Political repression, summary executions, systematic torture, arbitrary deprivation of liberty
venues outside the scrutiny of law, fundamental human rights violations, ran from Sept. 11 until the end of military rule, although with varying degrees of intensity and with different levels of selectivity to play in identifying victims. The Report of the National Commission on Truth and Reconciliation provides valuable and compelling information about identifying the institutions of the repressive apparatus,
within their activities, methods and procedures refined over time, and the places where they exercised enforcement tasks.
The work of the National Commission on Political Imprisonment and Torture has confirmed these findings, adding however a massive component to the practice of political imprisonment and torture before unsuspected, to conclude that the extent of the repression and the social universe of his victims were far higher than budgeted. Enough to anticipate that over 94% of those who suffered political imprisonment and came to this Commission
say they have suffered torture at the hands of government agents or persons in their service, the length and breadth of Chile.
While political imprisonment and torture accompanied all years of military rule, the bulk of its victims are concentrated in the installation phase power: 61% of the 33,221 arrests ranked by the Commission relate to arrests made in 1973, mainly by police (43%) and Army personnel (30%).
The evidence gathered by this Committee can form moral conviction about the effectiveness of the alleged torture, undermining any explanation of them as anomalous or random events, such as stocks only attributable to an individual, and emphasizes its deliberate institutional. All confirmed that torture operated as a system for information and counter any form of resistance. It would be wrong to assume that torture just responded to a method banned for relevant information. Sometimes - when it sought to capture the leaders of leftist parties in the underground
-served in that capacity. But the interview also was
invariably a sobering ritual. This is particularly evident in the case of the tortured and confessions were to confirm the indications of the oppressors. Ie torture sometimes start looking for a secret, but always intended to impose terror, exemplified for applying punishment stifle opposition. This purpose was evident in the first months of military rule, and again be in the 1980's, when it became apparent discontent.
All this leads to the conclusion that political imprisonment and torture constituted a state policy of military rule, defined and driven by the political authorities of the time, which for its design and execution of personnel and resources mobilized various government agencies and laws and decrees issued after laws covering such repressive behavior. And here was supported, sometimes explicit and often implicit, the only branch of government that was not part of that regime: the judiciary.
Thus, from the military, especially during the remainder of 1973, repression was applied in almost all parts of the country, members of the armed forces and police, sometimes assisted by civilians who are often involved in the selection of victims, and even in the practice of torture. In this first phase of massive onslaught against anyone who might be classified as political dissidents, many people were executed without trial or after trial flawed, were killed unarmed prisoners claiming the "law
of flight", there were mass arrests that swelled the ranks of prisoners who had surrendered voluntarily and reliably in response to Bandos claiming his appearance, and massive raids and other operations of registration, both in the capital and provinces, covered populations, industries, universities, public buildings, farms, mining centers. In view of the assembled thousands of prisoners were due to improvise
detention centers and torture, while outfitted camps in northern, central and southern Iraq, whose last prisoners would not be released until late 1976, . It is illustrative of the massive nature of political imprisonment and torture in 1973, stating types of detention facilities registered by the Commission: prefectures, police stations, substations, seals, holdings, headquarters, regiments, military schools, sports stadiums, gymnasiums, homesteads , factories, buildings public institutions, hospitals, armories, air bases and naval men and women's prisons, railway stations,
Navy vessels and merchant marine, prison camps, military prosecutors, governorates, municipalities, and educational institutions such as universities and high schools.
seeks not only to people in positions of responsibility in the deposed government, a left-known figures and ordinary militants, but representatives from grassroots organizations with participation in movements for social demands. Thus, in addition to party leaders, military and police arrest union workers, peasants holders of land reform, leaders of neighborhood associations and college and high school students. Many people seeking asylum in embassies, while the new government is promoting the accusation as a legitimate form of
collaboration with the restoration work "order." Between September and October 1973, the "caravan of death", a mission by military officers sent by President of the military junta in the north and south of the country, taught by example the degree of radical brutal cruelty that should prevail in the treatment of prisoners in store. The story of several members of that delegation, then embedded in positions of responsibility to the DINA, sugiere cierta tendencia "meritocrática" en el reclutamiento de los agentes de la represión, cuando a ésta le correspondió institucionalizarse como un recurso auxiliar de las prácticas de gobierno, una vez que el proceso de instalación en el poder ya estaba consumado.
