Chile to compensate for torture

2004-11-29 13:27

Santiago - Chilean President Ricardo Lagos has said his government will pay compensation to about 35 000 victims of torture during the dictatorship of general Augusto Pinochet, who seized power in a coup in 1973.

The payments will reach 112 000 pesos, or about 215 US dollars, per person per month.

"The government must do something to alleviate the pain of those who have suffered so much," the socialist president said in an address to the nation late on Sunday. "We have to take measures to heal the wounds, not to reopen them."

The announcement came after Lagos studied a new report on the use of torture by the Pinochet regime that remained in power until 1990.

The document, prepared by a commission chaired by Bishop Sergio Valech, contains the testimony of 35 000 people, who were arrested and thrown in jail under military rule.

The commission has accepted 28 000 of these testimonies as credible.

Ninety-four percent of them said they had suffered torture in detention, while 3 400 women testified they had suffered sexual abuse of one kind or another.

Lagos said that political prisons and use of torture were a brutal violation of people's rights that had "affected all facets of their lives, as well as those of their family members."

The military coup mounted by Pinochet to save Chile from "the threat of communism" resulted in the death of the country's elected president, Salvador Allende.

As many as 3 000 opponents of the military regime perished in the wake of the military takeover, including 1 198 people who disappeared without a trace, according to human rights advocates.

- AFP