RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – President Jair Bolsonaro’s statements about the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, and her father, General Alberto Bachelet, who died because of the torture suffered during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990), were rejected by leaders of the country’s main political parties.
Congressmen and senators from the left, center and right questioned what they considered an attack on the former Chilean president (2006-2010 and 2014-2018) and a use by Bolsonaro of Chile’s history “for internal political purposes”.
Chilean Senate President Jaime Quintana rejected Jair Bolsonaro’s attack and said that this “attacks the memory of Chileans”. The president of the Senate also said that Bolsonaro’s monstrous attack “should provoke a transversal and forceful repudiation of all Chilean political sectors”.
Quintana also said that “Bolsonaro is isolating himself from multi-lateral relations and is not up to the task of a head of state in any country in the world”.
The parliamentarian demanded a firm stance from the country’s president, Sebastián Piñera, an ally of Bolsonaro.
Jair Bolsonaro assaulted Bachelet, Chile’s two-time president (2006-10 and 2014-18) after she also granted a press conference in Geneva on Wednesday at which, when asked about Brazil, she said that the “democratic space” in the country is diminishing and expressed concern for the state of human rights in Chile.
Bolsonaro reacted with a post on Facebook praising the fact that the former president’s father, Brigadier General Alberto Bachelet, was arrested and barbarously tortured by the Pinochet regime, dying in 1974 as a result of the violence suffered in prison.
Bolsonaro wrote that “his country [Chile] is not a Cuba thanks only to those who had the courage to halt the left in 1973, among these communists was her father, a brigadier at the time.” Quintana said the human rights and foreign relations commissions of the Chilean Senate are expected to issue official notes today and that he expects “an energetic reaction” from Piñera and the Chancellor “to what is an aggression against all Chileans”.