In Chile, President Michelle Bachelet declared a new National Day Wednesday to honor the thousands killed during Chile’s seventeen-year dictatorship. Bachelet made the announcement from the site of the US-backed coup that overthrew president Salvador Allende.

• Chilean President President Michelle Bachelet: “I establish August 30 as the National Day of the Disappeared, and I do it with all the solemnity that this official declaration can have, but at the same time with all the symbolism carried by the fact that it was exactly here, in La Moneda palace, where the first disappearances occurred on September 11 1973.”

Scores of relatives of the disappeared attended the ceremony. Bachelet herself is a former political prisoner.