Esta fase represiva masiva abrió las compuertas para todo tipo de abusos. Como enseñan distintos testimonios, en ocasiones se dio la práctica de aprovechar eventualmente la indefensión de las víctimas de la represión para robarles posesiones personales de valor. La prisión política y la tortura caen de golpe sobre personas que, cualquiera fuera su militancia a la fecha, jamás previeron la irrupción de ese accidente en their lives. As extreme examples include the situation of individuals without political commitment to outlaw forces. The Commission has recorded cases of atrocities
not responding to any logic of repression which proves the existence of an enemy with clear profiles, highlighting the wide range
arbitrariness in selecting their victims, forcibly immersed in a state of severe insecurity about their fundamental rights.
can be considered the testimony of a woman member of a modest family in the south, no connections or political militancy. On October 20, 1973, eight soldiers accompanied by a police stormed his home, starting in the act of brutally beating his brothers, 15 and 16, in the presence of his mother and his younger son, an 8 years old. They justified the attack saying its participation in an assault on a police station in Valdivia. The military and the police officer knew the two surnames of the brothers accused of the assault, only the last name matched the identity of the victims. So he did know the family and even neighbors, but to no avail by the attackers. As a result, both young men were tortured to death. Days later, after wandering in search for different places of detention, his mother found them in the morgue. Both had been slaughtered. One of the teenagers was missing some of the face, his mouth full of horse manure, thorns, cigarette. According to the account of the complainant, the only daughter, she and her brother were arrested as they traveled to Santiago to denounce both killings to the military. In the hands of these
suffered torture and imprisonment. The brother lost his mind, she was left with disabling physical injuries and had to leave for a long exile, after six months of captivity in the partially completed National Stadium. In the story herein, and resume their personal and family circumstances:
.... by the coup of 73 name scope of the military gentlemen Police and destroyed our family. From 73 have never been happy, because I was detained, or imprisoned, tortured for a period of 6 months to claim. Injustice and crime had been committed by military Valdivia, together with the police. They have destroyed our whole family will have no brothers and no parents, because with the beating he gave my father for defending my brother and say that we [did not correspond to the family who wanted] to tell the truth gave him many blows, that my poor dad lost his mind and spent many years in the House Orate, or in the madhouse
in Valdivia, and as I was arrested with my older brother with [...] I was him James to give account. In my ignorance, I went to tell what they had done the military in Valdivia with our family, they heard when they were taken right there at the point of the face with rifle butts and kicked the body and beat them both, and I also beat as if I had been a man, they beat me mercilessly even by the breasts, I have all my body with marks of 73
. My body is all cut, my fractured ankle, fractured my hands, my knees all cut and I have the shoulder of my right arm, broken collarbone, and I have eyelids, broken, cut, because the military, when I hit a lot of us stopped [...] They were going to kill my whole family I begged them, Knee asked not to do so much damage, we had no idea, why we did so much damage, we have never been in politics, had never been arrested, no one in our family. "
After this period of massive collective punishment by military force, since late 1973, political repression starts to drift to more selective, both with regard to the victims and perpetrators. The repressive improvised give the first hour professionals instead of coercion, are involved in careers in their agencies and apply methods of torture more "sophisticated". The atrocities continued, but affect fewer people, and they usually have some kind of partisan political affiliation. In this context, the mission
mounting a police state went to the intelligence services and, prominently, in specially-created agencies that centralize and instill some logic to the previous instrumental repressive practices. Is the representative case of the DINA, under the direction of Colonel Manuel Contreras Sepulveda, was promoted to general. Formally established in June 1974 but took office in late 1973, the DINA repression led until its dissolution in 1977. In its early days included staff from all
branches of the armed forces and police, and as the first intelligence agency of the government as a whole, was in a volume of resources available that allowed an operational capability well above that shown by their peers. DINA soon controlled by army personnel, coexisted with other intelligence services, and even played the victims of political repression with their staff. None of the other intelligence or security agencies, not even the Joint Command in operations between 1975 and 1976, which enlisted personnel from all branches of the armed forces and police, as well as previous civil militancy in the country and movement Liberty risked his prominence in the fight by all means any organized resistance or dissent to the regime. In their task systematically sought to eliminate people trying to smuggle rearticulate designated parties or movements, according to the logic of the enemy within, with the stigma of Marxism
: priority, but not limited to the MIR and the Socialist and Communist parties. Its cadres, its members and contributors, all grouped under the category of "extremist", became the main victims of repression more selective than the previous one, but in no case less ruthless. Torture frequently resulted in death and often disappearing. Sometimes, under pressure of torture and death threats from the militant became a partner.
