Once at home cult, a Chilean tourist village that does not rest torture and cruelty

With sloping roofs with red tiles, trimmed lawns and a store sale with ginger, villa bavier looks like a bizarre village in a German style located on the hills of Central Chile.

But he has a dark past.

Once known as Colonia Dignidad, it was home for the secret religious sect, founded by a manipulative and abusive leader who collaborated with Augustus Pinochet’s dictatorship.

Paul Schaefer, which created the colony in 1961, introduced the regime of severe punishments and humiliation of the Germans living there.

They were separated from their parents and forced to work from a young age.

Schaefer was also sexually treated with many children.

After General Pinochet headed the coup in 1973, his military regime’s opponents were taken to Dignada’s colony to torture him in the dark cellars.

Many of these political prisoners have never been seen again.

Schaefer died in jail in 2010, but some of the German residents remained and turned the former colony into a tourist point, with a restaurant, hotel, cabins to rent and even the boats pond.

The Chilean government is now going to operate some of their land to mark Pinochet’s victims there. But the plans shared their opinions.

In Chile, more than 3,000 people were killed and more than 40,000 were tortured during the Pinochet regime, which was in power until 1990.

Louis Evangelist Agayo was one of those who are forcibly “disappeared”.

His sister Ana Agaho is sitting by the fire at his home in Parrala, the closest city to Dynhedad’s colony.

“Louis was quiet, he liked to swim. He wanted to create a fair world,” she said.

Mr. Agayo worked as a school inspector, was a member of the union of teachers and actively acted in the Socialist Party.

On September 12, 1973, a day after Pinochet overthrew the elected President of the Socialist Chile Salvador Allende, the police came to the house of Mr. Agayo and arrested him.

Two days later he was sent to a local prison, but on September 26, 1973, police arrived and pulled him into a minibus. His family never saw him again.

Ana Agayo says a local farmer came to her home to say she saw her brother in a German colony.

“My mother and father went to the colony of Dignadad, but she was not allowed,” she said.

“They went everywhere, looking for him, at the police stations, in the courts, but could not get any information. My father died of sadness because he couldn’t help him. My 96-year-old thought he could hear” Mom, come and get me out. “

Mr. Agayo was one of 27 people from the parallel, it was believed to be killed in Dignada’s colony, according to a current court investigation appointed by the Chile government.

The total number of people killed here is unknown, but there is evidence that it was the final place of many Pinochet’s opponents, including the Congressman of Chile Carlos Lorka and a number of other socialist party leaders.

The Ministry of Justice Chile states that the investigations believe that hundreds of political detainees were brought here.

Ana Agayo supports the government’s plan to create memory there.

“It was a place of horror and horrific crimes. It should not be a place for shopping or lunch at the restaurant. It should be a place for memories, reflections and for learning future generations, so that it will no longer happen again.”

But the government’s expropriation plans shared the opinion in the villa of Bavira, where less than 100 adults live.

Dorothy Manch was born in 1977 in Dignada’s colony.

“We lived in same-sex hostels such as barracks,” she recalls.

“From a young age, we had to work, cleaning the dishes for the whole community and collecting firewood.”

The government plans to expap 117 hectares from 4829 hectares, including the buildings where the torture was passed and the places where the victim bodies were exhumed and then their ashes were burned.

Mrs. Manch does not agree with expropriation plans, as they include the village center covering the houses of residents and shared enterprises, including restaurant, hotel, bakery, butchers and dairy products.

“We lived under the system of fear, we also fell victims. We restore our lives, and it will make us sacrifices again. Perhaps people who could re -re -re -re -residents would be devastating.”

Eric that came to Cololia Dignidad from Germany in 1962, at the age of two.

Separated from her parents, she remembers how she was crying at night for her mother.

Like a few other people from the colony, she says she was given electrical strikes as a child.

She also opposes expropriation plans and wants to stay alive there. “I want to be with people who understand what I have experienced.”

Chilean Minister of Justice and Human Rights, Jaime Gajard Falcon, told the BBC that the government has decided to expose the region, which concentrated the main buildings of the ex-colony.

“These were the sites of political detention, torture, observation and preparation of state agents to commit crimes against humanity.”

The expropriation decree was published in July. Over the next few months, the state will determine the cost of expropriated assets, he said.

Seventy -three residents and former residents of Villa Bauer wrote to the President of Chile, expressing concern about expropriation plans and asking him to participate in discussions about him.

They hired a public relations firm to handle their media relations, and a representative of this company accompanied the BBC during a visit to the site.

Separately, the BBC talked to several other residents and former dignado colonia residents who support the plan to create a memorial place.

Georg Klaub has lived in Dignadad’s colony since 1962 – when he arrived from Germany with his parents aged two – until 2010.

Like many boys in Colonia Dignidad, he says he was given electrical strikes, forced to take psychotropic drugs and have been sexually cruelty.

“Every night I was delivered to the building, I was deprived of a naked, they would put a black towel on my face, and here, here, here, here, here,” he says, pointing to genitals, throats, legs and under his arms.

“I think we should have a memorial, because so much cruelty happened to the Germans and the Chileans. I can’t believe that there is a restaurant in the place where many baby tears, urine and blood flows.”

Mr. Klaub is part of the legal affairs – with the support of the association of former and current dignada colony – who claims that the Bauri Villa leaders do not share the income of the former colonies.

They want the government to guarantee that when expropriation is going on, the payment of compensation is distributed among all residents and former residents.

Other victims who support expropriation plans are former political prisoners who were tortured in Dignadad’s colony, small farmers who were evicted from their land when the German colony was created, and the Chileans who lived locally and were sexually abused as children.

Schaefer was arrested in 2005, and in 2006 he was convicted of sexual violation of 25 children, including five children rape points. Several of his accomplices were also convicted.

Justice Minister Gayardo says it is important to make sure that the horrors that have happened here are not forgotten.

“There have been fierce crimes here. It was still private property. After the state will capture, the Chileans would be free to enter, and it will become a space for memory and reflection to ensure that such crimes will never be committed again.”