Unwanted: protests keep Pinochet's 'torture ship' out of Britain

One thing everyone agrees on is that the Esmeralda is a beautiful ship - a gleaming white, four-masted, ocean-going vessel. But its elegant silhouette does not disguise the fact that its pristine decks were once said to have been stained with the blood of those tortured, raped, maimed and murdered for the crime of opposing General Augusto Pinochet's brutal regime in Chile.

So it is perhaps surprising that the new Chilean government decided to send this particular ship on a round-the- world voyage to signal its good intentions. What is less surprising, as the Esmeralda lays up at a German dockside, is that the goodwill gesture has backfired dramatically.

Its progress across the globe has been dogged by a series of protests, the latest of which forced it to cancel a scheduled stop at Dartmouth in Devon. With Ricardo Lagos, the President of Chile, in London, glad-handing other world leaders this weekend, the embarrassment could hardly be more acute.

Amnesty International describes the Esmeralda as "a symbol of the cruel fate of political prisoners in Chilean recent history, especially the indiscriminate use of torture by government officials".

After the military coup of 1973, according to accounts of survivors compiled by organisations such as Amnesty and the Chilean National Commission on Truth and Reconciliation, the Esmeralda was used by naval officials to hold and interrogate opponents of the Pinochet regime. "Methods included the use of electric prods, high-voltage charges applied to the testicles, hanging by the feet and dumping in a bucket of water,'' Amnesty said.

This week the Chilean navy announced that because of damage suffered while entering harbour at Lübeck, on Germany's Baltic coast, the Esmeralda - now a training ship - would not now be making its planned visit to Britain.

It had been due in Dartmouth for exchanges with students from the Dartmouth Naval College, followed next week by a visit to Docklands in London. It is believed the Chileans simply scrapped the visit, not wishing to have an embarrassing reminder of the past highlighted as their President was meeting the Prime Minister.

Among those planning to protest was Patricia Bennetts, sister of Michael Woodward, a priest from Britain who worked among the poor in the Chilean port of Valparaiso and is said to have died as a result of interrogation on board the Esmeralda in September 1973. Mrs Bennetts is bringing a legal action alleging kidnapping, genocide and torture.

Britain rejected pleas to scrap the visit, because, it was unofficially suggested, permission might encourage Chile to speed up the Woodward case. But suspicion remains of another consideration: the Ministry of Defence has recently sold Chile the frigate HMS Sheffield, and Chile is seeking to buy three more from shipyards somewhere in Europe.

Mrs Bennetts said yesterday: "I was surprised, but very pleased that the visit was cancelled. The whole trip is an embarrassment all round. What we want is for there to be a proper inquiry, for the Chilean navy to admit the truth and for people to go on trial.''

Chilean ministers have said that, in the interests of social justice, investigations into the country's past should be confined to cases of "the disappeared" and victims of extra-judicial executions. The official explanation of Mr Woodward's death is heart failure in a naval hospital.

The ship has provoked demonstrations and dockside vigils in Peru, Ecuador, Germany and France.

The threat of protest forced the cancellation of stopovers in the Netherlands and Sweden. Further protests are planned at its next destinations, El Ferrol, on Spain's north-west coast, and Tenerife in the Canaries. It is due back in Chile in October.

Campaigners say that until Chile acknowledges its past, the ship will retain this stigma. Mrs Bennetts added: "They should have some kind of ceremony to cleanse the Esmeralda of its past. Then it can return to being a very effective and very beautiful ship.''