SANTIAGO, Chile —
The Valech Report, officially titled The National Commission on Political Imprisonment and Torture Report, was made public yesterday (November 29, 2004) by Bishop Sergio Valech, the head of the eight-member panel commission into abuses committed in Chile between 1973 and 1990 by agents of Augusto Pinochet's military regime. It was prepared by the National Commission on Political Imprisonment and Torture at the request of the president, and it is freely available to the public as a document on the Internet.
The report was based on testimonies given to the commission by more than 35,000 people. A little over 27,000 of those testimonies were regarded as legitimate by the commission.
On addressing the nation on November 28, 2004, president Ricardo Lagos said he would propose a bill that will provide compensation to the victims.
Most witnesses described behavioral, emotional and psychosocial effects. Many said they had felt — and still feel — insecure and fearful, humiliated, ashamed and guilty; depressed, anxiety-ridden and hopeless. Some persons mentioned alterations in their concentration and memory; others cited conflicts, crises and breakups within their families, as well as conjugal problems. They also mentioned the loss of reference groups and social networks. Most victims mentioned sleep disturbances and chronic insomnia, as well as behavioral inhibitions, phobias and fears.
This Commission heard testimony from 3,399 women, almost all of whom said they were the object of sexual violence; 316 said they were raped. Of the latter, 229 were detained while pregnant. Because of the torture they suffered, 20 of them aborted and 15 gave birth while in prison. Thirteen women said they were made pregnant by their captors; six of those pregnancies came to term.
The full report, in Spanish, can be found here.
Excerpts from the report as translated by The Miami Herald [1].
Share this: 






This page is archived, and is no longer publicly editable.
Got a correction? Add the template {{editprotected}} to the talk page along with your corrections, and it will be brought to the attention of the administrators.
Please note that due to our archival policy, we will not alter or update the content of articles that are archived, but will only accept requests to make grammatical and formatting corrections.
Note that some listed sources or external links may no longer be available online due to age.
Got a correction? Add the template {{editprotected}} to the talk page along with your corrections, and it will be brought to the attention of the administrators.
Please note that due to our archival policy, we will not alter or update the content of articles that are archived, but will only accept requests to make grammatical and formatting corrections.
Valech Report released