Michel Bachelet was born in Santiago, the capital of Chile, in 1951. Her father was a senior general in the Chilean Air Force. When she was a child, because her father needed to work at different air bases across the country, she and her family often moved. When his father was sent to the Chilean mission in Washington, the family moved to Washington. These experiences have taught Bachelet to appreciate and respect diversity from an early age.
Bachelet: “My father is a great father. He often plays with us. Parents encourage us to read and listen to classic music. At home, during lunch or dinner, and on weekends, we will discuss many different things. Very interesting things for our age, as well as cultural issues. I will also hear the current politics, or major events in the world, among adults. We are a middle-class family, and later my parents decided that I should keep going Public schools. This gave me a very interesting perspective, because some of my classmates come from middle- and high-income families, and some of my friends’ father is a construction worker. Take public transportation. Public schools need to wear uniforms, so no one can be different. These make me feel the importance of democracy. The most interesting part of the school is that I can choose sports, join an orchestra, I play guitar, and play basketball. And volleyball. Therefore, as a student in a public school, I can not only obtain the knowledge provided by formal education, but also social education and knowledge.”
Bachelet’s mother has long served as the head of finance and administration at the National University of Chile. As a thoughtful professional woman, her mother decided to retire early when she was 40 years old and began studying architecture before becoming an architect. She always encourages Bachelet and his brother to do what they want in life.
Bachelet: “My mother is indeed a progressive woman. When I was a teenager, one day when we were talking, she said, Michelle, you don’t need to be a mother, and you don’t have to be married, do Mother, give birth. You must do what you want to do in life, but no matter what you do, you must do well. In order to achieve this goal, you need to be a good student and study hard so that you can get you Want. Of course, she also said that if you want to get married and want children, of course you can, but this is not your destiny, women can create and establish their own destiny, and you can do it. Mother’s words It is very clear to me that she has been working herself. My parents were very progressive at the time.”
Bachelet later entered the National University of Chile. She loves natural sciences, but also social sciences, and did not determine her major at the beginning. Later, her boyfriend’s severe toothache triggered her to study medicine. Of course, she did not study medicine specifically to treat toothaches.
Bachelet: “It was a weekend and there was no dentist around, so I took my boyfriend to the biggest emergency hospital, where there is also a dental emergency. We stood there and waited for a few hours… I said, I think Become a doctor to change this reality. A painful person cannot wait so many hours without getting treatment because the staff is overwhelmed by so many patients. At that moment, I never thought about me. I will become the Minister of Health, but at the time I thought, I want to change this. I have to do something. The people do not have the right to health. This is unacceptable. This is what really triggered my decision to study medicine.”
At that time, in the early 1970s, Chile’s Allende government was overthrown in a military coup. Like the fate of many Chileans, the lives of Bachelet and his family were “turned upside down.”
Bachelet: “My father was put in prison. In the last year of the Salvador Allende government, the political situation was so unstable that he asked the armed forces to provide some generals to help the government solve certain problems. , Such as lack of food. My father was asked to be the head of this office. His task was to obtain various products from meat to cigarettes and distribute them to everyone. My father had to solve this problem and had to solve the queuing problem. Because there are few things, people have to line up to buy things in the supermarket. Therefore, my father is considered an ally of the government, and they know that my father is a progressive man. He does not agree with the coup, he believes that the president is democratically elected. It’s up to the people to decide whether the president will continue in power, not the armed forces to decide through a coup. So they put him in jail, and he was detained for nearly a year. He was tortured in different ways, psychologically, and also Physically. They isolated him and put a gun near his bed so that he could commit suicide. Of course, he didn’t do that. Later, they sent him back to a public prison.”
During the more than a year when his father was imprisoned, he was able to visit once a week, and Bachelet and his mother often went to the prison to visit his father.
Bachelet: “At that time I was 21 or 2 years old and was studying medicine. We wanted to see him as long as we were free. But that was painful because no one knew what would happen. Many people in prison suddenly Disappeared, they should be dead. We don’t know what will happen. Some governments in other countries asked the military government to release my father and let him go to neighboring countries, but they didn’t succeed. On the other hand, in universities, many doctors and The professors left Chile. They opposed the military government. They were either expelled from the university or harassed. Others were very tough and supported the military government. Many of them knew that my father was in prison and bullied me many times. When speaking in class, another person would say’Bachelet, don’t speak’, but I did not speak, and then I was silent. There are many such stupid little harassments, but for a young girl, it is very unremarkable Comfortable. And you know that they can put you in jail all the time because of what you are doing, the way you think or the way you talk. So, it’s a lot of pressure. But in the end, I always think I’m very lucky. , Because I’m still alive. Many of my friends have been killed or missing, and we never know their whereabouts. So I think I’m having a hard time, but some other people’s situation is much worse.”
Bachelet’s father suffered a heart attack in prison and died because he did not receive adequate medical treatment. He was only fifty years old.
