Valech Report

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The Valech Report (officially The National Commission on Political Imprisonment and Torture Report) was a study that detailed abuses committed in Chile between 1973 and 1990 by agents of Augusto Pinochet's military regime. The first part of the report was published on November 29, 2004 and detailed the results of a six month investigation. A second part was released on June 1, 2005. Testimony has been classified, and will be kept secret for the next 50 years. Therefore, they cannot be used in trials concerning human rights violations, in contrast to the "Terror archives" concerning Paraguay and Operation Condor.

The report was prepared at the request of President Ricardo Lagos by the eight-member National Commission on Political Imprisonment and Torture headed by Bishop Sergio Valech and it was made public via the Internet. The commission included María Luisa Sepúlveda (executive vice president), lawyers Miguel Luis Amunátegui, Luciano Fouillioux, José Antonio Gómez (PRSD president), Lucas Sierra, Álvaro Varela and psychologist Elizabeth Lira. It did not include any representative of the victims or members of the associations of ex-political prisoners.

The initial report was based on testimony given to the commission by 35,868 people, of which approximately 28,000 were regarded as legitimate. A further 8,000 cases were studied over the next six months. The second report included 1,201 new cases, 86 of which were children younger than 12 years old, including unborn children, which makes a total of 29,000 cases (an estimation, following United Nations' definition of torture, counts about 400,000 victims of torture[citation needed]). Most of these new cases had not been included in the first report because their parents were either executed political prisoners or among the "disappeared" detainees and there were no confirming witnesses. About two-thirds of the cases of abuse that were recognized by the commission took place during 1973.

The state provided lifelong monetary compensation (a pension of about US$215, which is less than Chile's minimum wage of just over US$240) to the victims as well as health benefits, equivalent to what indigents are entitled to. Families of the victims (3,000 of them were already dead) are not entitled to anything. Testimony to the Commission on Political Prisoners and Torture, created by decree 1040 (which is at the origin of the report), are classified and are to remain secret for 50 years. Therefore, the information cannot be used in trials concerning human rights violations, nor can it be made public. Associations of ex-political prisoners have been denied access to the testimony.

Contents

[edit] Criticism

According to the associations of ex-political prisoners, testimony to the Valech's Commission, was strictly and the commission used a different definition of torture than the one accepted by the United Nations. The associations say that testimony was accepted under the following conditions:

  • Detention must have been of more than five days (in 1986, in Santiago de Chile, 120,000 people were detained by the armed forces. Of those 120,000, 24,000 were detained by Carabineros (the Chilean police force) for a duration of four days and a half).
  • Detention must have been in one of the 1,200 official detention and torture centers listed by the Commission (including Villa Grimaldi, Colonia Dignidad, Víctor Jara Stadium or Esmeralda floating center), excluding all cases of torture in the streets or in vehicles (starting in the 1980s, the CNI, which succeeded DINA, no longer brought victims to detention centers; thus, say the associations, the fact that about two-thirds of the cases of abuse that were approved by the commission took place during 1973). The case of Carmen Gloria Quintana, who was burnt alive in the middle of the 1980s, was not recognized, following this definition of torture.
  • Detention must not have taken place in another country (excluding all victims of Operation Condor).

They also underlined the fact that the commission worked for only six months, and with very little publicity, despite the United Nations' demand to accept testimonies for a longer period. In the countryside, victims who managed to be informed (Internet being the only real way of that, since other media hardly spoke about the commission) had to give testimony to local authorities, the same which had tortured them a few years before. The commission worked only during office hours, forcing victims to ask their employer for permission to testify - which, in Chile's present day society, is not always an easy thing to do... No psychological assistance was provided to the victims, who had to relive horrible experiences, some of them suffering flashbacks (giving sense to the concept of "re-victimization"). Ex-political prisoners said that testimony from minors under 18 years old were refused, because it was impossible for them to recall exactly all the details of the place and time where they had been tortured (children, some of them five years old, and adolescents had been tortured by the dictatorship).

Sixty percent of the ex-political prisoners were unemployed for at least two years, following studies made by ex-political prisoners' associations. Their life expectancy is only of 60 to 65 years. Switzerland and Argentina have recently refused to extradite two of them to Chile, on the grounds that they might be subject to "mistreatments" in Chile. Others are still confined in high security quarters in Chilean prisons.

