5 Chilean Concentration Camps (Campos de Concentracion En Chile)

Today, we learned from Human Rights Watch that at least 43 Uyghur men and boys have been disappeared by the Chinese government. Though some of them may be guilty of serious crimes, they are all certainly entitled to due process and legal protections.

In the 1970s, after the democratically elected Chilean president Salvador Allende was toppled in a right-wing military coup, Pinochet, Contreras, and DINA set up a number of concentration camps throughout the country. Thousands of Chileans were tortured and killed. Here are five of these camps. You can find out more at Derechos Chile.

1. Pisagua. This prison between Arica and Iquique in the north hugged the desolate Pacific coastline.

2. Colonia Dignidad. The most disturbing. This farming community was founded by German immigrants in 1961. The leader of these Germans, Paul Schaefer, fled to Chile to evade child molestation charges at home. Rumors of disgusting things were coming out of the colony for years before the place was turned into a detention camp by the government.

3. Isla Quiriquina. The tiny island housed a naval training school which in turn held some of the disappeared. This video shows a recent graduation ceremony of females cadets. One wonders if the same atrocities would have happened had some of the intelligence officers and military personnel at the detention camps been women.

4. Chacabuco. This is the trailer for a documentary about the nitrate mining town in the middle of the Atacama Desert that was converted into a concentration camp.

5. Dawson Island. This remote speck in Patagonia was literally at the end of the world. The only footage I was able to find was of these mountaineers. The island in the background is Dawson.