Chilean church official says rights abuses must be remembered

Published: 2006-07-19

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- The human rights scars in Chile remain 16 years after the demise of Gen. Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship, said a church official who was a leading critic of the military regime. Today there is still a need to make society aware of the human rights abuses committed under the 1973-90 Pinochet government, said Msgr. Cristian Precht Banados, who headed the Chilean church's human rights agency in the early years of Pinochet's rule. "Dictatorships hide the truth. They use censorship and distort information. There are sectors of our society who don't know what happened or don't want to know," he told Catholic News Service July 18. Msgr. Precht, 65, is now pastoral vicar for one of the poorest sections of the Archdiocese of Santiago, Chile. He was interviewed while visiting friends in Washington. Pinochet, 90, remains controversial in Chile, and charges of human rights violations and tax evasion have been filed against him. So far he has not come to trial because of several years of legal wrangling as to whether he has immunity as an ex-president and if he is mentally fit to stand trial.

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