Left-Right violence worries Chileans

Press, 4 April 1985, Page 6

Left-Right violence worries Chileans

By

SIMON ALTERMAN, of

Reuter (through NZPA)

Santiago The killing of three Government opponents last week-end has renewed fears among Chileans that political stalemate is generating a spiral of violence from both ends of the ideological spectrum. Manuel Guerrero, a leader of an opposition teachers’ union, Jose Manuel Parada, a human rights worker, and a commercial artist, Santiago Natino, were found in a ditch with their throats cut at the end of a week in which five other people died in politi-

cal violence. Three were Leftists killed in incidents described officially as shoot-outs and the other two were security agents killed by a bomb after being lured to a hotel room. There also were two spectacular car-bombings in the heart of Santiago. Under the state of siege imposed by the President, General Augusto Pinochet, in November, political activities by Government supporters and opponents advocating peaceful change have been severely restricted and their views ignored by censored news media. Centrist politicians and diplomats say that this may

be partly because of ah attempt by General Pinochet to recreate the political vacuum of the years immediately after the military coup against an elected Left-wing Government in 1973. “The Government has consciously tried to cut away the middle ground,” said one diplomat. “In a country where the media is now almost totally controlled, the only groups which can get any publicity are the Government and the terrorist Left. This is partly the confrontation Pinochet likes and thinks he can win.” Human rights groups say that the nature of the latest

killings suggests an attempt to turn back the clock in another, more sinister way. Lawyers at the Vicaria of Solidarity, a group which is part of the Catholic church, said that abduction by armed men in plainclothes was the trademark of the security services from 1973 to 1976. “This is a big step backwards,” said one, a colleague of Mr Parada’s. “And this sort of spiral does not stop.” Although the Government has condemned the killings and promised an investigation, opponents and human rights groups have no doubts that the security ser-

vices were in it. “In a regime like the one in power in Chile ... it is inconceivable that something like this could happen ... without the complicity of security services or people linked to them,” the Opposition Christian Democratic Party said in a statement. The Archbishop of Santiago, the Most Rev. Juan Francisco Fresno, who is responsible for the work of the vicaria, called again for an end to violence in his Palm Sunday sermon in a packed cathedral. He was unable to finish because demonstrators fleeing from clashes with riot police outside the

sermon which, according to a prepared text, would have told all men of violence that they could not be children of God. Many Chileans fear that last week-end’s victims, all members of the Communist Party, were killed in reprisal for the hotel bombing and Santiago car-bombs and that a new round of reprisals will follow. Spokesmen for the Communists, when asked to justify their policy supporting acts of violence, always have said that they were an appropriate response to violence generated by the Government. Sources in the party say that some activists regard

the state of siege as an opportunity to sharpen their armed campaign and polarise the struggle still further. Such a hardening can be seen in a gradual shift by Leftist guerrilla groups away from sabotage raids to bomb attacks in cities, with less regard for civilian casualties. Political sources say that those with most to lose from an intensified armed confrontation are the nonCommunist Opposition parties. They are torn between a commitment to non-violence in pursuit of a quick return to democracy and a reluctance to move too far to the

Right and abandon to the hard-line Left the banner of implacable opposition. Such parties refused to back last week’s abortive call for a protest by the Left, fearing that they would be dominated by violence and convinced that the timing — less than a month after a devastating earthquake — was a political mistake. But they have shown no signs of being able to reach agreement with the disaffected sectors on the Right, who still insist that General Pinochet must rule until 1989, as laid down in a Constitution denounced by all the Opposition as undemgcratic.