HUMAN RIGHTS REACHES A LOW FOR CHILE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000705900003-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 8, 2011
• Sequence Number: 3
• Publication Date: September 10, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STnT
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/08: CIA-RDP90-00965R000705900003-1
ICLE APPEARED
ON
OPT PAGE -*.# -
SECTtoil I
CHICAGO TRIBUNE
10 September 1985
Human rights reaches a low
for Chile
By. Vincent J. Schodoleld
CHcpo Tribune
SANTIAGO, Chile-Mareela
Pradenas Toro, an 18-year`old lave
student at the University of Chile,
remembers the black-gloved hand
that slammed into her stomach.
Alejandro Herrera, a 19-yeardd
who is studying theology, says he
will never forget the cold steel
knife as it traced a line across his
throat.
Though their "detentions" lasted
only a few hours, the memories
linger.
The two students are among
hundreds of Chileans who have
encountered nameless men who
move about in cars without license es of antd he ptails private ivesof those
they seek.
Officials of human-rights organ
Giza rgymen are con-
-vinced that men nameless men
are in s m service&
And with rev
men have carried out two years of
torture and rea ago govem-
ment o onents.
o human rights situation at
this moment is the worst it has
ever been in the last 12 years,"
said Andres Dominguez Vial, coor-
dinator of Chile's Human Rights
Commission,, referring to the dozen
years of Pinochet's military rule.
Dominguez and officials of a
human-rights group sponsored by
the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of
Santiago, say the most sinister as-
pect of the situation is the govern-
ment's regular use of extralegal
means to intimidate its opponents.
The laws set up by the country's
military junta enable the govern-
ment to arrest and hold citizens
without charge, to deport those
suspected of antigovernment ao-
tivities and to sentence people to
internal ode in one of eight re-
mote areas.
Though there are many similari-
ties to the systematic violation of
human in other countries,
including rights
neighboring Argentina
during the former military junta's
1976-79 campaign against op-
ponents, the situation in Chile has
several unique aspects, experts
say.
For one, the number of people
involved is quite small.
Accordint to Human Rights
Commission statistics, only 18 peo-
ple ? are in internal exile. These
include a former official of the
commission, the vicof
the nation's construction workers
union and the leader of a youth
group.
Dominguez said his organization
has 631 confirmed cases of "disap-
peared" people, who vanish,
without trace and are assumed to
be in government custody or dead.
By comparison, more than 9,000
people disappeared in Argentina's;
"dirty war" after the military
takeover.
Human rights organizations say
there are. 1,000 political prisoners
in Chile, fewer than in some other
Latin American countries.
However, the methods used here
to suppress dissidents are almost
identical to those used elsewhere.
Opposition groups and their
members are spied upon. People
identified as activists are followed;
some are kidnaped and threatened
or tortured.
The church's human-rights
group recently compiled case his-
tories on 31 people who were de-
tained and tortured by unidentified
men believed to be government
agents.
The government has not re-
sponded. officially, it says it has'
no knowledge of such activities.
But the diligent work of an a
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/08: CIA-RDP90-00965R000705900003-1