Daily Times

Víctor Lidio Jara Martínez was born in a poor peasant family near Santiago on September 28, 1932. Manuel Jara, his father, abandoned the family but his mother, Amanda Martínez, a self-taught folk musician, educated her children and endowed them with love for humanity. Jara’s mother died when he was 15 and after dabbling with a few things ended up as an exemplary teacher, theatre director, poet, singer-songwriter, political activist and member of the Communist Party of Chile. He supported the Unidad Popular (‘Popular Unity’) coalition candidate Salvador Allende for the Chilean presidency in 1970 and campaigned by volunteering for political work and free concerts. Allende won but his pro-people policies irked the United States, which went all out to oust him, and eventually its quisling, the Chilean army chief Augusto Pinochet, toppled Allende who did not surrender and died fighting.

Jara was among the first to be rounded up on September 12, 1973 along with thousands others and taken as a prisoner to the Chile Stadium. It was later renamed Estadio Víctor Jara Stadium, as the Pinochet regime knew the power that music had in Chile because of its long tradition of folklore and folk music, especially when its proponent Jara was a dedicated revolutionary who believed that “Song is like the water that washes the stones, the wind that cleans us, like the fire that joins us together and it lives within us to make us better people.” There they were brutally beaten and tortured; Jara was singled out because of his beliefs and his influence. His hands were crushed and then he was tauntingly asked to play the guitar. He defiantly sang Venceremos (“We Will Win”). Beaten brutally again, he was then machine gunned and dumped in Santiago’ outskirts; his body had 44 bullet wounds. In Balochistan, when the body of Sana Sangat Baloch was found after he was kidnapped by the Pakistani intelligence agencies, there were 28 bullets wounds on his body. Jalil Reki, son of Mama Qadeer, had three bullets in his heart.

Carmen Quintana, an18-year-old who opposed Pinochet’s rule, on July 2, 1986 was part of a small group preparing a protest barricade when suddenly an army patrol swooped on them. Only she and Rodrigo Rojas DeNegri were caught. The soldiers commanded by Lieutenant Pedro Fernández Dittus poured kerosene on them. She thought they were trying to frighten them, but a soldier threw a Molotov cocktail near them and both were engulfed by flames; they desperately rolled on the ground to douse the flames. Before she lost consciousness someone rolled her up in a blanket and threw her in a truck. On regaining consciousness she found herself and DeNegri in a ditch on the highway. A police patrol saw them and took them to hospital. Denegri died but Quintana survived.

Shockingly, in January 1991, a military tribunal found Fernández Dittus guilty of negligence for failing to get medical help for DeNegri but cleared him of any responsibility for burning Quintana. Then in 1993 the Chilean Supreme Court sentenced Dittus to 600 days in prison for his responsibility for the death of DeNegri and causing serious burns to Quintana. Only 600 days for a crime of this magnitude. Establishments with unbridled power soon turn into criminal enterprises and their institutions into criminal gangs. Recently, the naval intelligence, the smallest and weakest in its class, was found involved in kidnapping for ransom in Karachi; it is terrifying to imagine what the most powerful ones would be up to.

Victor Jara, Sana Sangat, Jalil Reki, Zaman Khan Marri, Faiz Mohammad Marri, his brother Khudadad, Mohammad Khan Marri, his brother Mohammad Nabi, Ali Sher Kurd and hundreds of others have been killed here as were in Chile by the establishment. They paid the ultimate price but remained unbowed despite the horrendous brutality unleashed on them to break their resolve and make them accept the injustices and untruths that the army and establishment consider sacrosanct. The 44 bullets in Victor Jara, the 28 bullets in Sana Sangat, the three bullets in the heart of Jalil Reki and the tortured-beyond-recognition bodies of the Baloch activists are the irrefutable testimony of their brave and unflinching defiance of their adversaries and also the abject admission of their frustrated torturers that they failed to break the defiant spirit of these valiant souls.

William Ernest Henley’s (1849-1903) poem Invictus vividly captures the defiant human spirit and I quote it again as a tribute to and as the voice of those brave souls who suffered and still suffer at the hands of their torturers at the behest of governments more concerned with the commercial benefits and profits of their cronies and conniving countries.

Out of the night that covers me/Black as the pit from pole to pole/I thank whatever gods may be/For my unconquerable soul/In the fell clutch of circumstance/I have not winced nor cried aloud/Under the bludgeonings of chance/My head is bloody, but unbowed/Beyond this place of wrath and tears/Looms but the Horror of the shade/And yet the menace of the years/Finds, and shall find, me unafraid/It matters not how strait the gate/How charged with punishments the scroll/I am the master of my fate/I am the captain of my soul.

It is this unconquerable spirit of the abducted and tortured prisoners that the torturers and their masters wish to subdue. Unable to break the resolve of these brave committed persons they resort to killing them brutally hoping to make them an example for the intimidation of others but find more and more people emulating their deceased comrades in spirit and actions and joining the fight for truth and justice. Victor Jara’s last poem One Humanity is equally inspiring for all those who like him refuse to bow to injustices.

The dead have been mentioned, the missing should be remembered too. Zakir Majeed, Ali Khan Marri, Asghar Bangulzai, the doctors Din Mohammad, Akbar Marri and thousands of other missing Baloch presumably alive and still in the clutches of their tormentors who are capable of doing what they did to Jara, Sana and Jalil. When states become psychopathic in pursuit of their goals their functionaries strive to outdo them and therefore Carmen Quintanas are set on fire and Sanas have 28 bullets in their bodies. One day these heroic martyrs who defied the might and brutality of the state will be deservedly honoured by their people.

The writer has an association with the Baloch rights movement going back to the early 1970s. He tweets at mmatalpur and can be contacted at mmatalpur@gmail.com