already served or sentence him to house arrest for life in his home country.

A valid and internationally recognized court verdict would undoubtedly go a long way in sanctioning crimes against humanity worldwide, whereas any protracted legal proceedings by individual countries against Pinochet will sooner or later be invalidated by the demise or incapacity of the main actor of the show.

Unfortunately, the ongoing extradition tug-of-war increasingly tends to degenerate into self-righteous legal ego trips and international conscience-salving while far more serious crimes against humanity go unpunished.

The 3,000 or so victims for which Pinochet is held responsible during his 1973 to 1990 dictatorship pale in comparison with an estimated 1,700,000 killed by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia's killing fields and where so far not a single person has been brought to justice.

Hun Sen, a former Khmer Rouge is still the internationally recognized Prime Minister in a country in which billions of dollars have been wasted by the international community on ill- conceived democracy restoration projects and where the respect of human rights and democratic principles remains as elusive as ever.

In Sierra Leone, the former rebel leader responsible for tens of thousands of savagely killed and horribly mutilated innocents has now been appointed Vice-President. Another master butcher, Idi Amin, is allowed to enjoy an undisturbed retirement.

So far, no international arrest warrants or extradition requests have been issued for a depressingly long list of national leaders and warlords guilty of crimes against humanity.

The troubling question remains whether Pinochet would have been arrested in Britain if no Spanish or other Western nationals had become victims during his dictatorship.

The slaughter and human rights abuses inflicted in Cambodia, Uganda, Rwanda, Sierra Leone or Angola as well as other countries such as Guatemala, North Korea, Iran or former Yugoslavia almost exclusively affected local citizens or indigenous populations.

With the exception of a handful of Bosnian war criminals or Libyan Lockerbie suspects, Western nations have so far failed to bring any of the guilty parties to justice.

With some justification, the question may be asked whether Western nations are only willing or prepared to prosecute human rights cases involving their own citizens, and whether or not their vigorous attempt at bringing Pinochet to justice is truly unbiased and free of prosecutorial discrimination.

Such suspicions are further supported by Western media outcries or appeals for clemency by President Clinton, the Queen of England, the Pope and other Heads of State following the caning of a delinquent American teenager in Singapore or the mandatory execution of convicted drug dealers. Meanwhile the same punishment meted out to locals largely goes unnoticed.

Be that as it may, the Pinochet case raises other fundamental questions, such as the involvement of the United States in the 1973 Chilean coup d'etat and to what extent the U.S. government should be held co-responsible.

In spite of the massive media coverage received by the Pinochet extradition case, efforts to provide the public with a balanced understanding of the 1973 situation in Chile were significantly lacking.

While the overthrow of a democratically elected government cannot be condoned, the fact cannot be overlooked that the very election of a Marxist president at the height of the cold war in a politically unstable and economically bankrupt Latin American country already contained the seeds of a civil war.

Without trying to minimize human suffering caused by a Pinochet dictatorship, it is anybody's guess what the alternative could have been or whether or not a Nicaragua type of situation had been avoided.

Whether or not the general will be brought to trial, international protection of human rights will be the uncontested beneficiary of the Chilean tragedy.

Irreversible and historic precedents have been established in international human rights jurisprudence and it is now the responsibility of the international community to enact and implement the necessary legislation.

The failure to do so would not only be a major human rights setback but also mean that the victims of the Pinochet dictatorship suffered and died in vain!

The writer is a business consultant based in Jakarta.