RIGHTS-CHILE: Rights Group Wants Chilean General Axed

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

UNITED NATIONS, Oct 9 1998 (IPS) - Human Rights Watch called Friday for the dismissal of the Chilean officer in charge of U.N. military observers in Kashmir because of his alleged involvement in atrocities in Chile 25 years ago.

In a letter to Secretary General Kofi Annan, the group accused Brig. Gen. Sergio Espinoza Davies, the head of the U.N. Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP), of sentencing six Chilean socialists to death in secret tribunal proceedings in October 1973. Four of the men were executed the following morning, according to the rights group.

Espinoza is “unfit to lead a peacekeeping mission that seeks to uphold the international human rights principles upon which the United Nations was founded,” argued Joanna Weschler, U.N. representative for Human Rights Watch.

U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard said that the world body is studying the situation and is awaiting an explanation from Chile about Espinoza’s career. Once the government provides more information, he added, the United Nations would decide how to proceed.

Eckhard argued, however, the United Nations does not check the background of all officers recommended to the world body for posts, but relies on the governments to determine their qualifications.

“We don’t second-guess governments,” he told reporters Friday.

Espinoza reportedly has denied being involved in any atrocities, but refused to speak to reporters when approached in Pakistan on the topic.

In the letter to Annan, Weschler and Jose Miguel Vivanco, executive director of Human Rights Watch/Americas, said that Espinoza, as a captain serving in the Chilean military after Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s September 1973 coup against elected President Salvador Allende, served on at least one war tribunal.

The letter notes that, according to Chile’s National Commission on Truth and Reconciliation, such tribunals had an “unsatisfactory level” of legal knowledge and added, “In many of the deaths said to have followed from a decision by the war tribunal, it should be assumed that no such trial took place and that this was simply a way of explaining an illegal execution.”

The Oct. 29, 1973, death sentence delivered against six leaders of the Socialist Party of Iquique was a case in point, Vivanco and Weschler argued, with the Commission on Truth and Reconciliation arguing that the trial “violated the rules which safeguard the human rights of the accused”.

In addition, the letter to Annan noted, one member of the tribunal, Juan Enrique Sinn Bruno, alleged that the tribunal had originally sentenced the six suspects to ten years in prison, but changed the sentences to death “on superior orders”.

The appointment of Espinoza follows from standard procedures for U.N. peacekeeping, in which nations often second their top officials to the world body at their own discretion.

However, it has sparked considerable embarrassment after The New York Times published the allegations against the general, since Espinoza’s role compels him to monitor possible atrocities committed by India or Pakistan along the line of control in Kashmir.