Bachelet and his mother were also put in a secret prison. For two weeks, they were locked up in a place called Villa Grimaldi.
Bachelet: “They locked my mother in one place and locked me in another room where there were other women and we were all blindfolded. I saw some terrible things there. Myself I have not encountered the worst situation. Some people come back from the shock room, the situation is very bad, there are women who have been raped, etc. When people are in the same situation, there will be a kind of solidarity and mutual help. People who have been shocked many times Women will say, I’m thirsty, I’m thirsty. Other women will say, no, you can’t drink water yet, you have to wait until the electricity in your body disappears, otherwise, you will have one or another consequence. Then One day, the only day, a guard told me that your mother is okay. Then, he said, I am the Air Force. I said, can you give her a cigarette, because my mother, if she doesn’t smoke, she will be very painful . Later he said to me, I gave her the cigarette; she is fine, she said hello. This is very interesting. In many cases, there are villains, but there are also good people.”
Since Bachelet had an uncle who was still a general in the Air Force at that time, he gave Bachelet’s mother and daughter a kind of protection to a certain extent, protecting them from torture in secret prisons. Two weeks later, Bachelet was released “suddenly”, and soon after hard work, his mother was also released. They were then allowed to travel to Australia to reunite with their older brothers there.
Soon after, Bachelet went to East Germany at the time and continued to study medicine there, where he met her husband who was also Chilean. They got married and gave birth to their first child in East Germany. Because East Germany broke off diplomatic relations with Chile at that time, their son was unable to register at the Chilean embassy and became stateless. When his son was 8 months old, Bachelet and his family returned to Chile.
MONUSCO
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Bachelet addressed the Congolese media during his visit to Ituri, Democratic Republic of the Congo (file photo).
Bachelet: “This is my country. My people are suffering. I have to do what I should do. This is not my motto. The word responsibility has been in my bottle from the beginning. For me , It’s hard to think about myself first. I know that Chile needs me, and I must be there. There are many people who have not gone back, and I know there are risks in going back, but I have always thought that so many people die for democracy and freedom, of course I I don’t want to die, but I can’t stay abroad, I can’t stay at home ignorantly. I need to do something to somehow become the voice of the silent.”
After Pinochet came to power through a military coup, he ruled Chile for 17 years, including the democratic transition period from 1981 to 1990. It was not until 1990 that Elwin became president through elections that Chile returned to democracy.
After Bachelet returned to Chile in 1979, her studies in East Germany were not recognized. She had to continue her medical studies at the National University of Chile, and then received a scholarship to study pediatrics and public health. After graduation, due to the so-called political background, her career path as a doctor did not go smoothly, so she worked for a foundation that specializes in treating children injured in a national emergency.
In 1990, Bachelet joined the Ministry of Health as a general doctor. Ten years later, she was appointed Minister of Health. But at that time she had already conducted in-depth research on the military. Two years later, she was appointed Minister of Defense, becoming the first female Minister of Defense in Latin American history. In 2005, Bachelet won the presidential election as a candidate of the Socialist Party and became the first female president of Chile.
Bachelet: “We have worked hard to solve the inequality problem in Chile, and we have done a lot of work to improve or expand social and economic rights. We work hard to allow the country to continue to develop, but people can share the prosperity of the economy instead of letting prosperity be Enjoyed by a few people. We created the National Institute of Human Rights and the Museum of Memory and Human Rights to tell the children what happened in Chile with a large number of pictures provided by victims and family members. Now, our responsibility is to never return to this. The past. We may not be fully responsible for the past, but we have to be responsible for the future.”
UN Photo/Kim Haughton
UN Secretary-General Guterres (right) and UN Human Rights Commissioner Bachelet (middle) attend an event focusing on promoting economic development through women’s empowerment.
Six months after the end of the first presidential term, Bachelet accepted the appointment of the then UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to lead the newly formed UN Women as the executive director. In 2013, Bachelet returned to China again to participate in the election and was re-elected as president with a higher vote rate than in the first election. After resigning in 2018, Secretary-General Guterres appointed Bachelet to the important post of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.
Bachelet: “The experience of my life has helped me get to where I am now, to better understand how the world works, and to better understand the importance of human rights. Human rights are in my heart and in my life. I Not only is the task of condemning and becoming the voice of the silent, I also need to involve member states to ensure that they truly believe that they need to play an important role in protecting, promoting and ensuring human rights. But every country’s situation is different. It does not mean that you need to change the substance of the discourse, but to adjust in a meaningful way, because there are too many stigmatizations, stereotypes, and prejudices in many decisions, or simply don’t think that human rights are one thing. An important thing. Some countries say that human rights are a Western invention. Of course, this is not a Western invention. I always say that any mother anywhere in the world wants her children to be safe, warm and have food.”
Huang Liling reports from the United Nations Headquarters in New York.