CHILE : Legal Wrangling Continues Over Secretive German Colony

In January, 1991, the Chilean government tried to solve an embarrassing problem, one with international implications, through a legal maneuver: It decreed that Colonia Dignidad, a controversial colony of Germans in Chile, no longer existed as a legal entity.

But the problem of Colonia Dignidad, never simple, has proven once again to be persistent.

The Supreme Court ruled recently that the government decree against the colony was unconstitutional. The government, however, insists that Dignidad never has been dedicated to the purpose for which it was founded--to help Chilean orphans--and says it will continue its legal battle against the community.

Legal complications are not new to Paul Schafer, Dignidad’s founder and leader. When he came to Chile in 1961 and founded the community on a farm near the southern town of Parral, Schafer was wanted in Germany on charges of sexually abusing minors.

Schafer, who had led a breakaway Baptist sect in West Germany, brought with him dozens of adults and children when he set up the new community in Chile. The population of Colonia Dignidad (Dignity Colony) eventually grew to 250 Germans and its holdings to about 34,000 acres, with an airfield, a bakery, a dairy and a cemetery, according to visitors.

Since the late 1960s, disaffected members of the secretive community have accused Schafer and other leaders of sexual abuse and brainwashing. After the Chilean armed forces seized power in a 1973 coup, opponents of the regime reported that political police had tortured prisoners taken to the Dignidad farm, known as Villa Baviera.

The community and the government denied such reports, but the impression was widespread that something was rotten in Colonia Dignidad.

It was not surprising, then, that the community was a problem for the coalition government that took office in 1990 when the armed forces relinquished power. The coalition includes the Socialist Party, which had suffered persecution by the regime’s secret police, and the Christian Democratic Party, which has close ties to Germany’s Christian Democrats.

Germany still hopes to prosecute leaders of Colonia Dignidad for alleged crimes against German citizens. In October, the Chilean Supreme Court received a request from Germany that Schafer and two other Dignidad leaders be required to answer questions based on accusations of deprivation of freedom and causing bodily harm.

Meanwhile, the Chilean government has been looking for proof of alleged tax and customs fraud by the colony. The Customs Service reported it had found sufficient evidence of customs fraud to merit a judicial investigation.

The community’s lawyers fought the customs report, but the Supreme Court in June ruled against the colony, clearing the way for a criminal investigation. Customs said Dignidad apparently sold or rented farm equipment that had been imported without duties under the colony’s nonprofit status.

The government’s 1991 decree, which effectively canceled the nonprofit status, was endorsed by the Constitutional Tribunal. But the higher Supreme Court ruled last September that the law on which the decree was based is invalidated by Chile’s 1980 constitution.

Two appeals against the government decree are still pending in a lower court. If the final result of those appeals is in favor of Dignidad, Justice Minister Francisco Cumplido says the government will be left in a quandary.

“If the Constitutional Tribunal said the decree was constitutional and the Appeals Court or the Supreme Court definitively declares that it is unconstitutional, which sentence does the executive branch carry out?” Cumplido asked reporters. He indicated that the Senate might have to make the final decision.

Lawyer Fidel Reyes says that if the government persists in its efforts to cancel Dignidad’s legal status, “we have the right to think that the persecution of (this community) is at the level of an obsession.”