Landmark ruling opens door to better compensation for torture victims

By Tom Hyne
Published On : Tue, Nov 25th, 2014

Former political prisoners tortured during Pinochet regime demand compensation from Chilean government.

Chile is still coming to terms with its violent past and commemorates the tortured, murdered and disappeared every year with a candle-lighting ceremony. Photo by Charlotte Karrlson-Willis / The Santiago Times.

Thirty-one former captives — “political dissidents” detained and tortured on Dawson Island, Patagonia, in the days following Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s coup — are calling on the government to follow a recent court order to compensate them for past injuries.

Dawson Island served as a labor camp for political dissidents in the early days of the dictatorship following the 1973 military coup. According to the Report from the Chilean National Commission on Truth and Reconciliation (Rettig Report) the island housed 99 political prisoners who were forced to work under gruelling conditions.

On Wednesday Nov. 19, a Chilean court ordered the state to pay a total of US$7.5 million to the 31 former inmates —but some have expressed concerns that the ruling will be overturned if the government appeals to the Supreme Court. Amnesty International estimates 40,000 people were tortured or detained for political reasons during Pinochet’s time in power. The success of this case represents progress made in the search for justice for their plight.

Victor Rosas Vergara — vice president of the National Organization of Former Political Prisoners of Chile and the human rights lawyer leading the charge — called the decision a landmark ruling.

“It was a historic decision, all of the requests that have been made by political prisoners had been rejected by the court until now,” he told press. “These demands are invariably rejected because they say the victims should have made them in the first four years of having been made prisoner, right in the middle of the dictatorship.”
The Supreme Court has also recognized the flaws of a compensation process that requires all claims to go through a court of law and has vowed to investigate legislation that would see victims receive their dues without going through the judicial system.

Maria José Eva Parada — a researcher for Amnesty International — outlined another struggle for those seeking compensation.

“There is still no definition of the crime of torture in Chile,” Parada told press. “It has no mandate to investigate torture, and this is a shortcoming that restricts access to justice and, in effect, results in perpetual impunity in cases of torture.”

With all claims resulting in long legal battles, four of the 31 Dawson Island claimants died before the ruling was announced.

Osvaldo Puccio — one of the first to arrive on Dawson Island and former spokesperson for Ricardo Lagos’ government in 2005 — explained what the compensation would represent to those who received it.

“I think that if there is a compensation, it is the pride that each of us feel that, in a moment that was painful for Chile, we were on the side of what was right,” he said.

As Chile comes to terms with its bloody past, there is a growing movement calling for those who carried out Pinochet’s orders to be punished. Former Mayor of Providencia Cristián Labbé was arrested in October for the role he played in the torture carried out at Tejas Verdes — another notorious detention center.

By Tom Hyne
Copyright 2014 – The Santiago Times