Gael Garcia Bernal backs Amnesty's call for an end to impunity

The film star Gael Garcia Bernal has backed Amnesty International’s call for an end to impunity for human rights abuses in South America.

Gael García Bernal stars in the Oscar-nominated film ‘No’, which documents the fall of the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. Gael Garcia Bernal stars as René Saavedra, an advertising executive who devised the campaign that brought democracy to the South American country in 1988.

The film premiered in the UK yesterday.

Gael Garcia Bernal said:

“There is a lack of justice still. Pinochet, for example, never went into a court house. He was never tried. He died with millions of dollars in a United States bank account.

“But he is just one of the many reasons why the issues raised in the film remain relevant today.”

The character René Saavedra is loosely based on the real-life advertising executive Eugenio García who joined Gael Garcia Bernal earlier this week to pose for photographs.

Chile, like a large number of South American countries, has yet to fully address the human rights abuses committed during the 1970s and 80s, with a majority of those responsible still to face justice.

In 1973 General Pinochet led a bloody coup that overthrew the democratically-elected government of President Salvador Allende. During his 17-year rule, Amnesty International believes 1,100 people were forcibly disappeared, more than 2,000 were unlawfully killed and several thousands were tortured by the military forces.