Germany’s president on Tuesday said that he regrets his country’s diplomats failed for years to act on human rights violations at a secretive colony of German immigrants in Chile.
Germany recently ordered documents about Colonia Dignidad, or Dignity Colony, from 1986 until 1996 to be declassified for research purposes. For three decades from 1961, the enclave was the site of torture, slavery and child abuse.
“German diplomats didn’t take seriously the human rights violations at a concrete time,” German President Joachim Gauck said at a joint news conference with Chilean President Michelle Bachelet.
Photo: EPA/WOLFGANG KUMM
The leaders met earlier and Gauck said they spoke about “dark chapters” in their countries’ past.
“We hope that the declassifying of these documents will help contribute to knowing the truth about the many disappeared and executed at Colonia Dignidad and its surroundings,” Bachelet said.
The colony was founded by Paul Schaefer, a former medic in the Luftwaffe. After his World War II service, Schaefer became an evangelical preacher. He fled Germany after being accused of molesting boys at the orphanage he ran and began what became home to hundreds of Germans and Chileans in the enclave about 400km southeast of Santiago.
Schaefer also allowed former Chilean president General Augusto Pinochet’s security forces to operate a clandestine prison on the grounds where they tortured and executed dissidents during the 1973 to 1990 military dictatorship, according to witnesses’ testimony in court documents.
Colony members said married couples were forced to live apart and children were separated from parents. Residents were prevented from leaving. Those who dared to upset Schaefer were subject to electric shocks, high doses of tranquilizers and long periods of isolation.
There were also dozens of allegations of child molestation, leading Schaefer to flee Chile in 1997. He was arrested in Argentina in 2005 and extradited to Chile the same year.
Schaefer died in prison in 2010, while serving time for abusing about 20 children at the colony.
The enclave’s history was featured in a recent movie starring Emma Watson and Daniel Bruehl.
Ukraine’s military intelligence agency and the Pentagon on Monday said that some North Korean troops have been killed during combat against Ukrainian forces in Russia’s Kursk border region. Those are the first reported casualties since the US and Ukraine announced that North Korea had sent 10,000 to 12,000 troops to Russia to help it in the almost three-year war. Ukraine’s military intelligence agency said that about 30 North Korean troops were killed or wounded during a battle with the Ukrainian army at the weekend. The casualties occurred around three villages in Kursk, where Russia has for four months been trying to quash a
FREEDOM NO MORE: Today, protests in Macau are just a memory after Beijing launched measures over the past few years that chilled free speech A decade ago, the elegant cobblestone streets of Macau’s Tap Seac Square were jam-packed with people clamouring for change and government accountability — the high-water mark for the former Portuguese colony’s political awakening. Now as Macau prepares to mark the 25th anniversary of its handover to China tomorrow, the territory’s democracy movement is all but over and the protests of 2014 no more than a memory. “Macau’s civil society is relatively docile and obedient, that’s the truth,” said Au Kam-san (歐錦新), 67, a schoolteacher who became one of Macau’s longest-serving pro-democracy legislators. “But if that were totally true, we wouldn’t
SUPPORT: Elon Musk’s backing for the far-right AfD is also an implicit rebuke of center-right Christian Democratic Union leader Friedrich Merz, who is leading polls German Chancellor Olaf Scholz took a swipe at Elon Musk over his political judgement, escalating a spat between the German government and the world’s richest person. Scholz, speaking to reporters in Berlin on Friday, was asked about a post Musk made on his X platform earlier the same day asserting that only the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party “can save Germany.” “We have freedom of speech, and that also applies to multi-billionaires,” Scholz said alongside Estonian Prime Minister Kristen Michal. “But freedom of speech also means that you can say things that are not right and do not contain
TRUDEAU IN TROUBLE: US president-elect Donald Trump reacted to Chrystia Freeland’s departure, saying: ‘Her behavior was totally toxic, and not at all conducive to making deals Canadian Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland on Monday quit in a surprise move after disagreeing with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau over US president-elect Donald Trump’s tariff threats. The resignation of Freeland, 56, who also stepped down as finance minister, marked the first open dissent against Trudeau from within his Cabinet, and could threaten his hold on power. Liberal leader Trudeau lags 20 points in polls behind his main rival, Conservative Pierre Poilievre, who has tried three times since September to topple the government and force a snap election. “It’s not been an easy day,” Trudeau said at a fundraiser Monday evening, but
RSS