Key PointsPaula Sanchez was jailed and tortured in Chile by Augustus Pinochet’s regime, members of which live in Sydney.The Australian Centre for International Justice says Australia risks becoming a “a safe haven for perpetrators of atrocity crimes.”It called for the establishment of a permanent special unit to investigate international war crimes.
Paula Sanchez was jailed and tortured by Augusto Pinochet’s notorious secret police in Chile, so when her son told her his friend’s father was part of the regime and lived a few suburbs away in Sydney, she shut down.
Detained for two months in 1987 at a jail in La Serena, 500 kilometres north of the capital Santiago, the leftist activist was interrogated, tortured, electrocuted and raped by four men working for the powerful security agency.
She was a virgin at the time of her arrest.
“My son was shocked. He knows my story, he knows about the horrors of Chile but being next to somebody who was saying what he did was distressing,” she told AAP.
“He told me, ‘Mum, what if that man was one of them (the men who violated her)?'”
Dr Sanchez said the Chilean military official living in western Sydney claimed to have killed people rounded up at the national stadium in Santiago, which functioned as a prison camp for thousands of people following a bloody military coup in September 1973.
“I get stirred up, I get upset but then I don’t know what to do,” said the nursing academic, who arrived in Australia as a refugee with her family in 1988.
“Do I give this guy’s name to the authorities or report him somewhere. Do I follow it up? But it’s almost like I didn’t want to know.”
Dr Sanchez still carries “a lot of anger and hatred”, noting there are other Chileans in Australia who have admitted to committing atrocities but have not been extradited.
She highlighted Adriana Rivas, who has waged a four-year battle against extradition on charges that she kidnapped seven people in 1970s.
Rivas was an assistant to Manuel Contreras, the head of the secret police during Pinochet’s dictatorship.
“There’s witnesses, there’s testimony that seven people are dead because of her and she’s still in Australia,” Dr Sanchez said.
“It’s very strange that she hasn’t been extradited yet, even though the Chilean government has requested it several times.”
The Attorney-General’s Department (AGD) said the extradition process for Rivas was its final stage, requiring the government to decide whether to surrender her to Chile.
“The matter is being progressed as quickly as possible and with due regard to the requirements of the extradition framework,” a department spokesperson said.
The Australian Centre for International Justice says Australia’s piecemeal, ad-hoc approach risks making it “a safe haven for perpetrators of atrocity crimes.”
A 32-page report published Thursday called for the establishment of a permanent special unit to investigate international war crimes under the auspices of the AGD.
The independent standalone unit could initially open investigations through the Australian Federal Police (AFP) as an immediate and interim measure, the report recommended.
Melissa Chen, a senior lawyer at the centre who authored the report, described the mishandling of international crime investigations by generalist units within the AFP as “disappointing”.
“The establishment of a permanent, specialised international crimes unit would finally open up a pathway for survivor communities in Australia to seek redress for atrocity crimes.”
Chen said such an approach would help “close the impunity gap” for criminals on the run.
The AFP said its war crimes investigations are conducted by the Special Investigations Command.
It maintained the command is “staffed by investigators who have experience in dealing with war crimes matters, and a range of other complex and sensitive investigations.”
Renowned Australian human rights barrister Geoffrey Robertson said the report was an important call for the nation “to deny a hiding place to perpetrators of crimes against humanity … to flush them out and bring them to justice.”
For Sanchez, being involved in recent community events marking 50 years since socialist president Salvador Allende was ousted in the coup has been healing.
But she cannot dismiss the trauma of the dictatorship that followed, no matter how much she tries.
“I hope they (her perpetrators) live very long so they suffer like Pinochet,” she said in front of the Allende monument in western Sydney.
“I don’t feel hate, I feel hurt … about the injustices. It’s terribly painful knowing what happened.”
