an inescapable reality
While he said the principal act of "moral reparation" was the publication of the report itself, Mr Lagos accepted the commission's recommendations of a life pension for every victim of torture.
"The state must pay compensation, however austere, as a way of recognising its responsibility," he said.
He will send a bill to Congress that will also seek free education and healthcare for victims and their families. The Valech commission believes it heard 28,000 genuine accounts of torture.
The pensions would be worth 112,000 Chilean pesos a month, about 100 pounds, around half the average income, and would cost the state about 36m pounds a year.
There are fears that a glut of claims could be a drain on the budget. The education minister, Sergio Bitar, the youngest member of the Allende government when it fell in the 1973 coup and who was later tortured in a concentration camp, yesterday passed up his pension entitlement and called on others who were financially secure to do the same.
[...]
Like collective responsibility in post-war Germany or the truth commission in post-apartheid South Africa, the Valech report offers a chance for Chileans to come to terms with the darkest chapter of their recent history.
Last month, Chile's most senior soldier, General Juan Emilio Cheyre, issued an "institutional" admission of guilt for offences by the army.
That gesture and the Valech report give the lie to what has for 30 years been the line taken by everyone from Gen Pinochet down: that abuses were the work of a handful of renegade officers.
Members of Chile's right-wing political parties are holding firm in their decision not to apologize for their part in human rights abuses during the Pinochet dictatorship, following the publication Monday of the Valech torture report.
Jovino Novoa, who served under Pinochet from 1979 to 1982 and is now the leader of the opposition Independent Democratic Union, said Monday the civilians who participated in good faith in the military government have nothing to be ashamed of and should not apologize.
Tom Burgis/SantiagoTimes 30.Nov.04
