What decent heart did not pause to murmur a brief cheer at the arrest of General Augusto Pinochet in a London hospital? The idea of those old bones of his proceeding untroubled to a quiet end is almost too unbearable for words. He - with much assistance from the CIA and Pepsi-Cola - overthrew a democratically-elected regime, and as if that were not bad enough, inaugurated a systematic campaign of abduction, torture and murder amongst the Chilean intelligentsia and trade unions. Perhaps no developed and enduring democracy - which is what Chile had been for a century - has in world history ever been so rapidly and brutally ravished as it was under Pinochet's unspeakable lieutenants.
No doubt the policies of the overthrown President Allende were wrong, foolish, even insane; the opportunity to alter them would have come at election time. There is no excuse, ever, for taking up arms against a democracy. And once Pinochet had overthrown the rule of democracy, the destruction of human rights was not merely inevitable but, from the point of view of his junta, necessary. To have people freely condemning a dictatorship is the most fundamental denial of the principles of dictatorship; what other response is available to dictators but lawlessness, violence, oppression? To expect tolerant disapproval from a dictator is to expect an iron foundry to produce a string quartet.
Democratic triumph
The heart demands retribution; but what the heart wants need not be right. The greatest moment in this country's history did not come in 1916, 1921 or 1922. The date which towers over all others, which constitutes a triumph of the rule of law over the impulses of the heart, is that day in 1932 when the Cumann na nGaedheal government yielded power to the very people whose colleagues they had been executing with such abandon ten years before. Authority and law passed in a single moment between sworn and bitter adversaries, and civilisation was upheld.
How many hearts within Fianna Fail yearned for revenge for the 77 official executions, never mind the hastily improvised roadside firing squads? How many hearts in the departing government wanted to keep power over the state from those had opposed the creation of that state by force of arms and in doing so reduced it to penury? How many on either side had blood scores to settle? Yet in a heroic and common feat of discipline and attendance to the rule of law, the two factions adhered to the revived constitutional traditions which had been so brutally shattered over years of war.
As in Ireland in 1932, so in London in 1998; it comes down the rule of law, not the heart. My heart wants to see Pinochet rot in prison cell. However, General Pinochet arrived in Britain for medical treatment on a diplomatic passport granted to him by the democratically elected Chilean government. If that passport has no diplomatic validity, then it should not have been accepted by the British authorities. It was accepted, and therefore he should continue to enjoy diplomatic protection.
Non-negotiable deal
It is more than just a question of international law; it is also a question of Chilean law, which gives him protection similar to that enjoyed by terrorists being released day and daily in the North. That is part of our agreement, as Pinochet's immunity is part of the internal Chilean accord; and as our stomachs churn while we watch the release from jail of those men who strolled into a bar, saw the faces of the revellers they were going to kill, then carefully planted a bomb to cause maximum carnage to those blameless innocents, so the stomachs of democrats must churn when they see a vile man like Pinochet walk free.
But those are the terms of the Chilean peace deal, and they must be adhered to; only moral vanity and egotistical conceit justifies outsiders intruding into that deal and declaring that certain deaths - in this case Spanish deaths -are outside the agreement. The agreement is the agreement is the agreement. That is it. And just as the terms the leaders struck on Good Friday are non-negotiable and binding, so the terms of the Chilean deal are non-negotiable and binding.
The world is an unjust place, and there can never be proper atonement for the dead of war, or justice for the victims of the torture chamber. Those who planned Bloody Friday, or the abduction, murder and secret burial of people like Seamus Wright and Kevin McKee in Belfast in 1972, are now respected in high places, just as Chilean army officers responsible for atrocities at about the same time hold senior positions today in their army.
Imperfect solutions
We are necessarily talking about imperfect solutions; and in imperfect solutions, such as ours in the North or such as Chile's, the sole atonement for the dead and the justice for the tortured is that the firing squads have been demobilised and the torturer's electrodes have been disconnected. Is it such poor compensation to know the rule of gun and truncheon has been replaced by one in which there is a predictable and understood rule of law, beyond interference by armies or secret police or special pleading?
That said, Pinochet is a barbarian who deserves to fry in hell. Whether or not he does is, of course, up to others to decide. Democrats simply should not pay him the honour of emulating his disregard of law.