Global IssuesRIGHTS-CHILE: False Disappearances Trigger Debate on Truth Commissions
A debate is on in Chile as to whether to reopen the truth commissions that documented the victims of the 1973-1990 dictatorship, after four cases of false disappearances were confirmed.
"There are thousands of accredited cases of people killed, tortured and ‘disappeared’ (during the regime). If four errors were made, that’s nothing," retired judge Juan Guzmán, who is now director of the Human Rights Centre at the private Central University, told IPS.
In his view, the news of the mistakes is being blown out of proportion with the objective of "politically smearing" everyone who has taken part in the search for the truth about what happened to the victims of forced disappearance, and in the effort to bring their torturers and killers to justice.
Guzmán, who is known in Chile for his unsuccessful attempt to try former dictator General Augusto Pinochet (1915-2006), also believes the controversy is aimed at sullying the centre-left Coalition of Parties for Democracy, which has been in power since 1990, and its future candidate for the December 2009 presidential elections.
The 1991 National Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the 2004 National Commission on Political Imprisonment and Torture, both of which were created by Coalition governments, identified more than 3,000 opponents of the de facto regime who were murdered and "disappeared" and 35,000 who were tortured during the 17-year dictatorship.
On Monday, the Santiago Appeals Court accepted the government’s request to designate a special judge, Carlos Gajardo, to investigate the four cases.
The possible criminal charges associated with the cases will be studied by the Public Prosecutor’s Office and the State Defence Council.
On Tuesday, government spokesman Francisco Vidal reported that socialist President Michelle Bachelet had decided not to reopen the truth commissions by decree.
Any new evidence that emerges will be reviewed by the Interior Ministry’s Human Rights Programme, he added.
But Congress will continue to debate a controversial bill that would create the Human Rights Institute, which would consider the reopening of the truth commissions for a six-month period to review cases of victims of forced disappearance and political prisoners who were not taken into account by the two commissions.
However, the commissions would not review cases that have already been accredited, said Vidal.
The Group of Relatives of the Detained-Disappeared (AFDD) "proposes the creation of a subsecretariat of human rights, answering to the Interior Ministry, which would engage in an ongoing process of documentation of cases," the group's secretary-general Mireya García told IPS.
The AFDD is opposed to the creation of the Human Rights Institute "because it would not provide what we need, which is an integral human rights policy that takes into account all aspects, including justice," said García.
She concurred with Guzmán that the news of the four cases of people who turned out not to be missing has been artificially magnified.
"It is good to have transparency with respect to errors, we have no problems with that," she said. "But we believe these isolated cases are being magnified to the detriment of the hundreds of cases that have not yet been certified.
"What is truly scandalous is that 35 years after the military coup, we still have not found the detained-disappeared. That is a source of constant concern for us," said the activist.
The controversy broke out in November, when Germán Cofré, a Chilean who was supposedly "disappeared" in 1973, entered the country from Argentina, where he had been living for the last 35 years. Until then, his family in Chile had been receiving the compensation granted to victims and survivors of the dictatorship.
After that, the cases of Carlos Rojas, who is also reportedly alive and living in Argentina, and Edgardo Palacios, a former socialist political prisoner who died in 2006 as a homeless person, were reported.
Their families, who were receiving pension benefits from the state, said they had no idea what had happened to them.
The fourth case was quite different. Emperatriz Villagra, who was reported as "detained-disappeared" after the 1973 coup in which Pinochet overthrew socialist president Salvador Allende, had actually died in childbirth in 1955. Her family received no economic support. Judge Guzmán himself cleared up the confusion when the case emerged.
Of the four cases confirmed by the authorities, "there has been only one, as far as I know, in which the family has illegally taken advantage of the situation, which is the case of the Cofrés," said Guzmán.
But on Monday, Karla Rubilar, a legislator with the National Renewal party, which forms part of the right-wing opposition alliance, claimed that there are eight, not just four, cases of false disappearances.
She cited the case of journalist Juan Manuel Bertolo. According to his daughter Solange, Bertolo died of a heart attack in 1990, but in 1994 she found out that his name was on the memorial to the "detained-disappeared" in the National Cemetery. She blamed that on a former girlfriend of her father, who belonged to the co-governing Socialist Party.
After complicated paperwork, Bertolo’s name was removed from the memorial, Solange told the local newspaper La Tercera.
"As a woman who suffered this pain myself, but also because of my responsibility as president, I will not allow people to take advantage (of the compensation), let alone allow anyone to trifle with the suffering of many families who are still waiting for truth and justice," Bachelet said Monday.
The president instructed the authorities to complete the review of cases that has been underway since 2005, "to clarify any possible doubts."
"We must not confuse things here," she said. "The human rights violations are a national disgrace that has forever been engraved on the history of our country, and we will not allow that historical truth to be thrown into doubt."
Bachelet called on all political sectors not to take advantage of the scandal and "to be very responsible with this part of our history."
Right-wing opposition leaders have questioned the eventual reopening of the truth commissions.
"The governments of the Coalition, and in particular the left wing of the Coalition, have always tried to use human rights issues in some kind of biased manner during election campaigns to generate division in our country," said Independent Democratic Union (UDI) legislator Felipe Salaberry.
National Renewal lawmaker Lily Pérez said the truth commissions "gave official recognition to the human rights violations committed in our country" and "provided reparations to victims or their families," which means that "reopening the two commissions would imply questioning the way they operated and would undermine their importance to our peaceful national coexistence."
The scandal of the false disappearances is not helping "to create a greater sense of solidarity among Chileans, or to help bring about reconciliation in the country," said Guzmán, who is in favour of reopening the commissions because he says he knows of "hundreds of cases" that were not recognised and listed due to a variety of reasons.
© Inter Press Service (2008) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service