Dr Mohamed Kirat
By Dr Mohamed Kirat
Forty one years ago on September 11, 1973, the Chilean military led by General Augusto Pinochet, ousted the democratically elected Unidad Popular government of Salvador Allende. The objective was to replace a progressive, democratically elected government by a brutal military dictatorship. The military coup was supported by the CIA. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger played a direct role in the military plot. In the weeks leading up to the coup, US Ambassador Nathaniel Davis and members of the CIA held meetings with Chile’s top military brass together with the leaders of the National Party and the ultra-right nationalist front Patria y Libertad. While the undercover role of the Nixon administration is amply documented, what is rarely mentioned in media reports is the fact that the military coup was also supported by a sector of the Christian Democratic Party.
When one talks of September 11, the attacks on the twin towers in New York and that on the Pentagon come to mind, whereas there is another crucial September 11, but this one happened in Chile in 1973, 41 years ago. It was a coup orchestrated by the United States of America against the democratically elected president Salvador Allende. The coup d’etat resulted in more than 40,000 people being declared dead and lost, and never found. This means 10 times the casualties the US September 11 attacks caused. The 9/11 attacks on the US generated hundreds of thousands of articles, commentaries and analyses all over the world, while the overthrow of Alende was poorly covered.
President Michelle Bachelet marked Thursday’s anniversary of the 1973 military coup that toppled President Salvador Allende by urging Chileans to come forward with any information they might have about people who disappeared during the country’s dictatorship. About 40,000 people were killed, tortured or imprisoned for political reasons during the 17-year dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet, and about 1,000 of them have never been found. The dreams of the Chileans were shattered when the military overthrew the democratically elected government of Allende.
On September 21, 1970, Allende had been declared winner of free and fair elections, but before he took over the presidency, after a fruitless effort by Chilean conservatives and their US allies to have the victory declared unconstitutional, Edward Korry, the US ambassador in Santiago, reported to Henry Kissinger, the foreign strategist of President Richard Nixon: “Once Allende comes to power we shall do all within our power to condemn Chile and the Chileans to utmost deprivation and poverty.”
After Allende’s enemies finally claimed their victory against him on
September 11, Chileans protected themselves as best they could while Pinochet and his cohorts, strongly backed by Washington, turned to making a fortune from the privatisation of public services and, quietly, from the trade in cocaine from Bolivia which the US never seemed to want to criticise or attack. So confident was Pinochet of his protectors in “the free world” that on September 17, 1976 he ordered the killing of Orlando Letelier, Allende’s former defence minister, with a bomb planted in his car in Sheridan Circle in the diplomatic heart of Washington, DC. Such an atrocity, if committed by an Arab or Iranian, or indeed a Muslim of any persuasion, would have brought down instant punishment, or even war and would have generated tonnes of articles in the world’s leading newspapers. But Pinochet was in no danger. After all, he had been Nixon’s man all along.
It was a moment of remembrance, not for the victims of the military coup, but for those killed at the World Trade Centre in New York. What about the Chilean September 11? What about thousands of innocents, civilians, children and elderly who were murdered by the military. It is not a matter of comparing sorrow and pain, but for years the US media has tried to convince the rest of the world and mainly Third World countries that North American lives are more worthy than other people’s lives. After all, Americans think that developing countries’ peoples deserve to be arrested, tortured and killed. The truth is that no US president ever shed a tear for the Chile’s dead; no US politician ever sent a flower to the victims’ widows.
The US government and media use different standards to measure suffering. It is precisely this hypocrisy and these double standards that make the rest of the world uneasy with the behaviour of the US in various parts of the world. On such a symbolic day for Chileans, the president of Chile, Ricardo Lagos, attended a memorial service at the United States embassy where the ambassador, William Brownfield, stated that “people who hate the United States must be controlled, arrested or eliminated”.
The main objective of the US-supported military coup in Chile was ultimately to impose the neoliberal economic agenda. The latter, in the case of Chile, was not imposed by external creditors under the guidance of IMF. “Regime change” was enforced through covert military intelligence operation, which laid the groundwork for the military coup. Sweeping macro-economic reforms (including privatisation, price liberalisation and the freezing of wages) were implemented in early October 1973. Barely a few weeks after the military takeover, the military Junta headed by General Augusto Pinochet ordered a hike in the price of bread from 11 to 40 escudos, an overnight increase of 264pc.
This “economic shock treatment” had been designed by a group of economists called the “Chicago Boys.” While food prices had skyrocketed, wages had been frozen to ensure “economic stability and to stave off inflationary pressures.” From one day to the next, an entire country had been precipitated into poverty; in less than a year the price of bread in Chile increased thirty-six fold (3700pc). Eighty-five percent of the Chilean population had been driven below the poverty line thanks to the well planned and orchestrated military coup by “Democratic America” to implement democracy and economic welfare in the rest of the world.
The writer is a Professor of Public Relations and Mass Communication at the College of Arts and Sciences, Qatar University.
