The Esmeralda - Crime and Impunity
by Fred Bennetts
June 5, 2003
The Crimes
The National Commission of Truth and Reconciliation, set up by the first
government after the restoration of democracy in Chile, published a report in
1991 which was formally accepted by the then President of the Republic, Patricio
Aylwin. Its conclusions regarding the Esmeralda were as follows:
"In the case of the training ship Esmeralda the investigations carried out by
this Commission enabled us to confirm that a special unit of the Navy set itself
up in its interior for the purpose of interrogating those who had been arrested
and were being held on that ship and those who had been brought there from other
naval places of detention. Those interrogations, for the most part, involved
torture and ill-treatment."
The Victims
Michael Woodward, catholic priest, professor of CESCLA - which formed part of
the Catholic University of Valparaiso:
The Rettig Report contained the following statement about the death of Fr.
Michael Woodward: "It has been established that he was arrested by a a naval
patrol in the Cerro de Placeres on 16th September 1973 and that he was tortured
in his place of detention. A Navy doctor tried to give him urgent attention on
the dockside, an area guarded by the Navy, where the training ship Esmeralda and
the cargo ship Lebu were moored. From there he was taken to the Naval Hospital
where he died as the result of "cardio-respiratory failure", the result of his
parlous physical condition"
In his biography of Fr. Michael Woodward ("Blood on the Esmeralda", published by
Downside Abbey Books, 2002), Fr. Edward Crouzet wrote of the testimony about his
death given by Captain Carlos Fanta, Commandent of the cruiser Latorre: " Š.[he]
was in his wardroom at about seven o´clock when an urgent request arrived from
the Esmeralda for a doctor to attend a prisoner who was critically ill. Since
Admiral Merino, the Naval Commander-in-Chief, was away in Santiago, attending a
meeting of the Junta, Fanta was the senior officer in the port that dayŠ..he not
only sent one of the two doctors in his crew to the Esmeralda but ordered him to
report back immediately on his return to the Latorre. The doctorŠ..told the
Captain that the prisoner, a priest from Cerro Placeres, was suffering from
serious internal injuries, his internal organs were ruptured and haemorrhaging.
He could not live for more than another hour at the most. Dr. Gleiser had
ordered him to be taken to the Naval Hospital. He told Fanta that the injuries
were undoubtedly caused by severe blows to the body".
Subsequently Dr. Gleiser (now Admiral Gleiser) denied this statement. Captain
Fanta was forced to resign from the Navy in October 1973 and was persecuted by
the military junta.
María Eliana Comené, student of the Catholic University of Valparaiso, arrested
on 14th September. Testimony published by Punto Final, November 1999:
"They held me all day in the barracks at Viña, and from there they took us to
the barracks in ValparaísoŠŠŠAt nightime, at about 10 p.m., we were taken in a
bus with the lights switched off and without allowing us to look outside, to the
training ship Esmeralda. There we were subjected to the most cruel treatment by
more than a dozen young men whose faces were painted black and hooded. They
obliged us to take off all our clothes and they searched us violently,
humiliating us with insults and sexual abuse."
"There was violence 24 hours a day on the Esmeralda. Our fellow prisoners were
taken out, beaten and tortured, returning bruised and vomiting blood." Later
María Eliana was taken to the Lebu and later still to the Naval War Academy. "I
was there for four weeks, they took me out every night to interrogate me, they
hit me on the ears with their hands, they applied electric current to my tongue
and my vagina. They took us out to amuse themselves, to abuse us sexually. They
raped us on a massive scale."
