The Chilean Coup D’état of 1973

There can be no doubt that outrageous acts of atrocity were committed during the September 11, 1973 military coup d’état, which effectively overthrew the democratically elected government of Chile, and replaced it with a military Junta that would eventually be headed by the, then newly appointed, Army Commander-in-chief General Augusto Pinochet. After the military had taken control, the ousted president Salvador Allende was dead, and the military began collecting people they perceived to be dissidents, leftists, or supporters Allende. People were isolated in camps, systematically tortured, and murdered under Pinochet and his military dictatorship. In an effort to establish genocide as a crime, The UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the crime of Genocide (UNCG) established a working definition for the word “genocide.” According to Article 2, genocide is defined: any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

a. Killing members of the group;

b. Causing serious bodily harm to members of the group;

c. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical description in whole or in part;

d. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

e. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Within the context of the 1973 military coup d’état in Chile, it is clear that the Junta, headed by Pinochet, detained people without just cause, holding them for sustained periods of time, and subjecting them to poor physical conditions, under severe psychological pressures in order to flush out potential opposition. Therefore it is quite clear that the Junta intentiona...

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