by Natalie Hart
- Chile -

“Impunity for human rights crimes is not just a matter of the past, but also something that continues today.” - Irene Khan, Amnesty International Secretary General

On the tenth anniversary of former military dictator General Pinochet’s arrest in London, Amnesty International Secretary General Irene Khan led a delegation to Chile to investigate the country’s current human rights situation. Far from a finding nation that has firmly closed the door on its dark past, Khan reports unratified human rights conventions, unresolved cases of regime era disappearance and torture, and an indigenous community subjected to marginalization and discrimination – a country that has failed to put the ghosts of its past to rest.

by Natalie Hart
- Chile -

From the Qur’an standing on the sideboard, to the ornate Palestinian mosaic boxes decorating the room, to the anguished expressions of heavily made up Arabic soap stars filling the television screen, one could be forgiven for thinking that they were somewhere in the Middle East. We were, in fact, in La Calera – a dusty industrial town in Chile’s Quillota province, 118km from the capital Santiago – in the home of a Palestinian refugee.