Sola Sierra; Chilean Human Rights Leader

Sola Sierra, who became an eloquent campaigner for human rights in Chile after the disappearance of her husband at the hands of that country’s secret police, has died.

Sierra died Thursday in Santiago of a heart attack while recovering from back surgery, a Santiago hospital official reported. She was 63.

Viviana Diaz, an aide to Sierra, said the human rights leader underwent surgery to relieve back pain sustained during a fall several months ago.

For more than two decades Sierra was at the forefront of the human rights movement in Chile, winning international recognition with her calls for an accounting of the fates of thousands of people who vanished during the reign of Gen. Augusto Pinochet.

As president of the Assn. of the Relatives of the Arrested and Disappeared, the diminutive, conservative-looking Sierra could always be spotted at major political rallies in Chile. She always wore a chain around her neck with a black-and-white photograph of her husband attached to it, for he was one of the disappeared.

Jorge Pizarro was a Chilean Communist Party official and labor organizer. On Dec. 15, 1976, Chilean plainclothes agents seized him and a friend.

“We never heard from either one,” Sierra said.

But from evidence gathered by human rights investigators, Sierra said, there is no doubt that her husband was arrested “by the DINA,” an acronym for the Chilean secret police force, which was run by army officers.

An amnesty granted military officers in 1978 has hampered efforts to investigate the officials of the military regime who are believed to have played major roles in the human rights abuses.

“The only way to find out what happened to the disappeared people is to nullify the effects of the amnesty,” Sierra said some years ago.

“We don’t know why when the military committed such horrible crimes, we have to turn the page as if nothing ever happened,” she added.

Prominent visitors to Chile often made a point to visit her. Among them was the rock artist Sting, who wrote a song about Sierra’s group called “They Dance Alone.”

Sierra flew to London in November to support efforts by a Spanish prosecutor to have Pinochet extradited to Spain to face charges of human rights abuses during his 17-year rule.

Pinochet is under house arrest near London while he awaits an extradition hearing to begin in September.

Sierra was one of the first to applaud a British high court judge’s decision in May not to bar extradition of Pinochet to Spain. That step opened the way for the full extradition hearing.

“Every day, with these fundamental decisions being taken in Britain, it is shown that justice is universal and that there is no immunity for crimes against humanity,” Sierra told reporters at the time.