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Burnings Common In Chile

Burnings Common In Chile image Burnings Common In Chile image
Parent Issue
Month
August
Year
1986
Copyright
Creative Commons (Attribution, Non-Commercial, Share-alike)
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Agenda Publications
OCR Text

by Ellen Rusten

 

Some Chilean soldiers carry flammable liquid in spray cans. Sometimes if they catch a protester or bystander, they spray them with it. Then they light a match, set them on fire, and let them burn a long enough time so more than half their bodies are seared with burns.

 

"This happens weekly, this burning," said Eliana Moya-Raggio, a Chilean who teaches Spanish at the Residential College at the U-M, "but also kidnapping, murdering, raping, torturing. The situation in Chile is very bad now under the dictatorship."

 

In the case of Rodrigo Rojas de Negri, 19, Chilean soldiers sprayed him and a young friend with the flammable liquid, lit the match, waited for the flames to spread, and then put the fire out with blankets. They transported them several miles to the outskirts of the capitol city of Santiago where they were found the next morning, wandering along a road.

 

Rojas, a photographer and U.S. resident but a Chilean citizen, had been visiting his homeland for six weeks, when on the day before a two-day strike, he went with a friend to a poor neighborhood where reportedly youths were planning to build barricades to stop soldiers from entering their neighborhood.

 

Carmen Quintana Arancibia, an 18-year-old college student, had just met Rojas that day and had brought him to the neighborhood. Witnesses interviewed by Americas Watch, Amnesty International and the local Catholic Church human rights organization, said they saw soldiers spray the two young people with liquid and set them on fire. Quintana still lives even though she has bums on more than 50% of her body. Rojas survived for four days with 65% of his body covered by burns and then died.

 

The U.S. government, in a surprise move, has protested the slaying of Rojas and sent the U.S. ambassador in Chile to the funeral. The embassy has asked the government to investigate the incident.

 

"Should the results of that investigation indicate that wrongdoing did occur, the U.S. would expect appropriate action be taken to see that justice is done," a State Department spokesman said.

 

The funeral was interrupted by water

 

(see Chilé, page 29)

 

Chilé (continued from page 1)

 

cannons and police launching tear gas. The U.S. Ambassador was briefly trapped in the panic after the police moved in.

 

Rojas's mother, Veronica de Negri, blamed the Chilean government for the murder of her son and called the President a "liar." The Chilean government said that soldiers were not responsible for the torching, and at times has made suggestions that Rojas had been carrying flammable liquid and set himself afire.

 

Moya-Raggio said that she knows Rojas's mother. "She was in prison and tortured, and has not been allowed into Chile," Moya-Raggio said. The Chilean government permitted de Negri to return to Chile to visit her son while he was in the hospital. Moya-Raggio was reluctant to talk about de Negri because of possible danger to her.

 

But Moya-Raggio urged everyone to write to the Ministry of Interior in Chile to demand an honest investigation of the incident.'These things happen every day," she said,"but it is only now when a U.S. resident has been killed that the U.S. press is interested in it." Yet the tragic death of Rojas could be a way to bring all the other atrocities to light.

 

Send letters to Ministerio del Interior, Santiago, Chilé. The letters can be in English.

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