Torture alleged at ‘religious’ colony

Press, 3 December 1987, Page 10

Torture alleged at ‘religious’ colony

NZPA-Reuter Bonn West Germany is pressing the Chilean Government to allow an international investigation into a bizarre German religious colony in Chile after allegations of torture and child sex abuse at the camp. The West German Foreign Minister, HansDietrich Genscher, wants an international commission to investigate charges that the colony, known as Dignidad (Dignity), has for more than 20 years effectively imprisoned its population of more than 300 and turned them into slaves. Mr Genscher recalled the German Ambassador, Horst Kullak-Ueblich, from Chile on Friday to help prepare for an independent inquiry into the camp, the Foreign Ministry in Bonn said. "There are grounds for very serious concern,” said a Ministry spokes-

man, commenting on reports in the weekly magazines, “Stern” and “Der Spiegel.”

“We have been alarmed by testimony from former victims.”

“Stern” last week published a harrowing account from Georg and Lotti Packmoor, a West German couple who escaped from the colony, 400 km south of Santiago, in February, 1985. “During the day we , were supposed to make the children work so they became tired and weak... In the evening they would go into a large room in the (camp) hospital, where there were 12 beds in a circle,” the report said. “Behind every bed there stood a supervisor... If a child’s eyelids moved it was taken out and slapped on the face. If anything sexual was suspected, the child was taken out and given electric shocks with

a cattle prod. Also in the testicles. And thrown into cold water.”

They said the camp doctor, identified as Frau Seewald, gave some boys injections in their testicles. “The testicles swelled up and were supposed to be rendered inactive,” they said. A journalist, Gero Gemballa, who co-authored the “Stern” report, told Reuters the Packmoors’ account had been passed to the Bonn Foreign Ministry in 1985.

Asked about the testimony, the Foreign Ministry said it had received witnesses’ statements along similar lines.

') A spokesman told Reuters that, after months of pressure on the Chilean Government, a West German consular delegation obtained permission to visit Dignidad earlier this month.

“But the trip did not allay our fears,” he said.

“We were under the impression that the inmates were not able to speak freely to the delegation, so it was impossible to establish whether the accusations were true.

“The Foreign Minister is pressing for an urgent international investigation into the colony to try to clear up these allegations.” Dignidad was founded in the early 1960 s by Paul Schaefer, leader of a Baptist sect who fled West Germany after a police investigation into charges that he had sexually abused children at a home he ran near Bonn. Schaefer took a number of children and adults from the home with him to Chile.

The journalist, Gero Gemballa, said he was shocked during a visit to the camp in August “I was absolutely appalled by what I saw,” he told Reuters. “I spent three days inside Digni-

dad. The appearance of the people there was horrific.” He said 12 or 13 relatives of present or former Dignidad inmates had contacted him for help after he broadcast a report on West German radio last month.

“Among them was an 82-year-old woman searching for her daughter, and a man whose father died there six months ago and who could not get into the camp to bury him,” he said.

But Wolfgang Vogelsgesang, a councillor in Munich of the Right-wing Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU), told Reuters that he visited the colony in 1983 and saw no evidence of torture or child abuse.

“Such happy and contented people could not possibly be kept there against their will or tortured,” he said.