"... the continued existence of human rights is a necessary condition for any reconciliation... In a country in which everybody ends up mutually fearing each other, in which those who abused their power and situation do not want to leave the top because of their fear of revenge, only justice, which affords each individual his right, can objectively mete out the sanctions which correspond to each of those involved. Only justice can open the path to peace. True reconciliation will not be achieved with deceitful conciliation, with cover ups, by erasing and starting over again. True reconciliation must base itself on the strong rock of established human rights.
The conditions for reconciliation imply the reinstitution of the rights of those who have been persecuted... First we have to answer to the relatives of the executed and the disappeared as to the whereabouts of their loved ones... above all, we must give them full satisfaction. In relation to Chile's poor, we must return them the real and concrete right to live. Then they can begin to forgive... We also want the inhuman torturer, the military man, impregnated by an ideology which propounds war and hatred, the metallic rich, to recover for the sake of the rest of humankind. Because we love them, because we forgive them, we want to recover them for humankind... the Christian love which seeks reconciliation for Chile, walks along the path of human rights."
Excerpt from a text written in 1984 by Jose Aldunate, renown Jesuit priest,
a founder of the Sebastian Acevedo Movement Against Torture.
|