Scientists and Human Rights in Chile Report of a Delegation (1985) / Chapter Skim
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Pages 7-36
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From page 7... ...
The committee was told that many of the people who were detained and subsequently sent into internal exile without charges are believed to have been banished for political reasons: i.e., they voiced criticism of the government or its practices, they are human rights or labor union activists, they were involved in demonstrations against the govern ment/ or they are members of opposition or banned political parties. According to the Comision Chilena de Derechos Humanos J a group made up mostly of lawyers who work to protect and promote human rights, more than 31,000 people were detained for political reasons in November and December 1984: 28,459 in November and 3,417 in December.
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From page 8... ...
piled by the Vicars de la Solidaridad, a highly respected group that is active in human rights work and run by the Catholic church, 733 people were banished in 1984s 136 of them in October, 426 in November, and 139 in December. Transitory Articles 24 and 41 are applicable in cases of banishment.
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From page 9... ...
While he was not able to provide the dates on which they had been freed, over the course of the next few days human rights organizations gave the delegates the release dates of those who had already been freed and the expected release dates of those still believed to be in internal exile. Individual Cases As mentioned above, prior to the departure of the delegation to Chile, the committee sent the Chilean authorities the names of a number of colleagues who had reportedly been banished to internal exile.
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From page 10... ...
A private organization, the Comision Chilena de Derechos IIumanos campaigns against violations of human rights, including torture, arranges treatment for torture victims, and takes legal action on their behalf.
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From page 11... ...
Governmental repres In August 1983, he examined and provided medical assistance to four trade union leaders who were seriously tortured while held in solitary confinement by the Central Nacional de Informaciones (CNI) , Chile's secret police.3 He said that the examination of these torture victims was the most dreadful experience in his life and that since then he has worked in defense of human rights.
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From page 12... ...
. This provocation was particularly alarming in view of the kidnapping and murder, by armed men in civilian clothes, of a human rights worker and two other people at the end of March in Santiago.4 According to an article in the local Arica newspaper, La Estrella de Arica, on April 9, 1985, entitled "Once Dirigentes Amenazados de Muerte" ("Eleven Opposition Leaders Threatened with Death")
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From page 13... ...
Dr. Godoy was arrested the following day and taken by security forces to Santiago along with a professor and a lawyer, where the group was joined by the others from Arica who had been arrested.
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From page 14... ...
we were constantly being visited he r~n'= ~ ~ _ _= _ _ sentat~ves ot several professional associations. They included, of course, doctors, attorneys, teachers, church organizations from the Accion Fraterna of the Archbishops See, the Commission on Human Rights, different labor unions, and many outstanding public figures, including humble farmers.
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From page 15... ...
According to information obtained by the delegates, Fuentes was expected to be released from banishment on March 26, 1985. Ada Cam Casti llo and Manuel Ala rcon Valdi vJa, Mathematicians In early December 1985 the committee sent telegrams to the Chilean authorities requesting information on
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From page 16... ...
The delegates learned that he had been freed, but the date of his release is not known. Jaime Perez de Arc Araya, Economi st CNI agents reportedly arrested Jaime Perez de Arc Araya in Santiago on December 13, 1984, and took him to a CNI detention center.
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From page 17... ...
Name Registration No. Barberis Yori, Victor Barcelo Amado, Nelly Patricia Behm Rosas, Hugo Carrera Villavicencio, Maria Elena Cerda Catalan, Moises Cid Palacios, Patricia Condeza Vaccaro, Edgardo 3779 7906 417 4122 2454 7094 6089
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From page 18... ...
A physician and professor of medicine at the Universidad de Chile and at the Universidad Catolica de Chile, Hector Orrego Matte, was dismissed from the Universidad de Chile in 1974 for allegedly being responsible for "violence and dangerous acts." He became a professor of pharmacology and physiology at the University of Toronto.
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From page 19... ...
Fresno reportedly believes that the kidnappers belong to a branch of the security forces because of the character of the detention, i.e., interrogation to obtain "political information." According to declarations made by Arriagada to the Vicars de la Solidaridad, he did nothing illegal and plans to continue legal action.
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From page 20... ...
The case was then returned to the Supreme Court. A complaint was filed against DINA for illegal arrest and detention of Contreras Maluje.
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From page 21... ...
