My appreciation of democracy, my will to fight for human rights


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South America » Chile » Santiago Region » Providencia
February 1st 2015
Published: February 16th 2015
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After visiting the Human Rights Museum I’m stunned by the live footage I’ve seen of the events unfolding on September 11th1973, the day the government buildings were bombed. I saw tanks shooting at the palace, General Pinochet taking 20 of Salvador Allende’s friends out of the palace and shooting each one of them, Pinochet’s speech to the nation announcing the end of the socialist government and Salvador Allende’s speech apologising to the nation for letting them down and also announcing the end of the government whilst bombs could be heard going off in the background.Soon after the bombings started Salvador Allende took his life with a rifle whilst the palace was burning. Seeing the footage of what happened during the ten years under the dictatorship was even more disturbing, worse than anything I’d ever seen in WW2 films.

The truth is I had no idea what a military dictatorship would be like and even less idea that most of the South American countries around the time of the Cold War had been through military dictatorships. I cannot imagine what it would be like for our country if the British army turned on David Cameron, and David Cameron came on the radio one morning ( radio stations) which were slowly becoming propaganda sites for the army and said ‘I’m sorry, I’ve done my best to rule the country but now I must hand it over to the military, Britain is now under complete control of the army and the police, 3,000 people opposing the new regime will go missing and never be found, 45,000 people will be imprisoned and tortured, anybody on the street after 9pm will be shot and you will now be ruled by a dictator who has not been democratically elected.'

I would be terrified.

If I take one thing from this trip it will be an appreciation for having a democratically elected government, the knowledge that I live in a country where we have a strong recognition of human rights, the fight for justice and equality which generally most European countries share. From now on I will always vote and in my day to day life back in the UK I will be looking to preserve human rights in any small ways I can and speak out when they are been violated. I won’t wait until a human rights violation affects me until I act, I’ll start now in small, peaceful ways of fighting inequality –perhaps doing something as simple as being assertive at work or standing up for somebody. It's through people not speaking out that people lose their human rights- although I'm not armed with all the facts I’m convinced that’s how Pinochet was able to force himself on the country and I now fear that some of Cameron’s small little bills that he passes through parliament for example ‘the signing of zero hour contracts for workers’ which people accept and don’t speak out against until it affects them could be the UK's equivalent of the beginning of Pinochet’s 10 year dictatorship

I think we should fight just as much for freedom of expression. When I heard about all the books in Chile being burned under the dictatorship I felt angry, but when it was suggested to me that this might be the reason that Chile doesn’t produce books and that this has left a whole generation illiterate I was furious. On the contrary look how the French government have responded to that awful terrorist attack on the ‘Je suis Charlie’ cartoonists, they have printed more copies to emphasise the importance of freedom of speech instead of closing the magazine down. It makes me proud that people in Europe have the courage to a. recognise the importance of freedom of speech and b. protect it.

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