By Terry Cannon

I, the southern Chilean province of Li-
hares, not far from the small town of
arral, there is a ‘‘model farm”’ called
_ Colonia Dignidad (Dignity Colony).
’ Founded as a “home for abandoned and
Orphaned children,’’ Colonia Dignidad
1S a large farm, about 7,500 acres, and
+Tuns to the Argentine border.

_._ The agricultural atmosphere, its
founder Paul Schaefer said, would
~ facilitate “the healing of the hurt soul of
the'’child and its bringing up.” The work
of the colony has been praised by Chi-
lean authorities, including President
Pinochet and Adolpho Yankelowich of
the Chilean Mission to the UN, who
_ Called it ‘a nice place’’ whose people do
4 a “good job.” :

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_ by German emigres. Only German is
_ Spoken there. The colony is econom-
_ ically self-sufficient, containing large
_ tarms, factories, an electric power sta-
» tion, a hospital, a school, mills and a
_ Quarry. Its members still maintain con-
_ tact with the Federal Republic of Ger-
_ Many (West Germany), and it has been
_ Visited on several occasions by Erich
| Straetling, the FRG ambassador of

 Zation.”

__ Thehospital onthe farm is especially
_ Well-equipped, with all the best in mod-
€rn medical technology and virtually all
_ Medicine and drugs.

_ _ The rooms beneath the hospital are
€qually well-equipped. They are her-
Metically sealed and completely sound-
Proof. The people in these rooms wear
leather hoods sealed to their faces with
Chemical adhesive. No one can hear
| Melrscreams.

‘Center, run by German Nazis.
; € colony’s founder, Paul Schaefer,
_ &stablished his first “home for needy
Children’ in Siegburg, West Germany,
In the early fifties. It too supported itself
With a string of stores and companies,
°perated by the members who-donated
_ “ieir wages to the community.

aefer was the community’s guru.

~
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Colonia Dignidad is peopled entirely

hile, who praised its ‘‘efficient organi--

Colonia Dignidadis a Chilean torture

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- “He was and is the minister to whom we

all went for confesion,”’ a member said
in 1966. ‘By saying all our thoughts to
him ... the dependency on him grew
more and more. A religious feeling was
growing in our hearts, and we believed
this was the only way to eternal life.
Knowing that, the fear of being lost if we
left the group grew.”’ .
Schaefer raised psychological man-
ipulation to a high level. The school was
surrounded by a high fence. Members
were not allowed to speak to anyone out-
side the group. The rooms in the house
were bugged and wired with loudspeak-
ers. Phone calls and letters were con-
trolled.

By the early sixties, Schaefer was in
legal troubles and was prosecuted for
sexually abusing a child. He thought it

_ best to leave the country and took his
group to Chile, where in 1961 they had
bought a large farm, Colonia Dignidad,
to further their work with ‘‘orphaned
and abandoned children.”

For the next 10 years they built up

_ their colony. Life at the farm, according

to several members who escaped, was
like a Nazi concentration camp. Two
teenagers are known to have been
beaten to death, but a quick bribe and
political contacts in high places hushed
the scandal. Punishment was of three
types: hard labor, beating and the injec-
tion of drugs. _-

Then came the fascist coup of Sep-
tember 1973 — and Colonia Dignidad

(och oo eT Te | ATV

A Nazi
torture
camp,
in Chile

_joined the government, specifically the

DINA, the secret police. Until recently,

the only eyewitnesses to what went on at -

the colony were several political pris-
oners who were tortured there and later
fled into exile. But last year, a DINA
agent, Juan Mufidz Alarcén unexpec-
tedly approached a Chilean church
group.

Mufiéz Alarcén wanted “‘to die with a
peaceful conscience,”’ he said, and gave
a full-confession. In it he revealed that

many of the ‘‘disappeared”” — Chilean —

patriots who have been kidnapped by
the DINA and vanished — are being held
at Colonia Dignidad.

“T also want to make absolutely

clear, formally swear,” he said, ‘‘that

some of the prisoners are alive, though
in bad physical condition with many of
them at the point of madness due to the
very hard treatment they have under-
gone. I refer especially to Carlos Lorca
(General Secretary of the Socialist
Youth) and Ezeqiel Ponce (leader of the
Longshore union) who was head of the
Socialist Party inside Chile . . . they are
at Colonia Dignidad in the second -
pavillion. I also want to refer to Tolosa
of the Communist Youth and the Central
Committee, who . .. was terribly and
barbarously tortured.” Shortly after his
confession, Mufiéz Alarecén was mur-
dered by the DINA:

A 1976 report by the UN’s Economic
and Social Council describes what goes
on at the ‘‘model farm:”’

“In Colonia Dignidad prisoners have
allegedly been subjected to different
‘experiments’ without any interroga-
tion: to dogs trained to commit sexual
aggressions and destroy sexual organs
of both sexes; to ‘tests’ on the limits of
resistance to different methods of tor-
ture (resistance to beatings, electricity,
hanging, etc.) ; toexperiments designed
to drive detainees insane through ad-
ministration -of drugs; to prolonged
periods of isolation or other sub-human
conditions.

“Tt is noteworthy that in this camp
prisoners allegedly hear nothing from
their captors other than the orders for
torture. In Colonia Dignidad there ap-

pears to be a torture center of a particu- _

lar kind in a specially equipped place
underground. . .Inthese cells torturers
allegedly carry out interrogations over
a closed-circuit radio system, with the
detainees naked and tied to their berths
while electrical shocks are applied.”’
DINA agent Mufiéz Alarcén was
trained at Colonia Dignidad, he said, in
the art of ‘‘hunting people, interrogat-
ing them, torturing them and killing

- them.” The torturers at the colony are

trained by Brazilian specialists. The
farm has its own airstrip; planes arrive

and leave, some from across the un-

patrolled border of Argentina.

Colonia Dignidad maintains radio
contact with the rest of Chile and with its
supporters in West Germany. Among
the supporters on which it can appar-
ently count is the German government.
Erich Straetling, the FRG ambassador,
has actively covered up and denied all
charges that the farm is a laboratory for
torture. aie

Straetling, interestingly, is the
former FRG ambassador to South Af-
rica. Chile reportedly gets 40% of its

arms from South Africa, weapons that

the apartheid\regime purchases from
the FRG, Israel and Great Britain. The
FRG, South Africa and Chile are pres-
sing for the formation of a South Atlan-
tic Treaty Organization, which would be
the NATO of the South.

Colonia Dignidad, a hell-hole on the
Argentine border, final home of Chile’s
‘“‘disappeared,’’ staffed by German
Nazis, is only part of a longer chain.

José Venturelli

u £ 1 te serge fi AR “df
aug and ab woiseisbiaaes = NY =

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—SEPTEMBER 22, 1978—Page 7