RIGHTS-CHILE: Another Blow to Freedom of Speech

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Gustavo González

SANTIAGO, Feb 22 2000 (IPS) - The conviction of a reporter for libel against a former Supreme Court chief justice demonstrated that Chile remains one of the countries in Latin America with the greatest restrictions on freedom of speech.

The ruling handed down against journalist José Ale was based on the Law on State Security enacted by the dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet (1973-90), which remains on the books after 10 years of transition to democracy.

Ale could be pardoned by President Eduardo Frei if the Supreme Court fails to accept an appeal by the reporter’s attorneys seeking annulment of the sentence issued by the Supreme Court itself on Feb 15, based on a majority opinion by three out of five judges.

The reporter, a former head of the Association of Journalists, was sentenced to 541 days of parole, during which time he will have to sign in every day at the Prisoners Board.

Former Supreme Court chief justice Servando Jordán, who filed the lawsuit against Ale, is the same judge who in June 1999 got “The Black Book of Chilean Justice” by journalist Alejandra Matus banned by the courts.

While all copies of the newly released book were pulled off the shelves, Matus fled to Buenos Aires to avoid arrest. From there she flew to Miami, where immigration authorities granted her political asylum in November.

The Law on State Security, on which Jordán’s lawsuits against Matus and Ale were based, establishes that slander circulated in books or the media against high-level members of the government, the armed forces, parliament or the judiciary is equivalent to sedition.

Under that law, the author of a book or article considered slanderous, and even the editors or others responsible for the publication, can be taken to court, and legal authorities can order the seizure of the “instrument of crime” and a ban on its circulation.

Matus’ petition for political asylum in the United States was embarassing for Frei’s centre-left coalition government, which is keen on projecting the image of a sound democracy.

The persecution of reporters in Chile highlights the authoritarian holdovers of the dictatorship led by Pinochet, arrested in London in October 1998 on the basis of an extradition request from Spain on charges of human rights violations.

In 1998, the New York-based Human Rights Watch published a lengthy report on freedom of expression in Chile, which listed the laws curtailing that fundamental right that are still on the books in this Southern Cone country.

Laws on State security, abuse of publicity and cinematographic censorship and clauses of the military code of justice that are applied to civilians make Chile one of the Latin American countries with the weakest guarantees of freedom of speech, the rights watchdog concluded.

Jordán, who served as chief justice of the Supreme Court from January 1996 to January 1998, also invoked the Law on State Security shortly before leaving his post to have journalist Paula Coddou and writer Rafael Gumucio arrested.

The magazine ‘Cosas’, of which Coddou was editor at the time, published statements by Gumucio alluding to the “shady past” of Jordán, who was accused by right-wing politicians in 1997 of protecting a judicial functionary with links to the drug trade.

That accusation against Jordán was described in detail in Matus’ book, for which she carried out a detailed investigation of the Chilean judiciary from the dictatorship on, and provided information on Jordán’s problems with alcohol.

On Jan 7, 1998, at the end of Jordán’s stint as chief justice, Ale published an article in the ‘La Tercera’ newspaper in which he cited criticism from within the Supreme Court itself against a supposed clique comprised of the judge’s protegés.

In September 1998, Ale and then-director of ‘La Tercera’, Fernando Paulsen, were arrested on orders issued by an appellate court judge hearing a lawsuit filed by Jordán, and spent 24 hours in jail.

In July 1999, Judge Alejandro Solís acquitted Ale and Paulsen, based on the argument that the Law on State Security was incompatible with freedom of speech, which was guaranteed by international conventions signed by Chile.

Jordán appealed the ruling, and this month the Supreme Court acquitted Paulsen and convicted Ale as the sole author of libel against Jordán.

The sentence handed down to Ale brought an outcry from the Association of Journalists, whose leaders protested outside the courts with muzzles on their mouths. The legal ruling was also condemned by the Organisation of American States rapporteur on freedom of speech, Santiago Canton.

One of the three judges who signed the majority decision against Ale was Supreme Court justice Vivian Bullemore, who served from 1981 to 1990 as adviser to the Government Military Junta, the legislative organ of the Pinochet regime.

On Jan 27, just 18 days before Ale was sentenced, Bullemore approached the reporter during the funeral of Roberto Dávila, a former Supreme Court chief justice, and in the presence of several witnesses called him a “professional slanderer.”

The current chief justice of the Supreme Court, Hernán Alvarez, admitted that Bullemore should not have sat on the court that issued the final ruling on the lawsuit filed by Jordán, due to the magistrate’s predisposition against one of the defendants.

Based on that statement by Alvarez, Ale’s defence lawyer, Alfredo Morgado, has appealed to the Supreme Court to annul the sentence against Ale. If the appeal fails, Morgado will ask Frei to pardon the journalist.

The Ministry of Justice ordered, meanwhile, that Bullemore step down from the Supreme Court, arguing that the judge’s professionalism was lacking. In private, the magistrate complained that the decision was based on political motives.