Pinochet returned to Chile and now faces prosecution in his home country. Pinochet would not be the first of those in power during his dictatorship to be prosecuted in recent times. In neighboring Argentina a former general who became president during the bloody military dictatorship was jailed, as was in Mexico the brother of a previous president. Several leaders of the Rwandan and Yugoslav governments are being held and charged with genocide. Yet though human rights advocates in the West have mounted worldwide campaigns to do away with impunity not much momentum has been generated at popular levels anywhere in the world.
Impunity remains an elite issue and at that, only partially so.
In Taiwan and in France two legal processes are going on that involve high level leaders and officials. They are linked. The process in France focuses on a former foreign minister and his mistress. Huge kick-backs are involved but no corpse. In the Taiwan process in good part the kick-backs involved are the same but there is a corpse.