Hundreds of Chilean children were kidnapped and illegally handed over for adoption in Sweden during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet in Chile, according to a study published in Sweden by the newspaper ‘Dagens Nyheter’. The figures rise to 2,100 adoptions between 1971 and 1992, of which 1,700 correspond to the path opened by Pinochet with the Swedish extreme right.
The epicenter of the kidnappings and deliveries would be the Sweden-Chile Society, an association led by the far-right Ulf Hamacher that made it possible for the Adoption Center of the Swedish Society for the International Welfare of the Chilean Child to deliver positive information about the Chilean regime to the children. family nuclei requesting adoption.
The research is based on the findings of the doctor in history from the Chilean Austral University Karen Alfaro and the history teacher and doctoral student at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, José Luis Morales, who analyzed the diplomatic documentation of the Chilean Embassy in Sweden and archives of the Swedish Fund of the General Historical Archive of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Chile and of the Fund of the Ministry of Justice of the National Administration Archive, among other sources.
According to the investigation, the upper echelons of the Chilean dictatorship agreed to kidnap and send to the Scandinavian country thousands of children who were given up for adoption with the aim of breaking the diplomatic isolation of the regime.
"The Military Junta in Chile used international adoption to Sweden in a campaign of political influence", highlights the research work.
The Sweden-Chile Society sought to improve the image of the Chilean dictatorship in Sweden through humanitarian gestures such as seeking a better future for children who had supposedly been abandoned when in fact they had been kidnapped.
The first complaints of illegal adoptions came in 2004 due to the work of the journalist Ana María Olivares. Since 2018 there has been an investigation in Chile, led by judge Mario Carroza, which focuses on the irregular adoption of Chilean children during the Pinochet dictatorship.
The Swedish Government has reacted through its Minister of Social Affairs, the Social Democrat Lena Hallengren, who has announced an investigation to document possible "irregularities" in international adoptions from Chile.
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