“Everybody knows that the dice are loaded “, Leonard Cohen, ‘Everybody Knows’
Back to the 1980s
I first got involved in human rights work, with Amnesty International, around about 1988. In those days there was still very much an emphasis on political prisoners and those who were said to have been disappeared; arrested and never seen again.
There were three parts of the world which we did a lot of work on; South Africa, just about to enter the death throes of the racist apartheid system, countries such as east Germany and Romania, which were still firmly behind the Iron Curtain and the hellhole that was much of Latin America, with countries such as El Salvador where 27 families owned almost all the land and effectively ruled the country through the iron grip of right-wing death squads. It was a country where there was said to be no political prisoners, because the regime didn’t want to bother with the trouble and expense of keeping prisoners: it simply ‘disappeared ‘ them.
And then there was Pinochet’s Chile. I well remember writing numerous times to Pinochet to let him know that I and many others knew the kind of tactics his regime was using against opponents. Here was a man, a general in the Chilean army who had led the coup against the democratically elected Chilean government of Salvador Allende on 11th September 1973, the first 9/11, which Americans tend not to talk about so much.
It was well documented that up to 30 000 had been taken to the main football stadium in Santiago in the days and weeks following the coup, many of whom had been murdered in cold blood. These included the famous singer-song-writer Victor Jara, a prominent supporter of Allende, who had been arrested and had his hands crushed before being presented with a guitar and told to play it, by mocking guards. He was later murdered.
38 Londres Street
One of the places where opponents of the Pinochet military regime, which was in power in Chile from 1973 to 1990, were taken to before being murdered or ‘disappeared’ was at 38 Londres Street in the capital city, Santiago. In this book Philippe Sands, author of numerous acclaimed books about the Holocaust and how his family suffered in it, including East West Street, takes us on a detective trail, tracking down a direct connection between the Holocaust and the murder and oppression in Chile between 1973 and 1990. That connection took a human from, in the person of Walter Rauff, who was known to have been heavily involved in the invention and introduction of gas vans during the Holocaust and then having escaped justice and fled to Punta Arenas at the the end of the world in southern Chile, was then rumoured to have been recruited by the DINA, the Chilean Secret Police, to help run the interrogation and murder centre at 38 Londres Street.
The book, 38 Londres Street, details Sands’ search for firm evidence that this was true. It also interweaves this search with the story of Pinochet’s arrest in London in the autumn of 1998 and the attempts to get him extradited to stand trial in Spain for at least some of the crimes he committed as President of Chile between 1973 and 1990.
And hanging over it all, is Sands’ own tragic family history and the story of his grandfather, who lost most of his family in the Holocaust.
Two men. Two faces
Sands takes us on a trip through the details of the Pinochet case in London and his own research in trying to find out what exactly the truth was about the involvement of Walter Rauff in the DINA. In doing so, he leads us through some very murky waters, trying to discover, among other things, if Rauff was involved in a scheme whereby victims of the Pinochet regime were murdered and then their bodies crushed to make fish meal and feed for chickens.
As we go on this journey we can see how dangerous both these men were, both described a shaving two faces; a kind, warm face on one hand and an utterly cold, deadly one on the other. And we see just how easy it is for the real criminals, those who issue the orders at the top, to escape justice.
The struggle for justice
38 Londres raises a number of serious questions about the issue of immunity and the extent to which those responsible for the torture and murder of many hundreds, thousands, even perhaps millions of innocent people, should be dealt with by the courts.
Should the powerful people, those with connections and status, who have signed the death warrants and the orders for torture get away with it, claiming diplomatic immunity, while those further down the food chain, those who actually carry out the dark, dirty, deeds end up with life sentences in prison?
Yet that is what often happens. Today we have state leaders, such as Putin in Russia, Mohammad Bin Salman in Saudi Arabia and leaders in so many other countries such as Burma and Iran, who it is well documented have more blood on their hands than even Lady Macbeth had to contend with, yet carry on strutting around in the world stage, as if they had never done anything wrong.
When you look at the actions of so many heads of state across the world today, then you might agree with me, that they are perhaps the last people who should be granted immunity. International justice, established at Nuremberg after the horrors of the Holocaust and the Second World War and built on through institutions such as the international Criminal Court and the European Court of Human Rights is coming under ever great threat as right-wing populism continues to surge across so many parts of the world. This book tells us exactly why we should still defend the cause of international justice and why it is important for us to do so.
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