Chile announces national plan for the State to assume the search for those who disappeared during the dictatorship

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SANTIAGO (AP) — Nearly half a century after the military coup in Chile, the government of President Gabriel Boric announced Friday a national plan for the state to assume the search for some 1,100 victims of forced disappearance whose whereabouts are still unknown, a task that for years it has relied on the efforts of relatives and groups of victims of the dictatorship.

The National Search Plan will start with the integration of all the records of the disappeared gathered so far by different special truth commissions, the courts of justice, the relatives of the victims and the previous governments, informed on Friday the Minister of Justice, Luis Cordero, during a meeting with international press correspondents.

The dictatorship led by Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990) left a balance of more than 40,000 victims, including some 3,000 murdered opponents, of whom more than 1,400 were victims of forced disappearance. After decades of searches, the skeletal remains of 307 people were found and identified, and another 1,100 remain to be found, according to official figures.

The information on the disappeared will be worked on by multidisciplinary entities, which with resources and specialists, will continue the task that until now rested on the shoulders of the relatives of the disappeared.

Cordero said that it is possible that “indications for new investigations” emerge from the integration of old data.

Andrés Colque, 58, a psychologist, told The Associated Press that “even if a detainee is missing, it is necessary to look for him and have all the resources available, (because) it helps our society to value the rights and lives of people.” President Boric had already committed to developing this task.

The plan will not replace the task of the courts and, for it to work, it is important to have the collaboration of the relatives of victims and their groups, said Cordero, who is personally close to the issue. Two great-uncles are among dozens of peasants arrested and executed a month after the military coup of September 1973.