CHILE:Hecklers shouted over the sound of choirs at the funeral yesterday of Augusto Pinochet, the former Chilean dictator whose repressive rule from 1973 to 1990 made him infamous around the world for human rights abuses.
Some 3,000 relatives, friends and top Chilean military officers packed a courtyard in the grounds of a military college in Santiago to pay their respects to a man who continues to polarise Chilean public opinion, even in death.
The centre-left government denied Pinochet, who died on Sunday at the age of 91, the full state funeral usually reserved for former presidents, angering Pinochet supporters who believe he saved the country from communism and chaos.
Chile's president, Michelle Bachelet, who was tortured during Pinochet's rule, did not attend, and when her representative, defence minister Vivianne Blanlot, arrived, she was heckled and whistled at by mourners.
As the protests drowned out the noise of the funeral choir, the priest conducting the ceremony appealed for calm.
Pinochet's eldest daughter, Lucia, praised her father for lighting "a flame of freedom" in September 1973, when he overthrew the democratically elected socialist government of President Salvador Allende in a coup.
The military said that up to 60,000 people had flocked to the college for the public viewing of Pinochet's casket. The general's youngest son, Marco Antonio, said denying his father a state funeral was petty and the government was "incapable of taking a noble stance at this moment in history". - (Reuters)