Esmeralda scene of ‘beatings and torture’

Press, 10 November 1983, Page 6

Esmeralda scene of ‘beatings and torture’

PA Auckland Beatings, torture, and mock executions were held aboard the Chilean naval training ship Esmeralda in 1973, said an amnesty International spokesman yesterday. The Esmeralda, a fourmasted barquentine, is due at Auckland on December 17 for a four-day visit. Reports that the vessel had been used as an emergency prison and torture ship after the Allende government was overthrown in 1973 prompted the New Zealand section of Amnesty International to seek information from the organisation’s London headquarters.

The vice-chairman of the organisation’s New Zealand section, Mr H. W. Smith, distributed to reporters in Auckland yesterday copies of three testimonials he received from London. Mr Smith said the information would be distributed to members of Parliament, trade unionists, and interested parties such as the Auckland Harbour Board. “It must be the first time that a torture centre has visited New Zealand,” he said.

. “Our hope is to direct public attention to the prob-

lem of torture in Chile (which is still) widespread and systematic.

“The Esmeralda is not being used as a torture ship now, to our knowledge. “Those involved (in torturing people) in the Esmeralda have not been brought to justice, yet their names and ranks are in the documents.” (Names and ranks had been deleted from extracts to the testimonies distributed to reporters.)

Mr Smith said he did not know if those involved still served aboard the sailing

ship. the Auckland Trades Council has already decided to support protest against the Esmeralda’s visit. Its decision was taken at a meeting in October.

the Esmeralda . last visited New Zealand in July, 1972.

the testimonies obtained by Amnesty International were made by Mr Luis Vega Contreras, who described himself as an attorney for the Ministry of the Interior under the Allende government; Mr Sergio vuskovic Rojo, who callled himself a Communist, a university professor and the Mayor of Valparaiso at the time of the coup; and a third person, whose name has been withheld by Am-

nesty International. The longest of the three was a sworn statement made by Mr Contreras in Tel Aviv, Israel, on April 22, 1976.

Mr Contreras said, “We were taken to the midshipmen’s quarters . . . “I was pushed and thrown on the floor where everything was dark and the light bulbs were covered or painted red. The masks that covered some of the sailors’ faces had fluorescent paint.” After being kicked, stripped naked, and bound “they placed me under a high-pressure jet of sea water ... the pressure produced an unbearable pain in the head, ears, eyes, and lungs, using lances made from sticks with steel points, they would stab at us to keep us under the water jet.”

Mr Contreras described being kept awake for a 72hour stretch by constant beatings, application of the “water jet, and “the yelling that came from the torture chambers where electric shocks were applied ...” He was accused of being “a traitor” to Chile and was taken to the quarter-deck for questioning about his connections with police, Army, and Navy officers and about their connections

with Allende’s Popular Unity government.

“As soon as I arrived, he (unidentified) hit me on the kidneys and gave me a couple of karate blows with his feet on my thighs, stomach, and arms. He stepped on my insteps and gave me the ‘telephone’.” (The “telephone” was a form of torture where both ears were hit simultaneously, producing great pain and damage to the eardrums.) “I was tied up to the steel pillar and he gave me electric shocks on my tooth fillings.”

Mr Contreras described being the victim of a mock execution by a firing squad, being forced to grind salt into another prisoner’s wounds, friends arriving “covered in urine and faeces,” and another prisoner committing suicide. “Until then, the Esmeralda had been for me and for 10 million Chileans the ‘White Lady,’ the ‘National Pride’,” said Mr Contreras. “It represented Chilean democracy, manhood, the chivalry of Chilean officers and sailors.

“Today it is . a torture chamber, a flagellation chamber, a floating jail of horror, death and fear for Chilean men and women