By 1976, the operating mode of repression began to acquire new patterns.
begins to diminish with prolonged detention periods of disappearance, while increasing the arrest for a few hours or a few days. During that time, as had happened in the previous stage, was regularly tortured, almost invariably using electricity. Rampant intimidation. The intrusion of law enforcement agents in the field of domestic life of its victims are more frequent, such as visiting their home during the night and questioning, right there, to their families. Often, the victim was followed and watched, so that warned that lived in the shadow of an impending enforcement action
. If you stop, it was not necessarily led to a secret compound, could be tortured and interrogated in a moving vehicle, where he received threats and pressures to collaborate, after which the person could return to their daily lives, spreading the effect intimidation of fear among its close.
To gauge the scope of the DINA as executor of a police state, it should be noted that not only tracked, captured, tortured and killed those deemed enemies of the authoritarian regime also through its vast and extensive network of civilian informants and collaborators in Chile and abroad, in departments and public and private companies, in diplomatic compounds in airports in different countries and even other continents, and Chilean media, extended coverage surveillance of areas of activity and the risky outsiders militancy in the resistance to military rule. Included Chile, Latin America and Europe, coordinating actions of political repression with other security services of the Southern Cone "Operation Condor" - and with foreign terrorist organizations of the extreme right. A zealous inquisitor came as the DINA, which also were deprived of controlling their own government officials, including ministers, prominent and active duty military. Contributed powerfully to the strengthening of General Pinochet's personal power, leading the war against Marxism, but also
neutralizing potential rivals to the center of the military regime itself.
In its definition of the enemy to be kept in sight of the security services, nor failed to human rights defenders who sought to raise awareness, both within and outside the country, about the atrocities of terrorism State.
In fact, the DINA was a government agency yielded only accountable to the Chairman and Commander in Chief of the Army, General Augusto Pinochet, in complete disregard of the other members of the Board, other commanders of the Armed Forces and the Judiciary. His brutal procedures and autonomy of action came to arouse opposition and suspicion among those who approve of government's coercive policies, provided they were under some control and "rationality" in which considerations
certainly was not to provoke the enmity of the United States. In fact his solution responded to the conviction that their "licenses" detrimental to the position of the military regime against the international community. DINA, in fact, made complex operating out of Chile against opposition figures. In 1974 killed the former Army Commander General Carlos Prats and his wife in Buenos Aires in 1975, this time in Rome, an attempt on the life of the Christian Democrat leader Bernardo Leighton and his wife, leaving both seriously injured; and in 1976, now in Washington DC, killed Orlando Letelier, former foreign minister of the Allende government and the opposition leader in exile, and his secretary
American. This attack would precipitate the end of the security agency, even before the FBI investigations incriminate his ex-agents. Pinochet replaced the DINA and the CNI, law enforcement agencies under the Ministry of Interior, Contreras would be in charge at the time of its creation, to be quickly replaced. It is interesting to note that the Decree Law No. 1876, which specifies the reasons for concluding the DINA, establishing the "desirability of grading according to current circumstances, the powers of an agency created in internal conflict and overcome," implying that internal conflict had raged for years
in circumstances that, as seen, never existed in the property.
