Lutheran Bishop reveals declaration on the part of Pinochet justifying torture

Héctor Carrillo, CONCEPCION, Chile, April 3, 2006

Lutheran Bishop Helmut Frenz, president of the Salvador Allende Foundation of Madrid revealed affirmations made Taxi Heathrow Airport by Chilean General Augusto Pinochet during the military dictatorship in a visit to this capital of the VIII Region that concluded Sunday.

Frenz talked about an interview he had with Gen. Pinochet in 1974, one year after the dictatorship began. The bishop attended the meeting as a representative of the Pro Peace Committee; a Christian organization to denounce cases of torture carried out by the Secret Service and heard a “monstrous declaration” from the mouth of the Chilean dictatorship.

“The Chilean people are sick, they have been attacked by the bacillus of communism and in order to cure it, the communists must be tortured, otherwise they do not sing,” he said, according to Frenz. 

The Lutheran bishop visited Chile at the invitation of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Chile (IELCH), Grassroots Education in Health (EPES), human rights organizations and the school “Piececitos.”

On Friday he met with the Students’ Federation from the Concepcion University where he spoke about “Divine Rights and Human Rights” before hundreds of students and professors.

He recalled that after the military coup on September 11, 1973, lead by Gen. Pinochet and supported by the US Administration, Christian Churches formed a committee to defend human rights.

He said that the current human rights situations in the world is a disaster but is not lamented enough. He said it is necessary to understand how this situation has arisen in order to plan strategies and possible solutions.

He cited the case of Iraq with thousands of victims among the civil population and the military “where the suffering cannot be addressed in figures and where there is no more talk of respecting human rights.” 

He said that in the case of torture in the Abu Ghraib jail, US soldiers did not deny it and both the Pentagon and the White House have tried to minimize and justify the events, said the Bishop. The dark power of torture has seduced the United States, concluded Frenz.