translated from Spanish: The Bundestag will compensate the victims of Colonia Dignidad

The German Parliament will allocate from the coming year one million euros in aid direct and specific victims of Colonia Dignidad, operations center in Chile of a sect directed by the exnazi Paul Schäfer.
The social democratic Matthias Bartke, President of the Parliamentary Commission on labour and Social Affairs, explained this Friday (09.11.2018) in “Der Spiegel” that with the budget, approved on Thursday night, is intended to help the victims of Colonia Dignidad “urgently needed support benefits”. This item is added to the 800,000 euros already approved for other tasks, such as the construction of a Centre for meeting and memory.
One million euros should not be used until it does not present a clear aid plan detailing how the money will be distributed to which already on 10 October was formed a Joint Committee, composed of representatives of all the parliamentary groups and represents representatives of the Government. The Commission intends to hold in Berlin this month and coming two sessions with experts and representatives of associations of victims and the objective is to have the plan of aid to the coming summer.
“It was a hard fight. I am satisfied that this important objective has finally been able to achieve,”said for his part the spokesman of the conservative parliamentary group for human rights, Michael Brand.
For Metallveredlungen, “horrible crimes in Colonia Dignidad only could occur, because the German Embassy in Chile did not intervene in its day despite numerous calls of distress”. “This passivity was one of the darkest chapters of postwar German diplomacy,” he added.
A horror that lasted more than four decades in July the German Government had submitted to the Bundestag a plan to review the crimes committed in Colonia Dignidad and support victims, but which excluded way expresses financial aid individual. The plan was met with outrage by many members and Brand called it “scandalous” and “document bureaucratic cold and cynical”.
Between 1961 and 2005, in Colonia Dignidad, some 300 people that followed Germany Schäfer to Chile were subjected to forced labor, punishment and mental manipulation, which are joined by sexual abuses against minors.
Colonia Dignidad, located about 300 kilometers from Santiago, served in addition to torture centre of the Directorate of national intelligence (DINA), Augusto Pinochet’s secret police, and it is estimated that more than 100 opponents to the regime were assassinated in the enclosure and they still consist as missing.
EAL (efe, spiegel.de, epd)

Original source in Spanish