"When I was already in jail I showed signs of a serious infection, with vomiting
and fever. It was gonorrh¦a, and it was impossible to know how and when it had
been contracted, in the Esmeralda, in the Lebu, or in the Academy. All I know is
that I ended up with the lining of my uterus totally and absolutely destroyed"
Testimony of a person tortured on the Esmeralda. This testimony was
rendered before Amnesty
International. The victim's name has been withheld by AI:
He was arrested on the night of 12th September, 1973.They took him to the
training ship Esmeralda where, without even questioning him, they beat him
brutally while his hands were tied behind his back, together with three other
men whose names he never knew. They beat him all over his body but principally
on the torso and on his feet. On that occasion they beat him with their fists,
with rifles, sticks, and their feet. They repeated this (again without
questioning him) four times during the night which he spent there. He calculates
that each beating lasted 15 or 20 minutes. This took place on the night of the
12th September through to the morning of the 13th September 1973
Rosa Huerta. Testimony published by Punto Final, November 1999:
"One day I began to menstruate. I had no means of covering this menstruation and
neither did any other woman. At some point somebody passed me a piece of cotton
wool. And they made me enter a washroom with showers in the living area of the
Esmeralda, they pushed me inside. They were standing against all the walls, I
counted eight marines, some of them hooded and others with their faces painted
black. They told me to take my clothes off. I started to take my clothes off and
I left the bottom part on because I had in place the cotton wool which covered
my menstruation. Then when they obliged me to take off even my pants, I said
that I could not do so because I was indisposed. They obliged me to do so and at
that point my woman´s rebelliousness took hold of me, the rebelliousness of a
fighter. No matter how much they tried to make us feel like animals the moment
came at which the dignity of the person rebelled against all that. And my anger
and indignation was so great that I took off my pants, took the cotton wool
covered in blood and thrust it into the face of the lieutenant who was in charge
of the group. After that, by order of the lieutenant, two marines took me, still
naked, from behind and, holding me by the buttocks, bent over and looked up my
anus."
Sergio Vuskovic, Mayor of Valparaiso. Testimony rendered before the Interamerican Human
Rights Commission of the Organization of American States:
"Seven of us are from Valparaíso. All seven of us were tortured on the Esmeralda
for nine days. I want to desccribe one of the tortures which they applied to me:
they left me in underpants and handcuffed my hands behind my back. There was a
post and they tied me to it.They applied electrical discharges to my penis, my
testicles, my torso and my back. In addition, the officers who were
interrogating me beat me some 50 times in the same place with their fistsŠŠ..I
also want to say that I was held for three and a half days in the chaplain´s
berth. They did not allow me to sleep. For six days I could not sleep because
they woke me up every ten minutes, night and day, banging on the door so that I
could not sleep. They also did the following to me: when they took me to be
interrogated, they blindfolded me and the guard who accompanied me placed the
barrel of his pistol against my neck and asked me "Can you swim?" I answered "A
bit" "That´s good because we´re going to throw you overboard"ŠŠWe could hear how
they tortured the others right there where we were. And all this they did to men
and women in the training ship of the Chilean Navy"
Luis Vega, lawyer in the Ministry of the Interior, arrested on 11th December
1973. Affidavit:
They entered the dock area of the port at 21.20 and the policeŠŠhanded them over
to the Captain of the Esmeralda, who, together with the other officers stood at
attention on the upper deck of the Esmeralda, a ship of the Chilean NavyŠ..A
naval guard, without saying a word, gave him a blow on the neck with the butt of
his rifle. Immediately after he hit him again on the right kidney. They then,
with kicks and blows and accompanied by the foulest language it is possible to
imagine, made them enter the living quarters of the naval guardsŠ.Then they
placed him, already naked, in front of a jet of high-pressure sea-water for five
minutes or more. With kicks they took him away from there and knocked him to the
floor again. They tied his hands behind his back with each finger tied
separately. Tied up in this way, they placed him again in front of a strong jet
of sea water. The pressure caused intolerable pain in his head, ears, eyes, and
lungs. Goading them with spears made from wooden stakes tipped with steel they
forced them to stay in front of the jet of water of enormously strong pressure.
All of them were naked. At one point, by his calculation, there were 40 men and
72 women. The naval personnel treated the women in an outrageous way. They
fondled their breasts, hips and thighs. He heard the cries of women and young
people protesting against these outragesŠThey showed himŠan engineer, almost
naked, whose back was lacerated by the effect of electrical discharges which had
thrown him against metal poles. He has salt in his wounds, salt from sea water.
They obliged him (the witness) to stand on his back and press the salt into his
wounds with the palms of his feet.
On Saturday 15th most of the menŠŠ.were taken to the merchant marine ship
MaipoŠ.They returned to the EsmeraldaŠThey had to walk on top of hundreds of
bodies of men and women stretched out face donward on the dock. Some were
kneeling with their hands behind their necks, others were lying on the docks in
groups of five. Sometimes the pile of bodies was five deep, which caused
enormous suffering to the people on the bottom. On the main deck of the
EsmeraldaŠeverywhere there were rows of men crowded together who asked for
water, cried, moaned from tiredness, hunger and pain.
