Ex Colonia Dignidad was one of the topics discussed at the meeting between German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and President Gabriel Boric. The chancellor showed his will that this be a space for memory and reparation for the victims. His visit began with a visit to the Museum of Memory and Human Rights.
Olaf Scholz, German Chancellor, began his first visit to Chile on Sunday touring the Museum of Memory and Human Rights -Metropolitan region- in the company of President Gabriel Boric.
Scholz arrived from Argentina and met with Boric in La Moneda to hold a bilateral meeting. From there, the President showed him the White Room.
One of the main topics they discussed was about the former Colonia Dignidad, where Scholz reported that Chile will have the full support of Germany for this to be a memory space.
Gabriel Boric said that the history of Colonia Dignidad is terrible and heartbreaking.
“And it is worth remembering, andThe support he had from an important part of a sector of Chilean politics, some of which are still under public scrutiny. We fully support and appreciate Germany’s willingness to contribute to the search for truth, and to make the former Colonia Dignidad a place of memory. And it is the role of the Chilean State to continue fighting for all the truth and all the Justice”, he declared.
colony dignity
Colonia Dignidad, located almost 400 kilometers south of Santiago, was a German enclave founded in 1961 by Paul Schäfer and operated as a clandestine detention center during the Pinochet regime.
Schäfer subjected to forced labor, punishment, mental manipulation and, in some cases, sexual abuse to more than 300 people, many of whom followed him to Chile from Germany.
The settlement also served as a torture center for the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA), Pinochet’s secret police, and it is estimated that more than a hundred opponents of the regime were murdered in the compound.
Human rights organizations accuse both the Chilean and German courts of not sufficiently prosecuting the crimes committed in Colonia Dignidad, now renamed Villa Baviera.
First meeting in Chile
This meeting is the second held by both leaderswho already met last September in New York in the framework of the 77th UN General Assembly.
Chile and Latin America have not been a priority of German foreign policy in recent years, but Scholz -in office since December 2021- seeks to deepen political and economic ties with the region at a time when Germany is suffering the impact of the war in Ukraine.
Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, there have only been three visits by German chancellors to Chile: Helmut Kohl (1991), Angela Merkel (2013) and now the social democrat Scholz, who governs alongside Greens and Liberals.