The Colony: Chile’s dark past uncovered
▻http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/aljazeeracorrespondent/2013/11/colony-chile-dark-past-uncovered-2013114105429774517.html
In 1961, a former #Nazi officer called Paul Schaefer fled Germany, along with hundreds of others, to found a sect in southern Chile. In an idyllic rural enclave framed by the Andes Mountains he created a virtual state within a state - one where horrifying events unfolded.
Initially with the ignorance of the government, and then with the complicity of the #Pinochet regime, children were separated from their parents at birth and raised in a Kinder House. Men and women were kept apart and often drugged, while Schaefer systematically sexually abused boys and, occasionally, girls.
But it was not only the residents of Colonia Dignidad, or the Dignity Colony, that endured such brutalities. The secluded Colony, set on a huge estate featuring forests, mountains and rivers and enclosed by electrified barbed wire fences and look-out posts manned by armed guards, was the perfect place for the interrogation, #torture and disposal of anyone Pinochet considered to be an enemy.