The next day they took him to the bridge as soon as he reached it they beat
him on the kidneys and gave karate kicks to his thighs, stomach and arms. Then,
standing on the arches of his feet, they applied the torture known as "the
telephone".. After that he was tied to a metal post and electrical discharges
were applied to the fillings of his teeth. This produces an unbearable pain. On
the 19th September they again took him to the bridgeŠ..As soon as he arrived
they asked him "Can you smell the shit? One of your comrades has just shitted
himself because of the electrical discharges."
CODEPU Report, December 2002:
This report prepared by the Corporación de Promoción y Defensa de los Derechos
del Pueblo includes testimonies of victims of ill treatment and torture on the
Esmeralda. In addition to some of those referred to above, the names include:
Monica Moreno, Claudina Moreno, Ximena Azúa Ríos, Maximiliano Marholz,
Ariel Tacchi, Walter Pinto, Leopldo Zuljovic, Andrés Sepulveda.
Impunity
Not one of the crimes committed on the Esmeralda has been punished. Not one of
those responsible for those crimes has been indicted.
The Report of the Rettig Commission (Commission of Truth and Reconciliation),
published in 1991, did not identify the criminals responsible for the human
rights violations which it described but the Commission´s archives on which it
is based do contain the names of many of those criminals. By law, such
information, held in an official centre, must be provided, on request, to
judicial authorities. However, there is at least one case - that of Fr. Michael
Woodward (below) - in which an inquiry about relevant testimony in the archives
has met with initial denials of its existence only to be followed by an
admission that it exists after evidence to this effect was provided from another
source.
Recently, moreover, in response to diplomatic pressures, it has emerged that the
true custodian of the archives within the Ministry is its Judicial Office, not
the Programa de Derechos Humanos, the government´s human rights agency to which
the judiciary has been directing its subp¦nas up to now - fruitlessly in at
least some cases. There is, in any case, strong evidence to suggest that the
original copy of the archives has suffered damage and loss for reasons which,
according to reliable sources, may include negligence, extra-judicial tampering
or what has been described by officials of the Ministry of the Interior as a
"reclassification" of material.
The Navy has provided no evidence regarding the crimes on the Esmeralda to
relatives or judicial authorities. It has not even identified the members of the
Naval Intelligence Service who were on duty on the Esmeralda from whom the
trained torturers referred to in the Rettig Commission Report were drawn.
Moreover, accusations of torture on the Esmeralda have been denied by successive
Commanders in Chief of the Navy, despite the conclusions of the Rettig
Commission and despite the existence of a written communication by the military
regime to the International Commission of the Red Cross regarding a court
martial (Rol 57-74A) in which they admitted that the Esmeralda had been used as
prison ship.
Relevant statements by the Commanders in Chief of the Navy since the restoration
of democracy include the following:
Admiral Jorge Martínez Busch (now a member of the Senate) in a television
interview with Patricia Pollizer on 17th December 1990:
Question: "If it were proved that Navy personnel had participated in torture,
would you have these people removed from the Institution if they were still in
it?"
Answer: "Madam, I reject the term "acts of torture". Mistakes may have been
made. There may have been momentary excesses, so the expression which you
use does not correspond with reality."
Admiral Jorge Arancibia (now a member of the Senate), article in Punto Final of
September 1999: "Torture was never used" ("Jamás se torturó")
Admiral Miguel Angel Vergara (current Commander in Chief), interview in Navy
webpage in September 2002:
Question: "Does the Navy vouch for the fact that it cooperated fully with the
Mesa del Dialogo?"
Answer: "The Navy has, at the very least, provided to the
judiciary everything that has been requested of it."
Over the same period the successive Heads of Government of this now democratic
country, President Patricio Aylwin, President Eduardo Frei and President Ricardo
Lagos, have not seen fit to require that the Commanders in Chief retract their
declarations about the conclusions of a Commission which was created by the
Chilean Government itself.
On the contrary, to the present day successive Presidents have bid farewell to
the Esmeralda on its training cruises with praise for the Navy, the "White Lady"
herself and the values which she represents. President Lagos, wishing her "much
success, calm seas and strong winds" spoke of the cadets on board the Esmeralda
as "ambassadors abroad of all Chileans" while President Frei said of the
Esmeralda that she had been transformed into "a vehicle for public relations and
a permanent ambassador for the Government of Chile in other countries". During
his period of office, President Aylwin, referring to human rights violations,
coined the phrase "justice to the extent possible" ("justicia en la medida de lo
possible")
A particularly well-documented example of official obstacles to the pursuit of
justice is that of Fr. Michael Woodward, a Catholic priest of dual nationality -
British and Chilean. One of his sisters, Patricia Woodward Bennetts, filed a
criminal law suit in the courts of Valparaíso in January 2002 after the Chilean
government had guaranteed to the British government that they would ensure due
process. The charges included genocide (for religious reasons), state terrorism,
kidnapping, torture and murder. In pursuing the case, however, it has become
clear that due process is being threatened, amongst others, by the Chilean
Government itself.
