Movies you can watch: The Black Pipernel (2007)

Dir. Åsa Faringer - Ulf Hultberg (2007)

 

The story about Swedish ambassador in Chile - Harald Edelstam - and his heroic actions to protect the innocent people from the execution during and after the military coup on September 11th 1973. We travel with Edelstam during the terrible moments just after the coup and follows his never-ending fight for human rights, law and order. What drove him? And what price did he end up paying for his total commitment? Haunted by his own demons the we experiences on close hand how a womanizer desperately searches to find love again, a task only doable, if he can fight his own past and redeem himself. After saving hundreds - maybe even thousands - he is challenged once more, this time to save his newfound love from the death penalty issued by the regime. Another impossible task and a desperate chase against time. Based on a true story about a man, that did, what all of us only dreams of.

Chile Church seeks pardons, including rights cases

By CARLA CANDIA (AP) – 2 days ago

SANTIAGO, Chile — Chile's Roman Catholic Church on Wednesday urged President Sebastian Pinera to grant a sweeping pardon to aged and long-serving inmates — and the fact it would aid military officers who committed crimes against humanity has angered relatives of their victims.

Families of people who were slain or who vanished during Augusto Pinochet's 1973-1990 dictatorship protested outside La Moneda palace as Cardinal Francisco Javier Errazuriz and Monsignor Alejandro Goic, president of the Episcopal Conference, met with the president.

"Our proposal is not meant to open up wounds of the past, nor to make them heal by decree," Goic said of the plan, which is designed to mark Chile's 200-year independence celebrations Sept. 18 with a display of clemency.

But the wounds of the past remain bitter for many Chileans.

According to official statistics, 3,065 opponents of Pinochet's right-wing regime were killed and 1,200 more disappeared. Some 600 military personnel have been accused of crimes against humanity but no more than 150 are now in prison.

Mireya Garcia, vice president of the Group of Relatives of the Detainees and Disappeared, said those who commit crimes should serve their sentences. "Justice doesn't have to do with clemency but with what is fair," she told The Associated Press.

The church's proposed amnesty would apply to prisoners who are sick or older than 70 or those who have served half their sentence. Garcia's group says about 35 military personnel jailed for dictatorship-era "dirty war" crimes apparently would be eligible, though officials have not given an exact count.

The main opposition to the pardons for former military officials comes from left-center sectors who have a majority in the Congress, but some law-and-order members of Pinera's conservative bloc are also uneasy at the idea of seeming to go easy on convicts.

Pinera himself has sought to distance his brand of conservative politics from the far-right Pinochet dictatorship
Gen. Humberto Julio, president of an organization of retired military officials, praised the church proposal, saying it would help national reconciliation.

"It's incorrect to talk about impunity when the intention is to apply a sentence according to the age and health condition of prisoners," he said.

Copyright © 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Novels you can read about chilean history and politics: Death and the Maiden by Ariel Dorfman

Years after she was blindfolded and tortured by Pinochet's police force, Chilean woman Paulina marries Gerardo and through him meets, Roberto, whose voice she is certain was that of the man who tortured her years before.

Editorial Review: "This powerful political drama and psychological thriller by the noted Chilean writer premiered in London last summer, where it won the Time Out Award for Best Play. In March it opened in the United States on Broadway, with direction by Mike Nichols and starring Glenn Close, Richard Dreyfuss, and Gene Hackman. The play focuses on a woman who finds herself in the position to exact revenge upon a man whom she believes to have been her torturer 15 years earlier. In telling this story, the author also addresses the dilemmas which touch all our lives: innocence and evil, truth and lies, forgiveness, and revenge. This is a worthwhile addition to modern drama collections."- Howard E. Miller, Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Missouri Lib., St. LouisCopyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See the book in Amazon.com

See the movie directed by Roman Polanski on the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Chilean Human Rights Program

After the democracy was restored, former president Patricio Aylwin organized a comission -the Rettig Comission- to investigate all the human rights violations commited in Pinochet's Dictatorship.

Here we have the link to the Chilean Human Rights Program where you can find all the reports and documents about the victims, that were in total 3.195. 1.183 of them are missing detainees.

11' 09'' 01

11'9''01 September 11 (2002, 135 min), is an international film composed of 11 contributions from different filmmakers, each from a different country. Each gave their own vision of the events in New York City on September 11, 2001, in a short film of 11 minutes, 9 seconds, and one frame. The original concept and production of the film were by French producer Alain Brigand. The film received the "Special Prize" at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival.

From this film, here we have the video of the contribution of the british director Ken Loach, the segment "United Kingdom".