The CNI, which would not be dissolved until February 1990, he inherited from his
DINA personnel, premises and facilities. In both body executor of the
powers granted to the Executive by Decree Law No. 1877, issued the same day of its inception (August 13, 1977), the CNI was empowered to "arrest persons for up to five days in their own homes or in places other than prisons. " Decree Law No. 3451, dated July 1980, increase to twenty-day statutory deadline to be kept under arrest without making available to the courts for the arrest as a suspect of violating the Internal Security Act of State, in which name came
introducing legal reforms that restrict personal freedom since 1975. Verified
arrest in secret places, not surprising that most people have been tortured. Between 17 July, the date of publication of Decree Law referred to above, and 31 August of that year, 37 people were detained for more than five days, 22 reported, or, rather, dared to denounce " unlawful coercion. Thus, with the receipt of official sanction, were established legal conditions favorable to selective but systematic practice of torture as one of the methods of government in the service of a dictatorship. This was not the only form of legal cover given to the activities of the CNI. When his agents had to appear before the courts, they did under false identities or "sheets" precautionary measure to preserve their functions and duties in addition to their
impunity. Or, under judicial investigation officers were transferred to distant places by their own superiors, in order to hinder or prevent his appearance before the court.
Between 1978 and 1980, the CNI could initially concentrate on intelligence work
, marking an apparent decline in enforcement activity in relation to the preceding period. This was not the end but the reduction of arbitrary and illegal detention and torture in secret places. In addition, intensified short-term detention of people who were later released without being delivered to the competent courts. In these days of captivity, they were tortured.
The victims of this type of repression were preferably
militants or members of political parties, union leaders, relatives and friends of the victims, particularly relatives of disappeared persons and political prisoners, and persons related to the reporting of abuses to human rights. It was not unusual to use torture as a preliminary to the obligation to make or sign incriminating statements. So the dictatorship sought to validate its repressive policy against the public, artificially bulking up the number and scale of its enemies determined.
The outlook change with the articulation of the MIR in 1979, now decided to offer armed resistance to the regime by clandestine entry to the country of militants with military training as part of "Operation Return." The development would affect the insurgent struggle intensified repressive tasks of IPC and its peers. The same General Pinochet would defend the security agencies "with courage and selflessness, as declared in the pages of The Mercury on September 12, 1981 - protect the lives of the Chilean and public order in the nation." In any case, the onslaught of "extremists" would be gaining further momentum in the decade of the
eighties. Increase targeted terrorist actions against ombudsmen or agents of the regime, bank robberies and placement of explosive devices.
With the emergence of the Manuel Rodriguez Patriotic Front (FPMR) in 1983,
armed group linked to the Communist Party, which had resolved to oppose all forms of resistance to the regime, the strategy of armed struggle of an insurgent population sectors would penetrate and afincaría in the urban world. The appearance of Lautaro MAPU accentuate this trend, very gravitating between the youth of the poorest. Belligerent logic of armed struggle, driven as reaction to the military regime, favored in turn confrontational policy of General Pinochet, who thus gained ground to validate the need
repression and rejected calls for political openness as a threat to the country's governance. The assassination attempt against him by the FPMR on September 6, 1986, seemed to confirm his premonitions.
Given the state of polarization of those years, the Catholic Church repeatedly warned about the dangers inherent in the "spiral of violence" marked by attacks on security officers, military and police by insurgents, whose actions in turn unleashed reprisals such as the murder of opposition activists and mass arrests and violent in some populations.
sa happened in the seventies with the DINA, the repression would not assets of the CNI. Among the other agencies or groups involved in repression include the Police Department Communications (DICOMCAR). Established in 1983 to address the new situation, marked by the emergence of left-wing armed groups would be disbanded after learning of the involvement of its agents in the execution-style slaying, the year 1985,
three members of the Communist Party. Also in the 1980 operated unofficial character commands that respond mainly to the imperative revenge of its "martyrs" at the hands of so-called "extremist cells" as the Martyrs' Avengers Command (COVEMA). Similar to his fellow officers, also resorted to torture as a method of retaliation and intimidation.