Even before the filing of the suit, Patricia´s lawyer, Sergio Concha, was misled
by the Programa de Derechos Humanos (PDH). They gave him to understand that they
were the custodians of the Rettiig archives, claimed that they had consulted
them, and denied that they contained a key testimony which he was seeking - of
Captain Carlos Fanta (see above) - and which could be the object of a subp¦na by
an investigating judge. The PDH finally admitted that they had misinformed
Sergio Concha only after irrefutable evidence to that effect had been presented
from another source. Since then the late Captain Fanta´s son, Jorge, has also
confirmed that his father testified to the Rettig Commission.
Despite this incident, the PDH continued to insist that the Rettig archives
contained no additional evidence of any significance about Michael´s death, in
proof of which they had earlier shown Sergio Concha a few sheets of paper inside
a file. In this assertion they received the full support of the Director of the
Human Rights Department of the Chilean Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who,
moreover, reiterated that the PDH were the formal custodians of the archives.
Shortly after, from two different and equally unimpeachable sources, Patricia
received further disturbing information. She learned that documents were missing
from the Rettig archives allegedly in the custody of the PDH, that a copy of the
original archives had been made and was being held by a private Foundation,
which holds the Presidential papers of the ex-President of Chile Patricio
Aylwin. The Foundation has made known that their copy of the archives contains
no less than 130 pages of testimony about Michael´s death.
This Foundation has refused the subpoena of two judges, investigating other
cases, for access to the information on their copy of the Rettig archives and
has re-directed their requests to the Ministry of the Interior - the Ministry
under whose care the material in the original files was damaged or lost. The
judge responsible for investigating Michael Woodward´s case, Ministro del Fuero
Gabriela Corti, issued a subp¦na to the Foundation recently which received an
immediate reply.: it was rejected and re-directed to the Ministry of the
Interior.
In any case, the judge openly told Patricia in a personal meeting last year that
her work load was such that she could spare virtually no time for the
investigation of Michael´s death. Since then, the Supreme Court - who had been
asked to alleviate her situation - has instead increased her work load,
transferring to her all the open human rights cases in Valparaiso and the rest
of the V Region.
Another potential source of evidence about Michael Woodward´s death is the
hierarchy of the Catholic church. However, as was revealed in an article in
"Punto Final" of 6th December 2002, to which there has been no reply, the
Bishopric of Valparaiso connived with the naval authorities to cover up the
circumstances of Michael´s death. More recently the present Bishop Duarte (an
ex-chaplain to the armed forces) denied that he was holding testimony which
priests in his diocese claimed to have provided to him.
In addition, there is a wider-ranging, particularly noteworthy example of
attempts to seek justice which have been frustrated by the actions, or inaction,
of the Chilean government. This relates to the Comisión Ética contra la Tortura
(CECT). After two meetings with President Lagos personally, in 2001 and 2002, a
number of working sessions were held with a senior figure in the Ministry of the
Interior, Jorge Correa, and the Director of the PDH, Luciano Fouilloux. As a
result, Mr. Fouilloux -who has since resigned - proposed in January 2003 the
creation of a Commission for the Investigation of Torture in Chile. However, in
April 2003, his successor, Raquel Mejías, informed the CECT that the PDH would
not, after all, be able to carry out the necessary tasks - quantification and
characterisation of cases of toture - given its other commitments. More
recently, the Minister of the Interior - to whom the PDH is responsible - has,
again, promised to the CECT his support for their projects.
The extent to which the promises of the Minister of the Interior, José Miguel
Insulza, can be trusted can be measured by his words, just a few years ago, when
commenting about allegations of torture in Chile (made against a serving Air
Force General). He said: "Good God, does anyone believe that a person who was
brutally beaten 27 years ago can really get justice?"
In today's Chile, therefore, a government minister who feels free to talk with
petulance about such a matter unites himself with a branch of the armed forces
which takes pride in parading a torture centre before the world. Accompanied by
other allies - a conniving Church hierarchy and a Supreme Court with a
collaborationist past - they constitute a formidable bulwark in support of
impunity.
