Santiago de Chile, June 5 (RHC)-- The director of Chile's Museum of Memory and Human Rights, María Fernanda García, on Monday rejected statements by right-wing political sectors that vindicate the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.
Since the victory of the extremist Republican Party in the elections for the Constitutional Council, the voices denying the serious human rights violations perpetrated during the de facto regime (1973-1990) have multiplied here.
Republican Party councilor Luis Silva, a prominent member of the religious group Opus Dei, caused widespread repudiation when he expressed his admiration for Pinochet and described him as "a statesman".
But he is not the only one, since a few days ago the secretary general of the Independent Democratic Union, María José Hoffman, said through a press media that "the barbarities of the dictatorship are quite comparable to the barbarities of Salvador Allende's government".
This Monday the president of that right-wing party, Javier Macaya, defended Hoffman and repeated the offensive phrase that "without Allende there is no Pinochet", which was pronounced by a candidate of the Republican Party in the 2021 elections.
The director of the Museo de La Memoria said that it is difficult and disheartening to hear this kind of statements, as they not only vindicate the role of the dictatorship, but also install themselves in the collective conscience of the citizenship.
He warned how social networks amplify these hate speeches that do not help to look at the past as a reflection towards the future.
"For me, he assured, it is very strange to continue listening to people who were in the front row in the dictatorship and then in democracy they are also still in the front row".
García also referred to the importance of human rights education to make the new generations understand that the period of the dictatorship, for them very distant, is much closer than they imagined.
According to the Valech Commission report, published in 2011, during the Pinochet regime more than 40,000 cases of violations of citizens' prerogatives were recorded in the country, including 3,200 murders and disappearances (Source: Prensa Latina).
