WORLD A witness to fascism The telephone rang — a jarring, ugly message was delivered to Andrea Oshsenius. The voice at the other end warned her to get out of Chile or she would die. The voice was that of a member of one of Chile’s notorious government-protected death squads. Andrea is eight years old. A Canadian citizen Andrea is- home and safe now, but in that terrible invasion of her human rights she became both victim and weapon for brutal intimidation. Andrea Oshsenius was the instrument the fascists used to try and silence Veronica De Negri, mother to 19-year-old Rodrigo Rojas. It was on July 2 that Rojas and his companion Carmen- Gloria were captured, savagely beaten, doused with gasoline and set afire by a squad of Chilean soldiers under the command of a certain Lieutenant Pedro Fer- nandes. _ “Ifyou ask me how my life is — my life changed 180 degrees,” Veronica De Negri explains as she relives the longest and hardest eight days of her life — her return to Chile after a decade in exile to be with her son in the throes of death. It happens that our conversa- tion occurs exactly seven months since her son’s death, July 7, 1986. *‘I’m strong, but I have feel- ings. Everyone has two ways to deal with a difficult emotional situation. Some people would like others to feel sorry and cry in their home without doing anything. “Others decide to fight, and I’m a fighter. “I’m not talking about my life for people to feel sorry for me, I’m talking because it’s important to me that they take action and take a stand in terms of what’s going on in Chile.” A talented photographer, Rod- rigo Rojas set out early on July 2 to capture the reality of Chile under Pinochet, specifically to document how Santiago’s various social classes were observing the historic national days of protest. From Berlin Gerry van Houten NATO: cracks appear America’s NATO allies are becoming very nervous about the direction of U.S. foreign and military policy. Hard on the heels of a nuclear test in Nevada which ended the self-imposed 18-month Soviet moratorium and Washington’s rejection of a limited nuclear weapons-free zone in the South Pacific, U.S. Defence Secretary Weinberger insisted that Star Wars can and will be deployed by the early 1990s. British Prime Minister Thatcher and her Defence Secretary, George Younger, have informed the U.S. government that Bri- tain wants the U.S. to adhere to the ‘‘traditional,”’ that is, narrow interpretation of the 1972 ABM treaty which specifically pro- hibits testing or deployment of any kind of weapon in space. Leo Tindemans, who is both Belgian Foreign Minister and President of the European Economic Community (EEC) Council of Ministers, stated that the EEC’s position is and remains renunciation of any attempt to obtain military superiority. In his capacity as Secretary General of NATO, Britain’s Lord Carrington is reported to have sent a letter to Washington saying the NATO allies must be consulted before any decision about Star Wars is taken. In short, given the position of the NATO countires, the U.S. must accept a narrow interpretation of the ABM treaty. . Similar views were also expressed by Japanese officials and by West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl. In fact, Reagan’s major allies are so nervous about U.S. inten- tions that a meeting of the ‘‘group of seven’’ was cancelled. France, supported by Britain and West Germany, opposed the scheduled meeting, which was to be on the subject of fighting international terrorism, because the meeting coincided with a U.S. military build-up off the coast of Lebanon. The Western European allies suspected that the U.S. intended to take unilateral military action while the meeting was taking place. The U.S. would then have been able to present its allies with a fait accompli which the allies would then have to support out of solidarity. NATO members are still seething about the barely-averted trade war between themselves and Washington. U.S. blackmail forced the EEC to make concessions which can only aggravate the EEC’s economic problems, particularly in agriculture. The French government has been especially angry with the U.S. policy in recent weeks, with Prime Minister Jacques Chirac referring to U.S. negotiating methods as ‘‘gunboat diplomacy’’. He and other EEC leaders, including Thatcher and Kohl, don’t see European interests served by U.S. military gunboat diplo- macy in Lebanon. They still remember the Reagan administra- tion, which repeatedly declared it would have no dealings with. terrorism, was secretly negotiating with those whom it publicly characterized as terrorists. 8 e PACIFIC TRIBUNE, FEBRUARY 18, 1987 ~ The day ended tragically in a ditch covered with blackberry bushes 20 kilometers outside San- tiago, a place called Quilicura. Carmen-Gloria would later tes- tify how the soldiers and a truck- load of civilians that arrived after the beatings had started, tried to force them to swallow the gasoline. She would later testify that throughout the ordeal she didn’t believe the couple would actually be burned. ‘*They set them on fire. When both kids tried to extinguish the flames from their bodies they” were beaten again. They beat Rodrigo on the back of his head and he lost control of his body, and Carmen-Gloria in her mouth .. She’s now left with just one tooth.”’ Typically, the torturers found the time to photograph their macabre handiwork. The pair was found alive, in the Quilicura ditch where they had been dumped by the soldiers who had wrapped their unconscious bodies in blankets and tossed them in the back of a pickup truck. Rodrigo only lived four’ days but it was long enough to give a complete accounting of his ordeal to lawyers from the Vic- ariate of Solidarity, a Catholic human rights organization. ‘“‘They didn’t receive’ the proper medical attention. We were able to save Carmen-Gloria, because after Rodrigo died we were able to transfer her to a bet- -ter hospi Throughout our conversation there’s the underscored admoni- tion to remember her son’s death not as an isolated crime, but as an example of the countless human rights violations taking place everyday in Chile. What happen- ed to Carmen-Gloria and Rodrigo has happened before, is happen- ing today. Justice is a word that crops up repeatedly in the conversation. _ Justice for the victims in the Rojas case and other cases. Justice for the witnesses who risk their lives to tell the truth, and justice for the attorneys and everyone involved in such cases. ‘*To be a witness in Chile is also a crime. People receive death eee, are kidnapped by death De Negri: To be a witness in Chile is also a crime. All kinds of harassment and pressures are used to stifle opinion. squads, arrested, arrested, and threatened with being burned alive — all kinds of harassment and pressures trying to force them to change their opinion.” Faced with massive evidence of the military’s guilt in the grue- some events of July 2, and univer- sal outrage at the carnage, the authorities conducted a circus of civil and military enquiries, with neither the government nor the military accepting any respon- sibility for the torture and murder. The government appointed judge Carlos Alberto Echevaria to preside over the mock enquiry that charged Lt. Fernandes with negligence for failing to get the kids to a hospital. In August the matter became the subject of a military court where the victims, the witnesses and their three lawyers became the prosecuted. Witnesses were arrested, some were kidnapped and their lives threatened by the ever-present death squads. Enrique Palleta, an executive of the Vicariate of Solidarity, had the front of his home machine gunned. One day he made the grisly discovery on his doorstep of a pig’s head with a bullet be- tween its eyes. By the end of January, the military court had ‘‘reconstruct- ed’’ events. Exonerating the mili- tary of any responsibility, it ar- rogantly proclaimed that the young couple had set themselves on fire. None of the 15 key witnesses to the murder had been called before the military court, neither Carmen-Gloria nor her attorneys were allowed to testify, and a wit- nessed who refused to recant his testimony was arrested. On Jan. 29, Fernandes was re- leased on $25 bail after the milit- ary prosecutor had reduced the charges against him. “So now all the criminals in- volved in my son’s and Carmen- Gloria’s case — all those re- sponsible for his death are free, ready to commit new crimes again.’ “I want to draw a parallel with | another journalist, Juan Pablo Cardenal, director of the opposi- tion magazine Analysis. He has been condemned to three years in prison for exposing the irregulari- ies that exist in Chile. But the criminals are free.”’ — M.P. The Communist Party of Colombia has called for an International Day of Solidarity Against Violence and Mili- tarism in Colombia on Feb. 26. Ina public message, the CPC points out that some 300 communist and demo- crats have been killed or have van- ished over the past 18 months in the _ escalating violence in that country. Their message reads in part: The Colombian people are liv- ing in dramatic times. Their hopes for democratic change and a bet- ter life have been frustrated by the efforts of the most reactionary forces in the military in collusion with imperialism. These forces do not want to see the advancement of political and social reforms, i.e., the consolida- tion of peaceful, democratic change in Colombia which was foreseen in the agreement signed between the Colombian govern- ment and the guerrilla movement in 1984. To prevent such democratic change, dozens of Communist leaders, members of the Patriotic Union, magistrates and jour- nalists have been murdered. These crimes are made to appear as acts of drug traffikers or as the “‘settling of accounts’’ between revolutionary groups. But the real political aim of these terrorist acts is to lead to destabilizing the country, to strike at democratic currents, thus forcing the government to take positions favoring the milit- ary domestically, and against the Sandinista government external- ly. The CPC condemns this Col- ombian version of the Condor GP: solidarity with Colombia Plan, directed by the CIA. It calls on the government of President _ Barco to break up the para- military groups, working undef police and military supervision, which are carrying out the muI- ders in the country. It calls for 4 cleansing of the armed forces and for the guaranteeing of civil rights to opposition and left forces today being persecuted. Such steps would help facilitate the agreements reached between the government and revolution- ary armed forces which are today being systematically destroyed by — the military; as well as the lifting of the state-of-siege, and the launching of investigations of the murders, disappeared and tof- tured so as to punish those re- sponsible.