RIGHTS-CHILE: Disappeared Won’t Rest in Peace

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Gustavo Gonzalez

SANTIAGO, May 6 1998 (IPS) - The discovery of two bodies in a secret grave, fresh denunciations about Colonia Dignidad and a recent court verdict brought Chile’s attention back to the disappeared of the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship (1973-1990).

Legal investigations related to the hidden grave in Pisagua, 1,900 kilometres north of Santiago, continued Wednesday, as it is believed more bodies could be unearthed.

Socialist deputy, Juan Pablo Letelier said the latest discovery of possible victims of the dictatorship in Pisagua, where the remains of 20 disappeared were discovered in 1990, shows the problem of past human rights violations is far from closed.

“It is time the military assume the errors of the past and ask for forgiveness,” said the member of parliament, son of the former foreign minister Orlando Letelier, assassinated in Washington in 1996 on the orders of Pinochet’s secret police.

But the former dictator and senator for life since March 11, objected to this idea, replying that “these gentlemen (the socialists) should ask for forgiveness first.”

Pinochet claims the 2,000 disappearances denounced during the early years of the military regime occurred in the context of a “subversive war” where many of the victims were left-wing guerrillas buried by other members of their own groups.

The army, which Pinochet led from August 1973 to March this year, has insisted all the cases of alleged human rights abuses be closed, applying an amnesty law passed in April 1978.

From the early eighties to the present day, the remains of only 200 of the disappeared have been located and identified, and most of the lawsuits related to these cases were thrown out by military judges who invoked the amnesty.

In the case of the latest bodies discovered in Pisagua, the cause of death has still to be established, and further digging will be carried out in the area in a search for the remains of three socialist leaders who disappeared in 1974.

Pisagua was the site of a political prison camp in the early years of the dictatorship. Socialist deputy Felipe Valenzuela said around 100 left-wing activists must have been buried here, after being moved from Valparaiso, in the centre of the country.

The issue of the disappeared came to the fore again this week in relation to Colonia Dignidad, a German colony some 350 kilometres south of Santiago, led by former nazi, Paul Schaefer, currently wanted on paedophilia charges.

Chilean weekly ‘Ercilla’ and the State television channel reproduced photographs of three Chilean workers in the colony, whose families claimed they were amongst the disappeared and could still be alive.

The photographs were taken during the 40 days when the colony was virtually occupied by the police, on the orders of the judge who issued the warrant on Shaefer.

Colonia Dignidad was a detention, torture and disappearance centre used by Pinochet’s secret police, the DINA, according to denunciations made in international forums and the German parliament.

Some ten days ago, Humberto Lagos, a lawyer and human rights campaigner came up with the hypothesis that some of the detained- disappeared were being kept alive in the colony as forced labourers, having been “brain washed” into submission.

Relatives of Oscar Saldias, Luis Rivera and Enrique Carreno, three Socialist Party activists who disappeared in the early years of the Pinochet regime, claimed their relatives had appeared in the photographs printed in Ercilla.

Judge Jorge Norambuena, from the town of Parral, near to the colony, summonsed the families who lodged the complaint and the supposed disappeared Tuesday, and the latter turned out to be out- workers in the colony, identified as Manuel Gonzalez, Ramon Zavala and Hector Munoz.

However, the families stated the three who appeared in court were not those who appeared in the photographs, insisting their claims of kidnapping, lodged Monday, be persued.

On this front, the Supreme Court established a new precedent on cases of human rights violations, ordering the Caribineers to produce a list of personnel involved in two detentions in 1973.

These cases included a murder on September 23, 1973 and two disappearances on October 6 and 18 of the same year in Santiago.

Up until now, both the Caribineers and the three branches of the armed forces have hidden behind State and national defence security regulations to refuse to present lists of their personnel to the judges.

General Fernando Torres, the army prosecutor, warned this Supreme Court decision could lead to the courts reopening many cases of human rights violations covered by the 1978 amnesty.