By Dr Mohamed Kirat
Forty one years ago on September 11, 1973, the Chilean military led by General Augusto Pinochet, ousted the democratically elected Unidad Popular government of Salvador Allende. The objective was to replace a progressive, democratically elected government by a brutal military dictatorship. The military coup was supported by the CIA. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger played a direct role in the military plot. In the weeks leading up to the coup, US Ambassador Nathaniel Davis and members of the CIA held meetings with Chile’s top military brass together with the leaders of the National Party and the ultra-right nationalist front Patria y Libertad. While the undercover role of the Nixon administration is amply documented, what is rarely mentioned in media reports is the fact that the military coup was also supported by a sector of the Christian Democratic Party.
When one talks of September 11, the attacks on the twin towers in New York and that on the Pentagon come to mind, whereas there is another crucial September 11, but this one happened in Chile in 1973, 41 years ago. It was a coup orchestrated by the United States of America against the democratically elected president Salvador Allende. The coup d’etat resulted in more than 40,000 people being declared dead and lost, and never found. This means 10 times the casualties the US September 11 attacks caused. The 9/11 attacks on the US generated hundreds of thousands of articles, commentaries and analyses all over the world, while the overthrow of Alende was poorly covered.
President Michelle Bachelet marked Thursday’s anniversary of the 1973 military coup that toppled President Salvador Allende by urging Chileans to come forward with any information they might have about people who disappeared during the country’s dictatorship. About 40,000 people were killed, tortured or imprisoned for political reasons during the 17-year dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet, and about 1,000 of them have never been found. The dreams of the Chileans were shattered when the military overthrew the democratically elected government of Allende.
On September 21, 1970, Allende had been declared winner of free and fair elections, but before he took over the presidency, after a fruitless effort by Chilean conservatives and their US allies to have the victory declared unconstitutional, Edward Korry, the US ambassador in Santiago, reported to Henry Kissinger, the foreign strategist of President Richard Nixon: “Once Allende comes to power we shall do all within our power to condemn Chile and the Chileans to utmost deprivation and poverty.”
After Allende’s enemies finally claimed their victory against him on
September 11, Chileans protected themselves as best they could while Pinochet and his cohorts, strongly backed by Washington, turned to making a fortune from the privatisation of public services and, quietly, from the trade in cocaine from Bolivia which the US never seemed to want to criticise or attack. So confident was Pinochet of his protectors in “the free world” that on September 17, 1976 he ordered the killing of Orlando Letelier, Allende’s former defence minister, with a bomb planted in his car in Sheridan Circle in the diplomatic heart of Washington, DC. Such an atrocity, if committed by an Arab or Iranian, or indeed a Muslim of any persuasion, would have brought down instant punishment, or even war and would have generated tonnes of articles in the world’s leading newspapers. But Pinochet was in no danger. After all, he had been Nixon’s man all along.
It was a moment of remembrance, not for the victims of the military coup, but for those killed at the World Trade Centre in New York. What about the Chilean September 11? What about thousands of innocents, civilians, children and elderly who were murdered by the military. It is not a matter of comparing sorrow and pain, but for years the US media has tried to convince the rest of the world and mainly Third World countries that North American lives are more worthy than other people’s lives. After all, Americans think that developing countries’ peoples deserve to be arrested, tortured and killed. The truth is that no US president ever shed a tear for the Chile’s dead; no US politician ever sent a flower to the victims’ widows.
The US government and media use different standards to measure suffering. It is precisely this hypocrisy and these double standards that make the rest of the world uneasy with the behaviour of the US in various parts of the world. On such a symbolic day for Chileans, the president of Chile, Ricardo Lagos, attended a memorial service at the United States embassy where the ambassador, William Brownfield, stated that “people who hate the United States must be controlled, arrested or eliminated”.
The main objective of the US-supported military coup in Chile was ultimately to impose the neoliberal economic agenda. The latter, in the case of Chile, was not imposed by external creditors under the guidance of IMF. “Regime change” was enforced through covert military intelligence operation, which laid the groundwork for the military coup. Sweeping macro-economic reforms (including privatisation, price liberalisation and the freezing of wages) were implemented in early October 1973. Barely a few weeks after the military takeover, the military Junta headed by General Augusto Pinochet ordered a hike in the price of bread from 11 to 40 escudos, an overnight increase of 264pc.
This “economic shock treatment” had been designed by a group of economists called the “Chicago Boys.” While food prices had skyrocketed, wages had been frozen to ensure “economic stability and to stave off inflationary pressures.” From one day to the next, an entire country had been precipitated into poverty; in less than a year the price of bread in Chile increased thirty-six fold (3700pc). Eighty-five percent of the Chilean population had been driven below the poverty line thanks to the well planned and orchestrated military coup by “Democratic America” to implement democracy and economic welfare in the rest of the world.
The writer is a Professor of Public Relations and Mass Communication at the College of Arts and Sciences, Qatar University.
