Reply on, torture in Chile

Sir Frederick Mason's letter (January 23) commenting on the situation in Chile as depicted by Dr Sheila Cassidy seriously confuses the essential issues.
Neither the virtues nor the failings of Salvador Allende's government are now at issue. What is a fact — and Dr Cassidy's testimony only confirms previous evidence — is that the military Junta constantly and systematically violates human rights.
Not only Marxist revolutionaries but all democrats are liable to arrest and torture, Torture has become the norm. Nut the exception.
Amnesty International and other human rights organisations are in a position to document this — and have done so — as convincingly as the deprivation of human rights in the USSR.
All this happens against a background of poverty and near starvation for many which is infinitely worse than anything during the Allende period. Even many middle class Chileans are beginning to wonder whether they have not made a tragic mistake.
The harming of the Chile Committee for Peace, headed by the Cardinal Archbishop of Santiago; and concerned solely with humanitarian aid to prisoners and the poor, is a clear enough symptom of dictatorship at its worst.
Sir Frederick smears Dr Cassidy by implication for treating a wounded guerrilla. She did no more than any doctor worthy of the medical profession would have done for any wounded man, in any conflict. The Vatican's diplomatic mission gave him asylum and he is now about to leave Chile. Had Dr Cassidy not treated him, he would probably now be dead.
It is not the Junta that is today "picking up the pieces" — as Sir Frederick contends but those who, at great cost to themselves, work for the restoration of human rights to the Chilean people.
Rev Paul Oestreicher, ChairmanAmnesty International (British Section) 40 Dartmouth Row, London SEW It is disturbing to find so distinguished a former diplomat as Sir Frederick Mason making an apologia for the Chilean Junta, His attitude to the case of Dr Sheila Cassidy seems, to put it at its mildest, disingenuous. Can Sir Frederick really think, as he implies he thinks, that there is equal validity in the personal evidence of torture given by a British surgeon and accepted by a British Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office on the one hand and on the other, the denials issued by a discredited regime, whose sad record on human rights has been condemned by civilised people in the Church, the United Nations and a number of international agencies, from the International labour Organisation to Amnesty International?
As to his application of recent! Chilean history, I would submit that the record of the Christian Democrats, which he so admires, was hardly an outstanding one. I feel that the results of the 1970 Presidential Election, where the Christian Democratic candidates did very badly, showed that the Chilean electorate was very disappointed with that party.
The performance of Allende too was often disappointing, but Sir Frederick, in his criticisms of him, does not mention that this constitutionally elected leader was the victim of a covert economic and political war waged on him by a powerful foreign country.
Sir Frederick says that the military junta is now "picking up the pieces" in Chile. If he feels that the welfare of the people of Chile is improving under the present administration, may I suggest he asks himself why the Churches have, under General Pinochet, had to set up 600 soup kitchens to save children from starvation, a move they never had to make during the previous Government.
Hugh O'Shaughnessy 10 Northampton Park, London NI.