The Rettig Report

By Rebecca West

“The truth in itself is both reparation and prevention” –Jose Zalaquett, Chilean Law professor and member of the Rettig Commission


In 1989, a sixth of Chilean national citizens believed that they or a family member had been the direct victim of a human rights violation. When asked about the magnitude of violations under Pinochet’s rule, a majority of 52.4% perceived them as being six or seven (on a seven-point scale). 67.5% chose justice proceedings over amnesty for perpetrators of human rights violations, and only 9.5% (one in ten Chileans) thought military tribunals should be used to judge human rights cases.

In response to the collective Chilean wounds left by the Pinochet regime, in May of 1990, President Patricio Aylwin opened the Comisión Nacional de Verdad y Reconciliación (also known as the Rettig Commission) to investigate political disappearances and extrajudicial executions that occurred during Pinochet’s rule. The commission, like ones seen in South Africa and Peru, was established as a tool to help the country transition from dictatorial to democratic, and to rebuild the national morals and belief in the political system.

The Chilean truth commission, like ones it was modeled after, served two main functions: 1) to provide a place where human rights violation cases could be filed and investigated and 2) to therefore move towards a future of healing and shared understanding of the nation’s past. Rather than serving as solely an instrument of justice, the aim of the Commission was to create an open forum for discussion and healing. As Greg Grandin writes, “Truth commissions serve as modern-day instruments in the creation of nationalism and embody…nationalism’s enabling paradox: the need to forget acts of violence central to state formation that can never be forgotten.”


Lawyers, social workers, and members of the Rettig Commission created a comfortable environment for people to give their testimonies, given by a wide variety of people from retired military officers, to surviving political prisoners to friends and family of people who had been disappeared. At its publication, the report found that 2,115 cases of death or disappearance qualified as human rights violations. In 95.7% of these cases state agents were held responsible. The report found that an additional 164 people died as a result of political violence, and another 641 cases were still undecided by the report’s deadline, but they warranted further investigation.


After the publication of the Rettig Report, Aylwin called upon courts to conduct individual investigations of many cases based on evidence from the commission. He also established the “Aylwin doctrine,” which held that the 1978 Amnesty Law did not relieve courts of their duty to investigate and establish facts and criminal responsibilities of a case before they could apply amnesty, which had previously aided many people responsible for violations.


The Chilean truth commission was a huge step toward creating a new political environment in Chile. Although many people struggled with the no-name policy of the commission, its widespread publication and availability to the public, as well as complete backing by President Aylwin, gave it enough power to mobilize change in Chile and advocate for further investigation of human rights cases. The commission was reopened several years later to hear additional cases, many of which are still being investigated today.

Notes:

The image above is of Supreme Decree No. 355, which created the National Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

Photo source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:ComisionRettig.JPG

Sources Cited

Grandin, Greg. "The Instruction of Great Catastrophe: Truth Commissions, National History, and State Formation in Argentina, Chile, and Guatemala." The American Historical Review 110.1 (2005). Web. 27 July 2010. .

Stern, Steven J. Reckoning with Pinochet: The Memory Question in Democratic Chile, 1989- 2006. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010. 65-98. The Memory Box of Pinochet's Chile. Ser. 3. Print