Chilean President, Gabriel Borek. Photo: EFE.
Chilean President Gabriel Borek on Sunday reported a national search plan for more than 1,000 people who disappeared during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990).
During a ceremony in La Moneda to commemorate the 49th anniversary of the coup that toppled Salvador Allende, Borek said: “There are 1,192 detainees who have disappeared and we still don’t know where they are. It is unacceptable, unacceptable, we cannot naturalize him.”
More than 3,200 people were killed or disappeared during the 17 years of the military dictatorship. Hundreds of families still do not know the whereabouts of their relatives.
The President emphasized that the plan would have a close working relationship with organizations of relatives of victims of the Chilean dictatorship.
“49 years ago, these walls witnessed the quiet hardening with which a group of Chilean men and women attempted to defend democratic institutions, while being overwhelmed by the force of arms,” he said.
Borek noted that on September 11, Chileans remember Salvador Allende, those who suffered humiliation, persecution and exile, victims of repression and those who fought for a return to democracy.
He emphasized that “memory is not a purely intellectual act, a thing of the past, but a mobilizing exercise.”
(with information from Prensa Latina)
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