PCS general secretary FRAN HEATHCOTE explains why opposing war is inseparable from defending jobs, wages and public services – and why readers should come to the London Peace Conference on Saturday June 20
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Eduardo Contreras: titan of justice for Chileans
Kate Clark remembers a lawyer, exiled after the military overthrow of left-wing president Allende, who later helped to prosecute scores of the military coup-plotters and was instrumental in forming a new generation of human rights lawyers in the country in the ’90s
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IF THERE are over 150 of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet’s military personnel now languishing in prison, it is largely due to the ceaseless and determined work of Chile’s foremost human rights lawyer, Eduardo Contreras, who has just died in Santiago aged 84.
My companero Ricardo and I have been friends with Eduardo since we first met in his native city, Chillan, in 1969. Then a young lawyer, Eduardo had already been elected a municipal councillor representing the Communist Party of Chile.
It was the year before the historic victory of Socialist Salvador Allende, who was elected Chile’s president in September 1970, leading an alliance of socialist and progressive parties called Popular Unity (PU).
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