Pinochet was torturing leftists, suspected leftists, people who lived next door to leftists, etc., threw a lot of light on the subject when he said there were ELEVEN torture centers in Chile then. I learned later, researching that there were also three torture ships plying the waters off the coast of Chile, out where no one could hear them screaming, and certainly no one was going to be coming to rescue them.
One of the people they tortured was an English priest, Michael Woodward, and they killed him. Why this didn't become an international incident is beyond my comprehension, but as you recall, Margaret Thatcher and Pinochet were close friends, and she seemed to look after him and his wife when they left Chile to stay in England to avoid trial in the later days.
http://laprensa-sandiego.org.nyud.net:8090/archieve/2006/june02-06/ship.jpgHere's one article about the torture ship Esmeralda:
June 2, 2006
La Esmeralda, Haunted by Torture and Abuse, Docks in San Diego
By Michael Klam
Some background: On Sept. 11, 1973 Gen. Augusto Pinochet and his military junta, funded by the CIA, seized power in a coup d’etat that would lead to decades of large-scale repressions and human rights violations in Chile.
In the weeks after the coup, La Esmeralda (also known as the White Lady, a symbol of Chilean pride that continues as a training ship for young recruits) was used to imprison, beat, sexually assault, electrocute and water torture those who sympathized with the ousted socialist president, Salvador Allende.
The Chilean Navy only recently admitted that detainees were tortured. The navy’s Adm. Miguel Ángel Vergara said in 2004 that the navy “profoundly regrets” the abuses. Vergara did not acknowledge that the navy as an institution was at fault, saying, “Those personal and ethical responsibilities are strictly personal.”
In essence, he suggested that the superior officers were not to blame.
A November 2004 report printed in the Chilean newspaper, La Nación, said the navy “profoundly laments the violation of human rights, in any place and under any circumstance, particularly that which occurred on board the ship, Esmeralda, which is a symbol for all of Chile.”
But the navy still insists that it has no “institutional” responsibility for what happened on the ship or in the many other centers (Academia de Guerra, Cuartel Silva Palma) in which civilians were tortured and assassinated.
More:
http://laprensa-sandiego.org/archieve/2006/june02-06/torture.htmThe article you posted was really good. Paul Schaefer was very much a perv, and a wacko Christian, and a Nazi.
I'm also including an article by a Mother Jones writer on Schaefer which is really long. It does indicate that FINALLY, when this moster was 86 years old, he was convicted of child molestation, and other crimes:
Autumn 2008
The Torture Colony
In a remote part of Chile, an evil German evangelist built a utopia whose members helped the Pinochet regime perform its foulest deeds
By Bruce Falconer
Few outsiders ever gained access to the Colonia while its reclusive leader remained in power. An old Chilean newsreel, however, filmed at Schaefer’s invitation in 1981, provides a rare picture of life inside the community, a utopia in full and happy bloom. The footage shows a bucolic paradise of sunshine and verdant fields set among clean, fast-flowing rivers and snowy peaks. Its German inhabitants improve the land and work their trades. A carpenter assembles a new chair for the Colonia’s school. A woman in a white apron bakes German-style torts and pastries in the kitchen. Teenaged boys clear a new field for planting. Children laugh and splash in a lake. Schaefer himself, wearing a white suit and brown aviator sunglasses, takes the camera crew on a tour. Standing next to the Colonia’s flour mill, he extols the quality of German machinery. “We bought this mill in Europe,” he says in broken Spanish. “It is 60 years old, but we have not had to do any repairs on it.” Even today, this remains one of the only known recordings of his voice. It is crisp and baritone. Back outside, Schaefer leads the television crew to a petting zoo, where the reporter feeds chunks of bread to baby deer and plays with the colonos’ collection of pet owls. The newsreel concludes with a performance by a 15-piece chamber orchestra composed of young, female colonos in flowing white skirts and colorful blouses. The music is beautiful and expertly played.
These images were a reflection of Colonia Dignidad as Schaefer wanted it to be seen. Today, a quarter century later, with Schaefer gone and his utopia open to visitors for the first time, it looks much the same. On a recent trip to Chile, I made the four-hour drive south from Santiago. The village remains an oasis of German tidiness, with blooming flower gardens and perfectly tended copses of willows and pines. As I walked through it, there were very few people on the streets, and those I encountered smiled politely, then quickly retreated indoors. They did not invite conversation. I was reminded of what a Chilean friend, a journalist, had told me as I prepared for my visit. “You will get the uneasy feeling of crossing into some sort of twilight zone,” he had said. “You will see the way they dress, their haircuts. It’s like going back in time to Germany in the 1940s. Even though it is easier to talk to the colonos than it was a few years ago, things are still a long way from being ‘normal.’ Most of them are still quite afraid of speaking openly.”
The truth, so unlikely in this setting, is that Colonia Dignidad was founded on fear, and it is fear that still binds it together. Investigations by Amnesty International and the governments of Chile, Germany, and France, as well as the testimony of former colonos who, over the years, managed to escape the colony, have revealed evidence of terrible crimes: child molestation, forced labor, weapons trafficking, money laundering, kidnapping, torture, and murder. Orchestrated by Paul Schaefer and his inner circle of trusted lieutenants, much of the abuse was initially directed inward as a means of conditioning the colonos to obey Schaefer’s commands. Later, after General Augusto Pinochet’s military junta seized power in Chile, the violence spilled onto the national stage. Schaefer, through an informal alliance with the Pinochet regime, allowed Colonia Dignidad to serve as a torture and execution center for the disposal of enemies of the state. The investigations continue. In the months preceding my visit, police found two large caches of military-grade weapons buried inside the compound. Parts of cars had also been unearthed, their vehicle identification numbers traced back to missing political dissidents. Even as I stood in Schaefer’s house drinking apple juice, elsewhere on the property a police forensics unit was excavating a mass grave thought to contain the decomposed remains of dozens of political prisoners.
More:
http://www.theamericanscholar.org/the-torture-colony/Looks as if when countries DO get a chance to get their evil claws on helpless prisoners, they simply go for broke, and violate them in every way possible, as if their position is, who's going to stop them? Doesn't say a lot for the human race, does it?
We can only hope, somehow, the number of people who would go along with such profound hatred acted out toward others is diminishing over time. Hope is all that's left, apparently.
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