Headlines, Human Rights, Latin America & the Caribbean

RIGHTS-CHILE: Colonia Dignidad’s Dark History Far from Over

Gustavo González

SANTIAGO, Jan 17 2006 (IPS) - The dark history of Colonia Dignidad is far from over, despite the recent discovery of graves containing the remains of people who were forcibly disappeared by Chile’s 1973-1990 dictatorship, and the arrest 10 months ago of the agricultural commune’s founder, Paul Schäfer, said the authors of an investigation into the secretive German enclave in southern Chile.

“The fact that the Colonia itself has not broken up after Schäfer’s arrest is evidence that what was happening there went beyond him as an individual,” said Hans Stange, who along with Claudio Salinas wrote the book “‘Dr.’ Schäfer’s Friends”.

In an interview with IPS, Stange added that “there is no reason to believe that the ties between the (Chilean) state and Colonia Dignidad end with Schäfer,” the 84-year-old former Nazi medic and Baptist preacher who founded and headed the commune.

Colonia Dignidad, whose name was officially changed to Villa Baviera in 1991, served as a centre for the detention, torture and elimination of political prisoners after the Sept. 11, 1973 coup in which Gen. Augusto Pinochet overthrew Socialist President Salvador Allende (1970-1973).

It continued to be protected by a mantle of impunity after democracy was restored in March 1990.

Salinas and Stange, who graduated last year from the University of Chile School of Journalism, spent over a year investigating and writing their 280-page book, which carries the suggestive subtitle “The Complicity Between the Chilean State and Colonia Dignidad”.

Complicity, negligence, and corruption in the executive, legislative and judicial branches are all elements, according to the book presented on Jan. 7 by Salinas and Stange, that help explain the turbid history of the wealthy agricultural commune founded in 1961 as a tax-exempt charitable organisation by German immigrants on 170,000 hectares of land east of the town of Parral, some 340 km south of Santiago.

On Jan. 2, the police located an empty two-metre-deep common grave in Colonia Dignidad that had once held a number of bodies. Judge Jorge Zepeda confirmed that victims of forced disappearance had originally been buried there.

The remains of the victims, who were killed by the dictatorship’s secret police, the Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional (DINA), had been removed in 1978 in an operation codenamed “removal of televisions”.

On Jan. 10, the Group of Families of the Detained-Disappeared (AFDD) filed a lawsuit with the aim of getting Judge Zepeda, who is handling the case against Schäfer and other cases involving the sect, to prosecute the commune leader’s deputies and formally investigate the links between the (now defunct) DINA and Colonia Dignidad.

“The work of Judge Zepeda basically confirms allegations that were made years ago: the torture and political disappearances that were first revealed in 1977, the arms dealing, denounced in 1985, and the (sexual) abuse of minors, first reported in 1966,” said Stange.

Testimony from escaped members of the commune was ignored by the authorities for decades, said the authors.

Although a number of lawsuits were filed against Colonia Dignidad over the years, on charges ranging from customs and tax fraud to kidnapping and rape of minors, the cases were routinely tossed out on the grounds of lack of evidence.

Salinas and Stange said Schäfer enjoyed the protection of a powerful network, made up of judges, parliamentarians from rightwing opposition parties, former officials of the Pinochet regime, former police and military commanders, and members of the business community who reportedly benefited from the commune’s services.

Before he came to Chile, Schäfer had already been prosecuted for sexual abuse of minors committed in an orphanage he set up in Germany.

Schäfer’s luck only began to run out in 1997, when a warrant was issued for his arrest. He became a fugitive from justice, and was finally captured on Mar. 10, 2005 on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, Argentina, and extradited to Chile.

The charges he is facing include sexual abuse of at least 26 minors – the children of German immigrants or of rural Chilean families that Colonia Dignidad “recruited” through the jobs and hospital and educational services it offered to nearby local communities, with the blessing of Chilean authorities.

The allegations that the commune was involved in trafficking and illegal possession of weapons were proven to be true on Oct. 4, 2005, when a search ordered by Zepeda uncovered an arsenal including 1,833 hand grenades, seven machine guns, 104 semi-automatic rifles, 67 mortar bombs, and 176 kg of TNT.

But Salinas told IPS that “Judge Zepeda is not discovering anything new. The sensation this leaves is that every step forward in his investigation is meant to have an impact on public opinion, more than anything else.”

The young journalists question Zepeda’s work, because in their view he has delayed the prosecution of Schäfer’s deputies, and especially because in September he put an end to the takeover of the numerous companies and properties that belong to the Villa Baviera “charity”, which had been ordered by Judge Jimena Pérez in Parral.

Zepeda thus “brought to a halt a series of legal actions that were aimed at demonstrating what the Colonia is: an illicit association – that is, a group of people who met consciously and voluntarily to commit the most atrocious crimes,” said Stange.

The lawyers of the families of victims of human rights violations, as well as the centre-left government of President Ricardo Lagos, through the State Defence Council, sought to block the end of the takeover of Colonia Dignidad’s properties. But Zepeda stood firmly by his decision.

In their book, Salinas and Stange provide detailed information substantiating allegations that have not yet been investigated by the Chilean justice system. They maintain that not only did the commune serve as a torture centre for opponents of the dictatorship, but it was also a torture training camp for agents of the state.

“The members of the Colonia themselves apparently took part in the torture training given to Chilean secret police agents, especially Gerhard Mücke (the commune’s second in command) and Paul Schäfer himself,” said Salinas.

Several of the younger Germans were also trained in torture techniques by Schäfer and other Nazi army veterans who served in World War II, he added.

And “With respect to the participation of foreigners in the training of torture techniques in the Colonia, there is talk of Mossad (the Israeli secret service) agents like Mike Harari, whose name came to light thanks to an investigation carried out in Germany in 1993,” said Salinas.

“Mentioned as well were instructors from Brazil, a country that was also ruled by a dictatorship in the 1970s (1964-1985), who were recognised because of their accents or because they spoke Portuguese by several people held prisoner in Colonia Dignidad.”

“That means that the Brazilians not only provided training, but also apparently participated in the torture sessions and interrogations,” he concluded.

In earlier interviews with IPS, the authors described Colonia Dignidad as “a huge beehive, where Schäfer was the queen bee.”

The commune members “were under a spell cast by a man who is neither a psychopath nor brutish, but a charismatic leader, and also a homosexual who only likes boys,” said Salinas.

Schäfer “did not allow the commune members to have a private life or freely associate among themselves, and they had to work between 12 and 14 hours a day without talking to anyone,” said Stange, who added that children were taken away from their mothers at a young age, and raised collectively in same-sex dorms.