Chilean lawmakers on Thursday observed a minute of silence to pay tribute to the five police escorts who died in a failed attack targeting former dictator Augusto Pinochet 30 years ago—while rejecting a request to pay tribute to the communists the dictatorship killed that same day.
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With the exception of communist, socialist, democratic and independent lawmakers who boycotted the tribute, Chilean lawmakers remained silent during the first minute of the parliamentary session.
This is the first time in 30 years the policemen have received such tribute, proposed by a political ally of General Augusto Pinochet, right-wing lawmaker Ignacio Urrutia from the Independent Democratic Union.
“Today, it's been 30 years since my General Pinochet has been attacked, when give escorts died. All his murderers are free, including the mastermind who is here inside,” said Urrutia, about 20 minutes after the session started on Wednesday.
He was referring to communist lawmaker Guillermo Teillier, military chief of the guerrilla group FPMR, who acknowledged in an interview that he, among other leaders, allowed the attack to go forward without being aware of the operational details.
The tribute was supported by former left-wing student leader Gabriel Boric, heavily criticized within his own ranks. He justified his decision saying “it would be petty to deny him the possibility of holding a minute of silence for five dead policemen—none of them linked to human rights abuses.”
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“Human rights, as well as the sorrow of the relatives for the death of a beloved being, do not have color or ideology,” Boric added in a Facebook post in response to the attacks.
Lower chamber President Osvaldo Andrade, a socialist, asked commissioners to unanimously vote in favor of a one-minute silence to pay tribute to two communist activists and two leaders of the Revolutionary Left Movement, MIR, who also died on the day of Pinochet's attack.
The commissioners first refused, but in a post on social media Teillier said “the tribute will take place next Monday in the chamber, despite right-wing opposition."
Pinochet's grandson thanked Urrutia for having requested the tribute for the dictator's police escorts, in a letter sent to El Mercurio—a newspaper linked to Pinochet's coup in Sept. 1973.