Waubonsee Community College

Inside Pinochet's prisons

eng

videorecording

AdultCollege

Inside Pinochet's prisons

electronic resource

780140303

31

Filmakers library online

In view of the attempt to bring Augusto Pinochet to justice for crimes against humanity, here is an amazing historic document that was secretly filmed by East German journalists who penetrated Chile's concentration camps in 1973. The film was never shown in the West, though it was broadcast in the Eastern-bloc countries. Under Pinochet's orders, doctors, lawyers, trade unionists, students and leftist sympathizers were rounded up and held without trial. One camp we see is in the middle of a forbidding desert, where the extremes of heat and cold intensified misery. Here, prisoners, uncertain of their future and visibly frightened, spoke to cameramen. Some admit they were politically active, while others say they were not engaged in political activity. Some are old; some are women. Young men are forced through "re-education". There are telephoto images of beatings and firing squads. The truth of Pinochet's brutal regime is laid bare in this moving and exclusive film

general