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December 23, 2016

Chile: Families of Victims Protest Mass for Jailed Regime Members
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And in Chile, family members of those killed or disappeared under the
U.S.-backed dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet held a protest outside
Santiago's main cathedral on Thursday ahead of a planned Catholic mass
today for jailed members of the former regime. The protesters wore
photographs of their loved ones and held signs reading "never forget."
This is Carla Pellegrin, whose brother Raśl was disappeared under the
dictatorship.

Carla Pellegrin: "The human rights violators of this country are going
to ask for forgiveness in a mass, to obtain prison benefits. We
absolutely reject a pardon, because we are neither for forgiveness nor
forgetting. And basically that's because the missing are still missing,
because our loved ones who were tortured, who were killed, are no longer
here, which happens in many cases. And there's still much impunity, such
as in the case of my brother, certainly, and because there's a pact of
silence."

On September 11, 1973, democratically elected President Salvador Allende
was toppled in a U.S.-backed coup, ushering in 17 years of brutal
dictatorship under Augusto Pinochet.


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