Since May 1983, when the days begin monthly nationwide protest called by trade union bodies initially and then party leaders, in order to pressure the authorities in pursuit of an early exit to democratic dictatorship, repression and, specifically, torture, back to the fore. Social mobilization, which folded professionals and students university in solidarity with the workers, represented a challenge
citizen forced to reconsider the repressive policies in use. In the reconstitution of social networks articulated political dissent, repression visible, because it occurred in public places in broad daylight, was mainly based on police, whose officers served as a subversive force rather than as mere guarantors of public order. Repression associated with massive raids recrudecería peripheral populations since 1983, but the fact is that in previous years were not uncommon punitive police raids, military and CNI agents against leaders and organizations based population.
Already by the end of 1982, mass arrests, carried out mass demonstrations framed by discontent with the economic crisis began to emerge over the individual arrests, although they preserved their status as the largest risk to the physical integrity of detainees. This finding heralded the emergence of social protest movements, whose organization also came many of the detained individual. The crackdown extends to new areas of activity, extending the framework of city events susceptible to persecution. The media favorable to the regime and the authorities government had the outbreak of protest as the conflict between order and anarchy. The official discourse insisted that it was government's responsibility to avert the danger of vandalism, whose most visible youth population have been consistently identified with the underclass, to subtract
political significance to their acts of resistance, in such a way relegated to the invalidating the simple category of criminal behavior. No doubt, there were criminal acts under protest, however, served as an excuse for disqualification overall mass of them. Peculiarly, the use of lists of "wanted persons" in the context of the raids, since these people used be
precisely, members of grassroots organizations that provided a local platform to dissent to the regime.
Some of the opposition, previously almost exclusively underground, now became visible in public spaces, especially in the streets of downtown Santiago. A consequence of this change, the crackdown on dissent also led towards more extroverted, with its usual practices to use water cannons or tanks "guanacos" and tear gas, complete with arrests and beatings by large contingents of police .
The days of national protest, but departed in the center of Santiago, as he approached night and became effective curfew, moved its headquarters to peripheral populations (already active from morning). There, groups of young people to step out of the police or military (who even move in tanks), with roadblocks and bonfires that prevented or hindered access. In the eighties, on the other hand, emphasized the use of banishment as a form of administrative
more selective retaliation against opponents of the regime, which was also used, albeit very occasionally, as an expedient to isolate the tortured pending physical recovery to invalidate any complaints. And efforts to eradicate torture-the art of repression against political dissent
more prominent after discontinuation of the cases of disappeared between 1977 and 1987 - find new channels of public expression when, in 1983 the National Commission Creno against Torture, comprising senior officers of Catholic Church, personalities of the scientific and artistic professionals in the health area, members of bodies heading for the defense of human rights, and representatives of labor organizations and unions.
In those years of social upheaval, when government authorities alternating dialogue with opposition political leaders and the onslaught of the repressive apparatus, and the protests included the capital and major provincial cities, massive raids were intensified by military and police. Being in effect a state of siege and curfew scheduled for 18:30 hours, on the occasion of the fourth national protest scheduled for Thursday, August 11, 1983, the capital was occupied militarily by 18,000 men armed
taken to combat since the previous afternoon had begun to take positions in the stocks and residential sectors of activity more active opposition. The official count that day recorded 17 deaths, most were shot while inside of their homes and there were three dead children. The protests often end with dead and wounded by gunfire and hundreds arrested. As a result of these operations, which sought to stifle opposition in sectors of the population, thousands of people were arrested without charge to legalize the detention, which used to extend for a few days.
