During Pinochet's military dictatorship (1973 to 1990) 55 Chilean children were taken from their mothers at birth and sold to Italy .
This was revealed by unpublished data from the civil police released at the Fourth Congress of the Mothers and Children of Silence Foundation. Investigations into the fate of these children are underway.
The data was released on the occasion of the presentation of the international campaign to search for daughters and sons stolen during the Pinochet dictatorship, estimated at over 20 thousand children sent to Europe or North America, for forced adoption or trafficking . The campaign aims to put pressure on the investigation to progress.
The director of the Foundation, Marisol Rodríguez, underlined that "in 50 years no government has looked for these children" , adding that the vast majority of these people, now adults, have no photographs because they are children kidnapped and sold as soon as they were born. This is an element that makes research difficult if not impossible for families.
According to the police register, 178 children were sent to Sweden, 119 distributed to Chile itself, 90 to the United States, 55 to Italy, 30 to France, and a smaller number to other countries. These are the ones we are certain of, because the number of children "sold" would be much higher, estimated at 20 thousand.
(Unioneonline/L)