page_title: Human rights violations in Pinochet's Chile
section_title: Disappearances
hierarchical_section_title: Human rights violations in Pinochet's Chile / State-sponsored torture and repression / Disappearances
caption_attribution_description: Español: Memorial conmemorativo de la violación de los DDHH en Chile durante el régimen de Pinochet
context_page_description: Human rights violations in Pinochet's Chile were the crimes against humanity, persecution of opponents, political repression, and state terrorism committed by the Chilean Armed Forces, members of Carabineros de Chile and civil repressive agents members of a secret police, during the military dictatorship of Chile under General Augusto Pinochet from 1973 to 1990.
  According to the Commission of Truth and Reconciliation and the National Commission on Political Imprisonment and Torture, the number of direct victims of human rights violations in Chile accounts for around 30,000 people: 27,255 tortured and 2,279 executed. In addition, some 200,000 people suffered exile and an unknown number went through clandestine centers and illegal detention.
  The systematic human rights violations that were committed by the military dictatorship of Chile, under General Augusto Pinochet, included gruesome acts of physical and sexual abuse, as well as psychological damage. From 1973 to 1990, Chilean armed forces, the police and all those aligned with the military junta were involved in institutionalizing fear and terror in Chile.
context_section_description: While "disappearing subversives" was the central instrument of state terror administered by the Argentine military regime from the 1960s to the 1980s, it was still extremely widespread and prevalent in Chile as well. According to the Rettig Report, 1,248 people were "disappeared" by the Pinochet Regime. However, this number still remains a source of contention, as hundreds of bodies have yet to be discovered. There are several different approximations made for the number of people who had been "disappeared" by the military regime.  Many of those who "disappeared" were not given the chance to escape nor become asylum seekers elsewhere. Their bodies were deliberately hidden in undisclosed locations.
  Only seven days after the General seized power through a ruthless military coup, he ordered the military to round up approximately 10,000 students, workers, and political activists and jam them into Santiago's National Soccer Stadium on September 18, 1973.  This Stadium, that symbolized Chile's greatest pastime, turned into a concentration camp within a few days. Many were tortured and gunned down, and several hundred bodies were shuttled into secret mass graves.  These were victims of a well-organized program of official, yet clandestine, program of torture and murder.
  Many people were last seen in the detention and torture centers instituted by the intelligence agencies of the military regime. Following General Pinochet's arrest in 1998, Chile made a renewed effort to uncover the atrocities of the past. For the first time in several decades, human rights lawyers, and members of the armed forces wanted to investigate where the bodies of the "disappeared" were buried. On January 7, 2000, President Ricardo Lagos made a 15-minute nationwide address, revealing that the armed forces had uncovered information on the fate of approximately 180 people who had disappeared. According to Lagos, the bodies of at least 150 of these people were thrown into lakes, rivers and the Pacific Ocean.  The whereabouts of hundreds of more bodies remain unknown.
caption: Memorial to victims of the Dirty war in Chile
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