©Amnesty International
Dedication written by Amnesty International’s Secretary General Irene Khan during her visit to the Park for Peace Villa Grimaldi:
Amnesty International stands in solidarity with the victims, survivors, their friends and family of all those who were tortured here. We share the collective memory and we share the collective responsibility to ensure truth, justice and reparation.
We will not forget and we will work with you to make sure that never again shall such a tragedy happens.
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Irene Khan talks to a former detainee at Villa Grimaldi ©Amnesty International
Villa Grimaldi was a complex of buildings used for the interrogation and torture of political prisoners by DINA, the Chilean secret police, during the government of Augusto Pinochet. The complex was located in Peñalolén, in the outskirts of Santiago, and was in operation from mid-1974 to mid-1978.
About 5,000 detainees were brought to Villa Grimaldi during this time, at least 240 of whom were “disappeared” or killed by DINA. The location is now the site of the Villa Grimaldi Park for Peace, a National Monument dedicated to human rights and the memory of the victims of DINA.
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Flying into Santiago ©Amnesty International
I’m of a generation for whom the 11th of September was a turning point long before 9/11(of 2001). Only months after I was born in 1973, the coup d’etat took place in Chile, forever changing the psyche for many, not just In Latin America, but beyond.
I re-read Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s tale of “La Aventura de Miguel Littín clandestino en Chile” - the story of the reknown chilean film director Miguel Littín who was on a list of 5,000 people who lived in forced exile during the Pinochet regime. Miguel Littín risked it all to go back to Chile in 1985 to film the reality of life under the military dictatorship and Garcia Marquez’s reportage makes appropriate reading on the plane from Sao Paulo to Santiago.
Continue reading ‘En route to Chile’
