U.N. vote for aid to Chile’s victims

Press, 8 March 1978, Page 9

U.N. vote for aid to Chile’s victims

NZPA-Reuter New York The United Nations Human Rights Commission has voted to urge the United Nations General Assembly to set up a trust fund for Chilean detainees, exiles, and their families. Brazil, Panama, and Uruguay voted against the proposal, which would set up a fund to distribute humanitarian, legal, and financial aid. The United States abstained because Washington would have preferred a genera] fund to aid victims of human-rights violations.

The three Latin-American states were also the only countries to oppose a call for the Santiago Government to allow a special working group of the commission to visit Chile. A resolution extended the group’s mandate for an extra year, deplored the ‘‘destruction of democratic institutions” in Chile, and demanded clarification of the fate of missing persons. A Chilean observer, Sergio Diez, told the commission that the proposal for a fund showed “selectivity and discrimination” against the Santiago Government. “The majority of people deprived of freedom are deprived by decisions by courts because they have violated the law by possessing weapons and because they resorted to violence,” he said. The Chilean Government would continue to bar from the country the special group, set up in 1975, because of its prejudice against the authorities, and it did not accept the criticism contained in the resolutions, he said.