Letter: Pinochet arrest

Thursday 22 October 1998 23:02 BST

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Letter:

Pinochet arrest

Sir: The Independent is not prepared to forgive General Pinochet (Leading article, 19 October), even knowing he has installed a perfect democratic order and organised a flourishing economy. Then demand the arrest of another former autocrat - Mikhail Gorbachev - as soon as he enters a European country. He is responsible for the bloody suppression of liberation movements in Georgia, Azerbaijan and Lithuania, and for four years of war in Afghanistan where millions (not 3,000 like in Chile) died.

The expression of horror and compassion about perished Spaniards and Chileans exceed immeasurably any emotions concerning monstrous atrocities committed in the USSR, Hungary, China, Cambodia etc.

Does it mean that the butchers there, unlike Pinochet, were led by a correct ideology? Or are the lives of Westerners more important than of the Russian and Chinese?

OLEG GORDIEVSKY

London WC2

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