Suppression of opposition
He shut down parliament, suffocated political life, banned trade unions, and made Chile his sultanate. His government disappeared 3,000 opponents, arrested 30,000 (torturing thousands of them) ... Pinochet's name will forever be linked to the Desaparecidos, the Caravan of Death, and the institutionalized torture that took place in the Villa Grimaldi complex.
Almost immediately after the military's seizure of power, the junta banned all the leftist parties that had constituted Allende's UP coalition. All other parties were placed in "indefinite recess" and were later banned outright. The government's violence was directed not only against dissidents but also against their families and other civilians.
The Rettig Report concluded that 2,279 people who disappeared during the military government were killed for political reasons or as a result of political violence. According to the later Valech Report, 31,947 were tortured and 1,312 exiled. The exiles were pursued all over the world by the intelligence agencies. In Latin America, this was carried out under Operation Condor, a cooperation plan between the various intelligence agencies of South American countries, assisted by a United States CIA communication base in Panama. Pinochet believed these operations were necessary in order to "save the country from communism". In 2011, the commission identified an additional 9,800 victims of political repression during Pinochet's rule, increasing the total number of victims to approximately 40,018, including 3,065 killed.
Some political scientists have ascribed the relative bloodiness of the coup to the stability of the existing democratic system, which required extreme action to overturn. Some of the worst cases of human rights violations occurred during the early period: in October 1973, at least 70 people were killed throughout the country by the Caravan of Death. Charles Horman and Frank Teruggi, both U.S. journalists, "disappeared", as did Víctor Olea Alegría, a member of the Socialist Party, and many others, in 1973. British priest Michael Woodward, who vanished within 10 days of the coup, was tortured and beaten to death aboard the Chilean naval ship Esmeralda.
Many other important officials of Allende's government were tracked down by DINA under the auspices of Operation Condor. General Carlos Prats, Pinochet's predecessor and army commander under Allende, who had resigned rather than support the moves against Allende's government, was assassinated in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1974. A year later, the murder of 119 opponents abroad was disguised as an internal conflict. DINA set up a propaganda campaign to support this idea, (Operation Colombo), a campaign publicised by the leading newspaper in Chile, El Mercurio.
Other victims included Carmelo Soria, a UN diplomat working for CEPAL, assassinated in July 1976; and Orlando Letelier, a former Chilean ambassador to the United States and minister in Allende's cabinet, assassinated in exile in Washington, D.C. by a car bomb on 21 September 1976, after his release from internment. Documents were released in 2015 that alleged Pinochet ordered Letelier's assassination, though Michael Townley, a US citizen who worked for DINA and had organized Letelier's assassination and directly carried it out, implied otherwise in letters. This led to strained relations with the US and to the extradition of Townley. Other erstwhile victims included Christian Democrat Bernardo Leighton, who escaped an assassination attempt in Rome in 1975 by the Italian terrorist Stefano delle Chiaie; Carlos Altamirano, the leader of the Chilean Socialist Party, targeted for murder in 1975 by Pinochet, along with Volodia Teitelboim, member of the Communist Party; Pascal Allende, the nephew of Salvador Allende and president of the MIR, who escaped an assassination attempt in Costa Rica in March 1976; and US Congressman Edward Koch, who became aware in 2001 of relations between death threats and his denunciation of Operation Condor. Furthermore, according to later investigations, Eduardo Frei Montalva, the Christian Democratic President of Chile from 1964 to 1970, may have been poisoned in 1982 with toxins produced by DINA biochemist Eugenio Berrios. Though this accusation would eventually result in convictions, it was determined by 2021 that Frei was in fact not a homicide victim.
Despite having Pinochet as its highest commander, a "confession" by Michael Townley in 1978 described Gen. Manuel Contreras as the one who oversaw and ordered DINA's missions, even noting that Townley carried out numerous Operation Condor missions in Europe and the Letelier-Moffitt assassination "following orders from Gen. Contreras". In a letter Townley personally sent to Contreras after he was implicated in the U.S. and Chilean press as the lead suspect in the Letelier-Montiff assassination, Townley, using the alias J. Andreas Wilson, indicated his belief that Contreras had not "let his Excellency [Pinochet] know the truth about this case." Nevertheless, it was also acknowledged that the Pinochet regime made a major push to cover up its role in the assassination. The extensive cover-up efforts were codenamed "Operación Mascarada". It was also revealed that Townley, who was expelled from Chile to the United States in April 1978, believed that Contreras and General Pedro Espinoza of DINA were actually more likely to make an attempt on his life than Pinochet.
Protests continued, however, during the 1980s, leading to several scandals. In March 1985, the murder of three Communist Party members led to the resignation of César Mendoza, head of the Carabineros and member of the junta since its formation. During a 1986 protest against Pinochet, 21-year-old American photographer Rodrigo Rojas DeNegri and 18-year-old student Carmen Gloria Quintana were burnt alive, with only Quintana surviving.
In August 1989, Marcelo Barrios Andres, a 21-year-old member of the FPMR (the armed wing of the PCC, created in 1983, which had attempted to assassinate Pinochet on 7 September 1986), was murdered by a group of military personnel who were supposed to arrest him on orders of Valparaíso's public prosecutor. This case was included in the Rettig Report. Among the killed and disappeared during the military junta were 440 MIR guerrillas. In December 2015, three former DINA agents were sentenced to ten years in prison for the murder of a 29-year-old theology student and activist, German Rodriguez Cortes, in 1978. The same month, 62-year-old Guillermo Reyes Rammsy, a former Chilean soldier during the Pinochet years, was arrested and charged with murder for boasting of participating in 18 executions during a live phone-in to the Chilean radio show "Chacotero Sentimental".
On 2 June 2017, Chilean judge Hernan Cristoso sentenced 106 former Chilean intelligence officials to between 541 days and 20 years in prison for their role in the kidnapping and murder of 16 left-wing activists in 1974 and 1975.