against public opinion, the authorities identified the raids and operations to combat crime, in practice, meeting the people who suffered these actions, their priority was the warning to the settlers, under their collective acts dissent. In reply
the caceroleo which accompanied the protests around Santiago and other large cities, population sectors other was seen machine guns, shooting the body or the houses (including helicopters), the destruction of military and police windows with sticks and stones, the violent outbreaks in the home, launching tear gas within them, the beating of its inhabitants and the arbitrary detention of the same. The massive raids on the homes installed repression-battering and other degrading practices "in the center of the domestic life of thousands of people, including children," intimidating the family as a whole and, by extension, all community. Although practices prevail
enforced coercive during the 1970, torture is no longer assets of the security services. Incorporated into police methods, it is applied in the usual venues of discharging their duties in the neighborhood, soccer fields and places, both in Santiago and, occasionally, in provincial cities as spaces makeshift detention and punishment during massive raids undertaken for purposes of retaliation. Males older than 14 or 15, not excepting the
disabled or mentally ill, could be enjoined, by police and unidentified civilians, with no warrant any, to leave their homes and gather in these places, where they proceeded to carry out the implied kept in the open for up to twelve hours, receive frequent mistreatment and beatings of luma. The repression became less secretive and therefore more threatening to the ordinary citizen with pretensions to express their discontent. We reserve the harsher treatment to residents of the outlying towns of the capital, subjected to torture in situ, according to reports from the parish residents.
An additional fact should be considered due to its link with the subject of this Commission, and concerns the psychological warfare operations. no fact best graphic above that what happened with regard to the fifth national protest on September 8, 1983. A few days before, to break the protest movement of population, sowing mistrust among the people, spread a rumor that the populations of Southern and Southeastern Santiago would be victims of attack by the inhabitants of other towns. Residents and alerted, began self-defense actions. Alarmed, some
began to save their most precious belongings, while others their mediaguas bucket of water to counter the rapid spread of fire announced.
As one woman from the village of Santa Adriana, whose Solidarity Magazine testimony collected in the second half of this September, "" over there police went door to door saying he had to get up, because there were three thousand people of Victoria to burn our people. [...] When asked [ to the police who mounted the campaign of terror] why we are not defending them, said they were too few for the entire population. Until last night [Sept. 14] had groups of neighbors who could not sleep and would wake up around the campfire " .
Now, concerning the repressive apparatus would be misleading to think that attacks on human rights criminal actions were only left with impunity with the support of the judiciary. The government also had established a legal framework appropriate legal conditions of repression. Traditionally, states of exception limiting individual rights and fundamental rights of individuals. The military regime intensified these restrictions, already severe, incorporating them into their institutions.
Relativizing the principle of time, it introduced the possibility of successive extensions, allowing to extend states of emergency for most of the military regime. Also broadened the grounds invoked allowing the chance of those states, whose relevance was left to the discretion and convenience of the authorities, as an example, Decree Law No. 640 of 1974 replaced the grounds of "internal disturbance" with "shock, whatever its nature." Moreover, many laws were aimed at secret, however compelling to those who did not know. Already alluded to the punitive function
that met the military courts, which not only extended its jurisdiction, but that tried and failed to causes for which they were incompetent, even under the laws of the time. Furthermore, in the seventies and in the eighties, lawful actions were classified as crimes with a view to prosecuting those who denounced the human rights abuses and formed the violent opposition to the regime, while increasing penalties for existing crimes. Since 1973, participating in activities linked to the leftist parties and movements, transformed into "unlawful associations", came to constitute a crime against state security prison that claimed the policy (usually accompanied by torture
) many people in attendance at this Commission.
Also, in October 1983 compared to the days of nationwide protests, law 18,252 was passed to punish criminally, with penalties of imprisonment, banishment or exile " leaders of social organizations and political opposition, defined here as "those who encourage or unauthorized acts convene collective public streets, plazas and other public places and those who promote or incite demonstrations of any other species to allow or facilitate the disruption of public peace. "
mention deserves the Decree Law No. 2.191 of 1978, better known as "amnesty." Put forward by its supporters as a high contribution to peace in a divided society in the past, in practice it sought to preserve the impunity of past violations of human rights committed by state agents or persons in its service, even if that order has also brought benefits to people identified with the Popular Unity government or political dissent. The interior minister of the time, referring to this law in a speech on June 15, 1978, defined what the official position on the "excesses" and its leaders earlier: "It is necessary that the country
understand that defeat a violent and organized subversion [...] is a challenge that demanded constant action, selfless and preventive security forces, in terms that she can not be prosecuted could be applied criteria for a normal period. "
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