Human rights abuses in Chile under Augusto Pinochet were the crimes against humanity, persecution of opponents, political repression, and state terrorism committed by the Chilean Armed Forces, members of Carabineros de Chile and civil repressive agents (members of a secret police), during the military dictatorship of Chile under General Augusto Pinochet from 1973 to 1990.
According to the Commission of Truth and Reconciliation (Rettig Commission) and the National Commission on Political Imprisonment and Torture (Valech Commission), the number of direct victims of human rights violations in Chile accounts for around 30,000 people: 27,255 tortured and 2,279 executed. In addition, some 200,000 people suffered exile and an unknown number went through clandestine centers and illegal detention.
The systematic human rights violations that were committed by the military dictatorship of Chile, under General Augusto Pinochet, included gruesome acts of physical and sexual abuse, as well as psychological damage. From 1973 to 1990, Chilean armed forces, the police and all those aligned with the military junta were involved in institutionalizing fear and terror in Chile."Thomas Skidmore, Modern Latin America, Oxford University Press., 2004, p. 134
The most prevalent forms of state-sponsored torture that Chilean prisoners endured were electric shocks, waterboarding, beatings, and sexual abuse. Another common mechanism of torture employed was "disappearing" those who were deemed to be potentially subversive because they adhered to leftist political doctrines. The tactic of "disappearing" the enemies of the Pinochet regime was systematically carried out during the first four years of military rule. The "disappeared" were held in secret, subjected to torture and were often never seen again. Both the National Commission on Political Imprisonment and Torture (Valech Report) and the Commission of Truth and Reconciliation (Rettig Report) approximate that there were around 30,000 victims of human rights abuses in Chile, with 40,018 incidents of torture and 2,279 executed. The following people have been identified, along with many others, as victims of the Pinochet regime: Diana Aron, journalist Miguel Enriquez, political activist Victor Jara, singer-songwriter and poet Jose Liendo, left-wing militant Carlos Lorca, political activist Reinalda Pereira, doctor and trade unionist Arsenio Poupin, politician Elizabeth Rekas, social worker Alfredo Rojas, engineer and politician Bautista van Schouwen, doctor and political activist Franco Teruggi, writer and trade unionist
History
The military rule was characterized by systematic suppression of all political dissidence, which led some to speak of a "politicide" (or "political genocide"). Steve J. Stern spoke of a politicide to describe "a systematic project to destroy an entire way of doing and understanding politics and governance."
The worst violence occurred in the first three months of the coup's aftermath, with the number of suspected leftists killed or "disappeared" (desaparecidos) soon reaching into the thousands. In the days immediately following the coup, the Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs informed Henry Kissinger that the National Stadium was being used to hold 5,000 prisoners, and as late as 1975, the CIA was reporting that up to 3,811 prisoners were still being held in the Stadium.Thinking About Terrorism: The Threat to Civil Liberties in a Time of National Emergency, Michael E. Tigar, pp. 37-38, American Bar Association, 2007 Amnesty International reported that as many as 7,000 political prisoners in the National Stadium had been counted on 22 September 1973.Chile: an Amnesty International report, p. 16, Amnesty International Publications, 1974. Nevertheless, it is often quoted in the press that some 40,000 prisoners were detained in the Stadium. Some of the most famous cases of "desaparecidos" are Charles Horman, a U.S. citizen who was killed during the coup itself, Chilean songwriter Víctor Jara, and the October 1973 Caravan of Death (Caravana de la Muerte) where at least 70 persons were killed. Other operations include Operation Colombo during which hundreds of left-wing activists were murdered and Operation Condor, carried out with the security services of other Latin American dictatorships and the aid of the CIA.
Following Pinochet's defeat in the 1988 plebiscite, the 1991 Rettig Commission, a multipartisan effort from the Aylwin administration to discover the truth about the human rights violations, listed a number of torture and detention centers (such as Colonia Dignidad, the ship Esmeralda or Víctor Jara Stadium), and found that at least 3,200 people were killed or disappeared by the regime.
A later report, the Valech Report (published in November 2004), confirmed the figure of 3,200 deaths but dramatically reduced the alleged cases of disappearances. It tells of some 28,000 arrests in which the majority of those detained were incarcerated and in a great many cases tortured.Valech Report Some 30,000 Chileans were exiled and received abroad,Augusto Pinochet's Chile, Diana Childress, p.92, Twenty First century Books, 2009Chile en el umbral de los noventa: quince años que condicionan el futuro, Jaime Gazmuri & Felipe Agüero, p. 121, Planeta, 1988 in particular in Argentina, as political refugees; however, they were followed in their exile by the DINA secret police, in the frame of Operation Condor which linked South-American dictatorships together against political opponents.LIFTING OF PINOCHET'S IMMUNITY RENEWS FOCUS ON OPERATION CONDOR Some 20,000–40,000 Chilean exiles were holders of passports stamped with the letter "L" (which stood for lista nacional), identifying them as persona non grata and had to seek permission before entering the country.Chile since the coup: ten years of repression, Cynthia G. Brown, pp.88-89, Americas Watch, 1983. Nevertheless, Chilean human rights groups maintain several hundred thousand were forced into exile.
