Chil Two Utal Repression

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On the second anniversary of the military coup in Chile General Pinochet's regime announced a number of measures 'easing' the dictatorship -all of them shallow frauds aimed at making international support for the junta easier for foreign governments.

A 'consultative' council of state is proposed - not elected and without powers - on which three former presidents have been invited to sit. They include Eduardo Frei, Christian Democratic president fron 1964-70.

Pinochet also claimed that political prisoners will in the future be tried before civilian, not military courts. But the state of emergency remains in forçe, meetings, strikes and demonstrations are banned.

One figure stands out, underlining the international character of the Chilean defeat. US sales of arms to Chile totalled $ 68 millions in the year up to September 1974, compared with S65 millions in the twenty-two years from 1950 to 1972: In 1975 the military budget was twenty per cent higher than the health and education budgets combined.

Pinochet's junta bases itself on the most brutal and systematic repression of the working class and peasants, carried out with a huge volume of weaponry supplied by American imperialism and other capitalist governments - including Britain and France.

What are the economic results of the junta? Most wages are Fixed by • decree, while prices are Political prisoners under guard in Sa illowed to race forward unchecked. Official figures put the rate of nflation during 1974 at over 370 per cent (that is, almost a quadupling of the price level): the World Bank estimated it at 600 ver cent.

For millions this has meant extreme poverty, in many cases to he verge of starvation. Most forms of basic medical care are out of the reach of workers, with the price of medical supplies and drugs (many inobtainable except on the black market) shooting up fifty-fold in less than two years. And at least one in seven Chilean workers are unemployed.

ARRESTS

The political repression spearheaded by the political police DINA - continues unchecked since the coup of September 11th, 1973. A decree of May this year promising access to arrested persons within forty-eight hours, has remained a urau teller, and ine junta was even dood lattar nad thai. forced to refuse a visit in July by a United Nations commission on human rights.

A recent report by 'Amnesty International' identified a number of houses, barracks and other military premises in Santiago and Valparaise which have been specially equipped as centres for torture. The methods generally used include beatings, forcing victims to stand for days on end, electric shocks to the genitals, isolation and deprivation of sleep and food for long periods. Small children are tortured in front of their parents' eyes.

The regime officially admits to holding over four thousand political prisoners; the true figure is many times this. The 'Amnesty' report states that it has checked the names of over two thousand persons who have 'disappeared' since the coup, relatives.

Pinochet's dictatorship is the bitter price paid by the Chilean intiago football stadium working class for the Popular Front policies of Stalinism, which refused to break with the military officers even as they were preparing the coup.

A number of Stalinist governments continue to bolster Pinochet - Rumania and China, for example, continuing not only diplomatic relations but trade: even when the blood on the dictatorship's hands has forced a number of capitalist governments to break off diplomatic relations.

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and on whom the regime refuses to provide any information to