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Chile may compensate Pinochet victims
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-11-29 13:52
Lagos said he made up his mind after studying a gruesome report on torture
during Pinochet's 1973-90 regime. The report was prepared by a commission that
heard testimonies from 35,000 people. The commission accepted 28,000 of those
testimonies as true.
However, Lagos cautioned that "These measures should not be seen as an insult
to the armed forces" that ruled with Pinochet.
Pinochet's right-wing dictatorship fiercely suppressed leftists, dissidents
and others perceived as opponents, imprisoning, exiling, torturing and killing
thousands. Many of them simply disappeared.
The report on torture was the second to be compiled since the restoration of
civilian rule in 1990. A 1991 examination focused on the abductions and deaths
of dissidents, stating that 3,197 people died for political reasons during the
Pinochet regime.
Lagos called reading the report "an experience that has no precedent in the
world."
He said he would ask Congress to approve compensations for the victims,
including pensions of $190 a month. In addition, victims and their relatives
will get housing and health benefits from the state.
Politicians both pro-government and from the opposition anticipated support
for the presidential proposal to Congress. But human rights groups reacted with
frustration.
"This is just a partial solution," said Liliana Mason, member of an
association of former political prisoners. "I do not think this is enough. We
wanted truth, but also justice."
There was no immediate reaction from Pinochet or his associates, but when
Lagos received the report earlier this month, retired Gen. Guillermo Garin, the
former dictator's spokesman, said the report would "reopen wounds in our
society."
The president did not disclose details of the testimonies included in the
report, which will be published on the Internet, but he called them "shocking."
He said virtually all 3,400 women interviewed by the commission claimed to have
suffered some kind of sexual abuse.
Published reports have disclosed some of the torture methods described by the
victims, including widespread use of electricity, sexual abuses including the
use of animals, beatings and simulated firing squads.
"How can we explain such horror?" Lagos asked. "I do not have an answer."
Lagos said the report aims "at healing wounds, not reopening them."
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