According to the Latin American Institute on Mental Health and Human Rights (ILAS), "situations of extreme trauma" affected about 200,000 persons; this figure includes individuals killed, tortured (following the UN definition of torture), or exiled and their immediate relatives. While more radical groups such as the Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR) were staunch advocates of a Marxist revolution, it is currently accepted that the junta deliberately targeted nonviolent political opponents as well.
A court in Chile sentenced, on 19 March 2008, 24 former police officers in cases of kidnapping, torture and murder that happened just after a U.S.-backed coup overthrew socialist President Salvador Allende on 11 September 1973.
Bureaucratic authoritarianism The concept of bureaucratic authoritarianism characterizes the military regimes that rose to power in South America between the 1960s and 1980s, specifically in the Southern Cone regions of Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay. These regimes had a technocratic approach to policy-making and were accompanied by substantial repression. Guillermo O'Donnell—a prominent Argentine political scientist— labeled these regimes as "bureaucratic authoritarian" in order to "distinguish them from oligarchical and populist forms of the authoritarian rule found in less modernized countries".Karen L. Remmer and Gilbert W. Merkx, "Bureaucratic-Authoritarianism Revisited," Latin American Research Review 17: 2 (1982), 3-4,
From its inception on 11 September 1973, the Chilean bureaucratic authoritarian regime's ultimate agenda was to repress political dissidents—which some have classified as "politicide" (or "political genocide").Luis Roniger and Mario Sznajder, The Legacy of Human Rights Violations in the Southern Cone: Argentina, Chile and Uruguay, 1999, p.10 General Pinochet's assumption of power through a violent and bloody military coup d'état foreshadowed the brutal conditions that many innocent people would endure over the next 17 years. Pinochet genuinely feared the supporters of the Popular Unity Party (PU) and its leader Salvador Allende, who had been the first Marxist to become President of a Latin American region through open elections. General Pinochet lived in a state of paranoia, and constantly feared being assassinated or losing power.Roger Burbach, "The Pinochet Affair. State Terrorism and Global Justice," Nueva Epoca 5:17 (2005), 290-292. Thus, he set out to destroy those who were not in unity with his policies, particularly those who had once served the PU.
As Pinochet's suspicions grew, the military dictator targeted anyone who was in some way associated with the "leftists", which even included the mothers, wives, and children of the potential subversives.Rex A. Hudson, ed. "Chile: A Country Study". GPO for the Library of Congress, 1995. In order to legitimize control of the country, Pinochet created institutions that were seemingly democratic. He organized a plebiscite, held on 11 September 1980, which approved a new Constitution that went into effect on 21 October 1980, and that validated the legal system he had established by decree. The Constitution proscribed an eight-year election period, permitted reelections and gave the President of the Republic an immense amount of power. Laws were passed to criminalize acts of terror and limit the use of habeas corpus. A crucial aspect of the Pinochet regime was how unified the military was. Another was the disarray of civilian society, which created an atmosphere that was conducive to repressing all those who supposedly supported the PU, other leftist organizations, and even centrist institutions like the Christian Democratic Party.Thomas Skidmore, p. 134
Instilling a sense of fear
Caravan of Death From the moment Pinochet assumed power, he wanted to instill a sense of fear in the Chilean population. These fears manifested with his authorization of the "Caravan of Death". Following the coup on 11 September, Pinochet ordered this Chilean Army death squad to target the leaders of the PU by any means necessary. The Caravan of Death, under the leadership of Sergio Arellano Stark, killed 68 people within three days, by stabbing, beating, and shooting them. The establishment of the Caravan of Death served three main purposes: 1) silence dissent through murder, 2) weed out military officials who were not aligned with Pinochet's regime and 3) establish fear within leadership ranks. The Caravan of Death resulted in the institutionalization of a state-sponsored system of terror.
DINA
On 14 June 1974, Junta Decree 521 mandated the creation of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA). There were thousands of people working in this agency. DINA was instituted to "produce the intelligence necessary to formulate policies and planning, and to adopt measures to procure the safeguarding of National Security and development of the country".Pamela Constable and Arturo Valenzuela, A Nation of Enemies: Chile Under Pinochet, New York: W.W Norton & Company, 1993., p. 91 DINA established interrogation and detention camps, in which former members of Allende's Marxist government and the Leftist movements like the Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria were incarcerated and brutally tortured. Pinochet's goal was to annihilate all forms of opposition. He therefore greatly supported Military Decree 1697, which outlawed the formation of any political party. A large proportion of the Chilean population was vulnerable to surveillance. Chile's churches, universities, businesses, and neighborhoods were all under intense scrutiny.Pamela Constable and Arturo Valenzuela, p.91
Joint Command