Although the announcement made last Saturday by President Gabriel Boric, during his Public Account, in order to expropriate parts of the Colonia Dignidad estate in Parral, was received with satisfaction by the victims and civil organizations from the world of human rights, many remained. doubts in the environment, because – among other things – no one knows what the value of the properties to be expropriated is and, above all, who will receive the money paid for them, since practically everything that remains of the once immense patrimony of the The enclave is owned by a series of companies of different types, whose owners are the children of the leaders of the sect.
Two lawyers who represent victims of the colony, Hernán Fernández and Winfried Hempelas well as the president of the Colonia Dignidad Association, Margarita Romeroagree that this is the main problem in this regard.
Fernandez tells The counter that “The State gives sporadic signals that are insufficient and contradictory“But the important thing is that today we have this will expressed in a statement by the President, publicly before the entire country.”
Without prejudice to this, it states that ““That is not enough, because the victims first need a declaration of justice.”explaining that after the historic sentence issued against Paul Schäfer and his accomplices, for the countless sexual abuses committed by the German pedophile, “Instead of selling at that time, expropriating and paying the victims, the companies were allowed to continue not only profiting, but also looting the victims’ assets with various maneuvers of pseudo-legality or legality, of a superficial, civil and commercial legality., but not legality based on the rights of the victims,” he stated, in reference to the corporations that were created at the end of the 1980s (Cerro Florido, Bardana and Cinoglosa), to which the assets of the company were transferred. colony before in 1991 former President Patricio Aylwin canceled the legal personality of the then corporation “Sociedad Benefactora y Educacional Dignidad”. These companies are joined by other more recent ones, such as the real estate companies Bamberg Ltda. and Bergneustadt Ltda.
Tourism on the blood of the victims
Given this, former President Aylwin – in the opinion of lawyer Fernández – made a mistake, because when asked what would happen to the sect’s assets, he responded that ““If companies are established in accordance with the law, the companies must be respected, because in Chile we live in a rule of law.”thus allowing the enclave to continue functioning the same, while they continued abusing children inside and enslaving people, including minors.
This also allowed, he points out, that in the face of “the criminal phenomenon of Colonia Dignidad” they appeared “great defenses of politicians who today parade freely in Chile and who have risen in their political career, and be careful: I am not only talking about the right, but also about other political sectors that have been indifferent to the suffering of the victims of the colony ”.
Thanks to this, he adds, the children of the subjects closest to Schäfer, all of them also convicted of different crimes, were left with control of the limited companies and ended up turning the colony into a sort of resort macabre.
“This privileged group of hierarchs has made tourism places about the blood of the victims. Today even government institutions, I am referring to the Municipality of Parral, for example, but also private companies, hold celebrations there, as if it were an amusement park, a strange and curious German site. We cannot accept that.”
He emphasizes that no one knows today how much the heritage and surface area remains of the farm that originally had 17 thousand hectares, which are added to the El Litral farm, in the commune of Bulnes, which had almost two thousand hectares. .
“The companies that today would be expected to pay, which seems like an insult and a mockery to us, are looting the neighborhood in full view and patience of the victims. They are cutting down forests, selling forests, they are selling land, making plots within the colony.. And that is conclusive proof. Where is the authority in this country? “Where is Mr. Altamirano, from the Undersecretary of Human Rights, who is very good at speeches, but very bad at actions?” he complains, referring to the Undersecretary. Xavier Altamirano.
The nervousness of the elderly
At the same time, Winfried Hempellawyer for the Association for Truth, Justice, Reparation and Dignity of Former Colonists (ADEC), points out that the presidential announcement is “For us, this is good news and in fact an old aspiration, that is, for the State to take charge and expropriate at least part of the colony’s land, which we have been asking for for 15 years and not only us, but also other human rights groups, such as the Talca group and the Santiago association”.
However, he agrees with Fernández that it should not happen that this measure ends up benefiting the children of the hierarchs. In this regard, he details that “the settlers who are in favor of this memory site totally agree that all buildings that have any stain, so to speak, related to human rights, be submitted to the administration of the State. The second issue immediately arises: to whom these compensations are paid. Today it is a real estate company called Bamberg Limitada, however that real estate agency is being managed by Hans Schreiber and Thomas Schnellenkamp.”both sons of Schäfer’s lieutenants.
In this regard, he points out that “It is not going to be that, on the one hand, that money does not reach the victims and, on the other hand, the State, inadvertently, finances those who should not be financed, who are the children of the hierarchs.. We know, plainly speaking on a legal level, that the State has to pay the price to whoever is the legal owner registered in the Parral Roots Consortium,” he explains, adding that in light of this They are looking for a way for the money received to go to a fund dedicated to reparation for the sexual, psychological and physical abuse committed by Schäfer. against most of the German settlers and a good part of the Chileans who came to the enclave, most of them victims of illegal adoptions.
Furthermore, Hempel relates that the older settlers, who were victims of Schafer and still live on the farm, are very nervous, exemplifying that on the same night of the announcement some of them did not sleep, “because they thought that they would have to pack their bags and leave just the next day.”.
Along with those older settlers, who are very conservative and who also mostly adhere to the doctrine of ““latter rain” (the sectarian current to which Paul Schäfer belonged and which continues to be practiced within the enclave), the children of the hierarchs and the forcibly “adopted” Chileans also coexist, “who find it quite difficult to rebuild their lives outside of the colony,” he details, while asserting that The idea is not to re-victimize those who were already victims for decades.
German experts
Margarita Romeropresident of the Colonia Dignidad Association for Memory and Human Rights, comments that, indeed, “We have requested expropriation for many years. For us it has always been the only way for the owners of the colony to ‘let go’ of that property they inherited. We are talking about the fact that all the children of the leaders are the ones who manage all these companies today, that they are public limited companies and that they are the owners of the land and everything that is there. So, for them the idea was very complex, and they fought so that it would not be a National Monument.”.
As she remembers, in 2016 they were declared a National Monument 182 hectares of the property (despite the opposition of the children of the hierarchs) and, in addition, explained that, despite evaluating the decision to expropriate, said decision, according to the information she has, was made based on the report of the German experts who are part of of the mixed commission formed between the Chilean and German governments in 2017.
In this regard, Romero criticizes that “they are not inviting us to participate. What’s more, we continue to talk about the work of experts and a concept of a memorial that was made behind closed doors,” without taking into account the victims’ associations.
It should be noted that on May 28, the Minister of Justice, Luis Corderosent a letter to his Housing counterpart, Carlos Montesasking him to expropriate the buildings that would form part of the memory site and a documentation center: lto Paul Schäfer’s house, the restaurant, the administration building, the potato cellar, the hospital and the concierge.
However, Romero wonders: “Who did these experts talk to? As far as I know, they didn’t even go to the Human Rights Program, where they have all the information.”. In this regard, he affirms that the decision of these places is arbitrary, since indicates that there were other sites that were used as places of detention or torture, without them being includeddespite there being testimonies from people who were there, like the hay shed, for example.
Given this, she maintains that the decision to expropriate only those places and not others was agreed between the German experts and the current administrators of the sect’s properties, ensuring that – in her opinion – ““Everything that is a National Monument should be expropriated, the entire 182 hectares”.
Read the letter requesting the expropriation of Colonia Dignidad
