smCOLUMN SEVENTY-EIGHT, NOVEMBER 1, 2002
(Copyright © 2002 The Blacklisted Journalist)
SECTION SIXTEEN
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COLUMN
SEVENTY-EIGHT, NOVEMBER 1, 2002
(Copyright © 2002 The Blacklisted Journalist)
CHILE'S SEPTEMBER 11:
IS THE SAME THING GOING TO HAPPEN HERE?
Subject:
For your attention
Date: Mon, 16 Sep 2002 16:01:32 퍍 (UTC)
From: ah2002@blueyonder.co.uk
To: info@blacklistedjournalist.com
Andrew
spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it.
-------
Note
from Andrew:
A
short but poignant article I discovered on the Web today.
-------
To
see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk
Remembering
September 11 1973
Were
the lives of those killed at the World Trade Centre more valuable than the
innocents murdered in Chile's US-backed coup, asks Tito Tricot
Tito
Tricot
Monday September 16 2002
The Guardian
Our
dreams were shattered one cloudy morning when the military overthrew the
democratically elected government of Salvador Allende. Twenty-nine years later,
at midday, Chile's's firemen sounded their sirens paying tribute to thousands of
men and women who lost their lives without really understanding what was
happening.
It
was a moment of remembrance, not for the victims of the military coup, but for
those killed at the World Trade Centre in
New York. Sad as that might have been, it is even sadder that Chilean firemen
have never sounded their sirens to remember our own dead. And there are
thousands of them, including many children, who were murdered by the military.
It
is not a matter of comparing sorrow and pain, but for the past year the US media
has tried to convince us that north American lives are worth more than other
people's lives. After all, we are from the third world, citizens of
underdeveloped countries who deserve to be arrested, tortured and killed. How
else are we interpret the fact that the military coup in our country was planned
in the United States?
The
truth is that no US president ever shed a tear for our dead; no US politician
ever sent a flower to our widows. The US government and media use different
standards to measure suffering. It is precisely this hypocrisy and these double
standards that make us sick, especially when on such a symbolic day for
Chileans, the president of Chile, Ricardo Lagos, attended a memorial service at
the United States embassy where the ambassador, William Brownfield, stated that
"people who hate the United States must be controlled, arrested or
eliminated".
In
what kind of a world are we living? Can we stand idly by while in the name of
the fight against terrorism countries are bombed or invaded by the US war
machine? I think not, especially because, irrespective of the horror of the
World Trade Centre attacks, the US has no moral right to impose its will on our
continent. After all, we in Latin America have ample experience with US
terrorist tactics. In our continent alone 90,000 people disappeared as a direct
result of the operation of the School of the Americas and US
"counterinsurgency" policies---30 times more than the victims of the
World Trade Centre.
One
cannot---and should not---attempt to quantify suffering, but we do have the
right to denounce this double standard. We also have the right to question
President Lagos's assertion that "for the youth of today what happened in
1973 is part of history, which means we must undertake the task of looking to
the future". Only a few hours after the president's speech, thousands of
people---mostly young people---took over parts of Santiago and other Chilean
cities to express their true feelings about this fateful day in Chile's history.
They organised demonstrations, candle-lit vigils, concerts, meetings, seminars
and put up barricades to defend themselves from the police.
It
was a way of saying: Neither the United States nor anybody has the right to
steal our memory. No one has the right to steal our day, for September the 11
1973 is marked in our hearts with tears.
Copyright
Guardian Newspapers Limited ##
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