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Thousands of young people of our generation, including those of us who studied law school at the University of Chile, participated in many ways in the fight against the military dictatorship.
Our resistance was not to impose another dictatorship to silence those who silenced us, to repress those who repressed us. Our fight was for freedom.
I saw the video where it was happening and they tried to silence Sergio Micco. I must say that he initially made me a little embarrassed and then a little angry, but at no time did I stop disagreeing with what was being done.
The words and actions of the person who directed the National Institute of Human Rights can and should be the subject of criticism. In fact, in the midst of a popular uprising, this person refused to recognize the widespread and systematic nature of human rights violations, thereby protecting the then president from obvious legal responsibilities.
These days he goes further and formulates opinions that tend to justify the bizarre theories that during 2019 there was an attempted coup d’état. The only thing left for Mr. Micco to say was that this came from the Cuban and/or Venezuelan intelligence services.
It must be denied and refuted. But another thing, quite another thing, is to try to silence him and throw him from law school to the University of Chile through de facto means.
Even worse is that some political organizations try to justify this and that the dean of the law school issues an ambiguous statement trying to lower the profile of a situation that is serious.
It is possible that authorities who in their youth did nothing against the military dictatorship out of fear or because they intimately justified it may not seem serious, but to those of us who fight in some cases with all forms of struggle this seems very serious.
I still remember a day of street propaganda that a group of law students carried out in Pudahuel, even having the means to resist the henchmen of the dictatorship.
Young people participated there who would later even become ministers of state, but we did not risk our lives to install another dictatorship, to install other censors, to install other arrogant people. We were willing to die, and I am not exaggerating, for freedom.
As the great German revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg said and wrote, freedom of expression, which is an essential part of the left, is the freedom of the other, it is the freedom to listen to what you don’t like.
Rosa Luxemburg died fighting for these libertarian ideas.
At the beginning of the 90s I was occasionally at the Law School of the University of Chile when José Piñera arrived there with the purpose of speaking to the students who outright rejected him. I called on the young people not to kick him out and to go to a room to discuss ideas and that’s how it was done.
We went to room 4, which was filled shortly. There I started telling them that this moment was a great day for democracy because 12 years ago he had arrived at that same school as Minister of Labor to try to convince us of the benefits of the Labor Plan. and that on that occasion he was accompanied by a large group of thugs from the National Information Center and that he did not accept questions. I added that the young students with his democratic tolerance were giving him a great lesson; They were going to listen to him respectfully, something he had not done with my generation a decade ago.
The room shook with a standing ovation and then Mr. Piñera explained the supposed benefits and flattery of the neoliberal model that he intended to deepen as president of the republic. The young people listened to him respectfully and refuted him in the same way. That’s how Don José Piñera left with his tail between his legs.
You had to listen to and respect Don Sergio Micco for a matter of principles. But it was also necessary to confront him about his conduct as a public figure that, far from promoting Human Rights, in practice helps them to be violated. But it had to be done respectfully and within the framework of democratic dialogue. It was very easy to do and Micco would have been in serious trouble.
I want to take Rosa Luxemburg’s libertarian opinions further and say, perhaps with Bertold Brecht looking at me, that if today we silence by deed those who do not think with us, sooner or later others will silence us.
By Roberto Avila Toledo
The opinions expressed in this section are the responsibility of the author and do not necessarily represent the thoughts of the newspaper El Clarín