[edit] Excerpts

Excerpts from the report as translated by The Miami Herald: [1].

Consciously or unconsciously, a conspiracy of silence about the torture spread slowly through the country. Political prison and torture constituted a state policy during the military regime, defined and promoted by the political authorities of the period which mobilized personnel and resources of various public organizations and issued decrees and laws that protected such repressive behavior. And this had the support, explicit sometimes but almost always implicit, of the only power that was not a member of that regime: the judiciary.
[More than 18,000 of the 35,868 respondents] said they were detained between September and December 1973. During that period, torture was practiced by members of the Armed Forces and Carabineros [paramilitary police] in what became a generalized practice on a national scale.
[More than 5,266 respondents] were political prisoners detained between January 1974 and August 1977, when new modalities of detention and torture were created. By June 1974, the DINA [Directorate of National Intelligence] was granted full legal recognition and its own budget.
[Almost 4,000 respondents] were persons detained for political motives between August 1977 and March 1990. The final period of the repressive process was distinguished by the activities of the CNI [National Information Center.] In 3,059 cases, the detainees were kept in CNI facilities.
As the citizenry rearticulated itself politically, the Investigations Department Police [police detectives] and Carabineros intervened again most actively in the tasks of coercion, detaining (for shorter periods) and torturing (with the usual methods) either on their own or placing oppositionists at the disposal of the CNI, military or civilian tribunals for processing.

[edit] Methods of torture

The methods of torture described by witnesses before this Commission included:
  • Repeated beatings
  • Deliberate corporal lesions
  • Bodily hangings [suspensions]
  • Forced positions
  • Application of electricity
  • Threats
  • Mock execution by firing squad
  • Humiliation
  • Stripping down to nakedness
  • Sexual aggression and violence
  • Witnessing and listening to torture committed on others
  • Russian roulette
  • Witnessing the execution of other detainees
  • Confinement in subhuman conditions
  • Deliberate privation of means of existence
  • Sleep deprivation or interruption
  • Asphyxia
  • Exposure to extreme temperatures

[edit] Sexual violence against women

This Commission heard testimony from 3,399 women, almost all of whom said they were the object of sexual violence; 316 said they were raped. Of the latter, 229 were detained while pregnant. Because of the torture they suffered, 20 of them aborted and 15 gave birth while in prison. Thirteen women said they were made pregnant by their captors; six of those pregnancies came to term.
Utilized as places of detention and interrogation were the most diverse facilities: Armed Forces bases, police precinct houses, ships, city halls, stadiums, prison camps, jails and secret prisons operated by the DINA and CNI.
Practically everyone who testified before the Commission stated that they were detained with extreme violence, some in front of their children, in the middle of the night, with shouts, blows and threats of death made to the detainee and other family members, creating an atmosphere of terror and anguish.
Although prison conditions varied, detainees generally slept on the floor, without a mattress or blanket; they were deprived of food and water or were given scant and awful food. They lived in crowded and unhealthy conditions, without access to toilets or baths, and were subjected to constant humiliation and abuses of power.
[At DINA facilities] daily life was characterized by insalubrious physical conditions and constant psychological pressure on the prisoners, who were kept tied up, blindfolded and in total uncertainty. At all times, they were exposed to brutal interrogations.
Of the total number of witnesses, 23,856 were men; 3,399 were women. Of the younger detainees, 766 were between 16 and 17 years old; 226 were between 13 and 15, and 88 were 12 years old and younger.
In addition to inflicting physical trauma, the torture left psychological consequences.
Most witnesses described behavioral, emotional and psychosocial effects. Many said they had felt — and still feel — insecure and fearful, humiliated, ashamed and guilty; depressed, anxiety-ridden and hopeless. Some persons mentioned alterations in their concentration and memory; others cited conflicts, crises and breakups within their families, as well as conjugal problems. They also mentioned the loss of reference groups and social networks. Most victims mentioned sleep disturbances and chronic insomnia, as well as behavioral inhibitions, phobias and fears.

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

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