The armed forces headed by General Augusto Pinochet took power in Chile from the elected government of President Salvador Allende in a bloody military coup on 11 September 1973. In recent years, the courts have not applied the amnesty law. However, its continued presence in the domestic law is incompatible with Chile’s international human rights obligations. In 1991 a National Commission for Truth and Reconciliation Report (Rettig Commission) documented 2,296 people were killed for political reasons, including almost a thousand cases of enforced disappearances. In 2004 and 2005 a National Commission on Political Imprisonment and Torture report (Valech Commission) found that 28,459 people were arrested for political reasons and that most of them were victims of torture. The commission was reopened in 2010 to assess further cases of enforced disappearance, political killings, political imprisonment and torture. The total number of people officially recognized as disappeared in Chile or killed between 1973 and 1990 stands at 3,216 and survivors of political imprisonment and/or torture at 38,254.
Posted on: Wed, 11 Sep 2013 02:21:52 +0000
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