Letters of inquiry regarding the details of Iriarte's detention sent by the committee to the Chilean authori It is not clear ties in 1982 were never answered. where Iriarte spent his term of banishment nor how long he was there, however, according to information received by the delegation from the Cicada de la Solidaridad, Iriarte is now free.
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From page 22... ...
Rafael Retamal, the elected president of the Supreme Court, also commented on the question of habeas corpus under the state of siege. He told the delegates that habeas corpus is very restricted under various emergency decrees, including the state of siege.
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The delegates asked whether anyone had been brought to trial for torturing political detainees, and Irarrazaval cited two casess one in 1982 in the northern part of Chile that involved three security agents, and another in 1984 that reportedly involved two policemen. He said these agents were tried by the civil courts, condemned to death, and executed.
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From page 24... ...
The delegates were also told that, since the 1984 declaration of the state of siege, the Supreme Court had ordered the lower courts to accept writs of habeas corpus and to investigate cases of alleged torture. Staff members of the Vicaria de la Solidaridad told the delegates that when people come to report that they have been tortured they must .~; an sworn, notarized to present their .
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From page 25... ...
All the victims photographed had come to the Vicars to file a complaint against the Chilean security forces and to be examined and treated. At a meeting with the Fundacion de Ayuda Social de las Iglesias Cristianas (FASIC)
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From page 26... ...
During the demonstrations, selected individuals were often tortured intensively for a few days, to create a sense of panic, fear, and intimidation within the general population. Staff members at the Vicars de la Solidaridad and FASIC told the delegates that while in the mid-1970s torture was usually attributed to the secret police, it is now practiced by all branches of the security forces.
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From page 27... ...
In other cases, he said, "some physicians have suffered retaliation after denouncing or certifying acts of torture." At the meeting held with members of the Colegio Medico, the delegates specifically requested information on reports of the involvement of medical professionals in torture. They were told that in 1983, when the Colegio Medico reviewed and amended its code of ethics, two provisions dealing with torture were included.
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From page 28... ...
Dr. Trejo said that shortly after the all; ~1 ; n== Or releases/ a member of the ethics committee received a call from the director of a military hospital who requested that the committee support his efforts protest an order that hospital staff attend to victims of torture and mistreatment under conditions that are proscribed in the new guidelines.
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From page 29... ...
Carlos Hernan Perez Castro, was suspended for a year from the colegio for his role in certifying that Maria de Los Angeles Sanhueza Ruin, who had been interrogated in March 1982, was in good physical condition upon release from a secret detention center when, in fact, she had been tortured. The colegio is expected to rule on the cases of the four other accused physicians later this year.
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From page 30... ...
In 1979 the Supreme Court of Chile appointed special judges to investigate the unresolved cases of the disappeared' to date, no one has been indicted. The committee's delegates submitted the names of disappeared scientists to the Chilean authorities and requested information regarding their whereabouts and legal situation (see Appendix A)
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From page 31... ...
(Where Are They'd. These books nrovi~ Retailed documentation on 478 cases of = ~ people, many of whom were political dissidents, who disappeared in Chile between 1973 and 1977, often while in the custody of a-tents of the government security forces.
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From page 32... ...
, legal administration, and from the departments of Medicine, Economic Sciences, Basic Sciences, Philosophy, Humanities and the Main Building (La Tercera, 5.1.85~." The delegates were told by Maximo Pacheco, vice president of the nongovernmental Chilean Commission on Human Rights and a former dean of the Law School at the University of Chile, that 80 percent of the law professors at the University of Chile were
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From page 33... ...
Vial, a highly respected biologist who is one of t'ne few nonmilitary rectors of a university in Chile, had just been appointed to his position, reportedly as a result of pressure on the Chilean government from the Catholic church. At the Escuela de Negocios de Valparaiso (Business School of Valpara~so)
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From page 34... ...
Caceres said that he did not know of any professors at the University of Santa Maria who had been fired since 1983, but in the first few years following the coup many had lost their jobs for political reasons. He said that in the last ten years some economists at the Universidad de Chile had had various problems.
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From page 35... ...
She was dismissed from her position as professor of mathematics at the Universidad de Santiago, without explanation but presumably for political reasons, in January 1985.12 Ada Cam Castillo Ada Cam Castillo is a mathematician who received a master's degree (1980) from the Universidad Tecnica del Estado.
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From page 36... ...
36 instructor of mathematics at the Universidad de Antofagasta in November 1984 at the time of his arrest (see above, "Individual Cases"~.
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