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TITLE:  CHILE HUMAN RIGHTS PRACTICES, 1994
AUTHOR:  U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE
DATE:  FEBRUARY 1994

                             CHILE


Chile is a multiparty democracy based upon a Constitution which
provides for a strong executive, a bicameral legislature, and
an independent judiciary.  Approved by referendum in 1980, the
Constitution was written under the former military government
and contains limits on popular rule.  Chile's second
consecutive democratically elected president, Eduardo Frei,
began a 6-year term on March 11.  A new Congress comprising 120
Deputies and 46 Senators was sworn in the same day.  Appointees
of former dictator General Pinochet continued to dominate the
constitutionally independent judicial branch.

The armed forces are constitutionally subordinate to the
President through an appointed Minister of Defense, but enjoy a
large degree of legal autonomy.  Most notably, the President
must have the concurrence of the multi-institutional National
Security Council to remove service chiefs.  President Frei
asked Gen. Stange, Commander of Carabineros (the uniformed
police), to resign in April following a judicial charge of
covering up evidence in a 1985 murder case, but he refused, the
charges were dropped, and he remains in place.  The Carabineros
have primary responsibility for public order and safety, and
border security.  The civilian Investigations Police is
responsible for criminal investigations.  Both organizations,
although formally under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of
Defense--which determines their budget--are under operational
control of the Minister of Interior.  Elements of both forces
continued to be accused of human rights abuses, including
police brutality.  Some notorious alleged perpetrators of human
rights abuses during the previous regime remain on active duty
in the army.

The export-oriented economy experienced its eleventh
consecutive year of expansion in 1994.  The most important
export was copper, with fresh fruit, fish meal, and
manufactured goods also important sources of foreign exchange.
Gross domestic product grew more than 4 percent, unemployment
increased to about 6 percent, and inflation fell for the fourth
consecutive year, to 8.9 percent.

Five years after the transition to democracy, the principal
human rights issues in Chile relate to abuses that occurred
during the former military government.  Efforts to do justice
in those cases are limited by sometimes conflicting
requirements for justice and national reconciliation.  In
particular, the courts continue to struggle with the
application of the 1978 amnesty to cases that occurred during
the first 5 years of military rule.  However, in March a
civilian court convicted 15 Carabineros of the 1985 murder of 3
Communist leaders and sentenced 6 to life terms.  The judicial
system continued to investigate, with mixed success, a number
of other pending human rights cases, but human rights monitors
criticized the preferential treatment given some human rights
abusers.  Continuing human rights abuses include instances of
police brutality and torture, prior restraint of the press,
social discrimination against ethnic minorities and indigenous
people, and individual acts of violence against women and
children.

RESPECT FOR HUMAN RIGHTS

Section 1  Respect for the Integrity of the Person, Including
           Freedom from:

     a.  Political and Other Extrajudicial Killing

There were no reports of political killings.

No terrorists died in confrontations with police in 1994, but
the Defense Committee of the Peoples' Rights (CODEPU) claimed
that two criminals died in shootouts because the police used
excessive force.  The circumstances remain unclear.

The police arrested several leaders of Chile's two main
terrorist groups, the Dissident Wing of the Manuel Rodriguez
Patriotic Front (FPMR/D) and the Lautaro Youth Movement,
responsible for most of the political violence since the return
of democratic government in 1990.  The arrests included
Guillermo Ossandon, the most wanted terrorist, and founder and
leader of the Lautaro Youth, who was arraigned for 600 crimes,
including 25 homicides, the Lautaro committed under his
leadership.

The courts succeeded in bringing to justice some government
agents who used political violence in the past.  Special
investigating Judge Milton Juica convicted 15 former police
agents from the former Carabinero Intelligence Unit, Dicomcar,
and their civilian informant for kidnaping and murder in the
1985 death of 3 Communist Party members.  He sentenced them to
prison terms, including some life sentences.  The Court of
Appeals confirmed life sentences for six agents, one of them
the former head of operations of Dicomcar.  The case remains
under appeal.  A military court investigated Carabinero
Commanding General Stange and five retired Carabinero generals
for obstruction of justice in covering up the crime, but
determined they had committed no illegal acts, a ruling that
was confirmed by the Supreme Court.

The Fourth Chamber of the Supreme Court ruled in November that
another former Carabinero captain in Dicomcar should serve his
3-year sentence for the 1985 death of socialist Carlos Godoy
Echegoyen in the penitentiary, reversing a ruling by the
military court of appeals that granted him probation.  The
Supreme Court also ruled that army Captain Pedro Fernandez
Dittus should serve 600 days in prison for his responsibility
in the burning death of Rodrigo Rojas Denegri and the serious
burns sustained by Carmen Gloria Quintana in July 1986.  The
case was the first in which a military court had ruled in favor
of human rights victims, but the military court of appeals in
1991 reduced Fernandez's sentence to 300 days and allowed his
release on probation.  The Supreme Court did not determine who
was responsible for the injuries, but ruled that the captain
had been negligent for not attending to the victims.

The Supreme Court is still reviewing Justice Adolfo Banados'
sentencing of Gen. Manuel Contreras and Colonel Pedro Espinoza
to 7- and 6-year prison terms, respectively, as the
intellectual authors of the 1976 murder in Washington, D.C. of
former Chilean Foreign Minister Orlando Letelier and his
American assistant, Ronni Moffitt.  The two defendants remained
free on bail in the only case involving DINA--the Pinochet-era
secret police--that was specifically excluded from the 1978
amnesty law covering most political crimes before that date.

The courts have not issued findings in the investigations
requested by the Minister of Interior into the 1993 deaths of
two prisoners in police custody.  Police commanders who
conducted their own internal investigations were rumored to
have punished those involved, but this has not been announced
publicly.  The Supreme Court ruled that a civilian judge should
continue to investigate the two deaths that occurred during
demonstrations sponsored by leftist and human rights groups on
September 11, 1993, the twentieth anniversary of the 1973 coup.

The Supreme Court maintained jurisdiction over the
investigation into the 1976 murder of Carmelo Soria, a Spanish
citizen employed by the United Nations.  A military court
applied the amnesty to the case in December 1993, but in April
the First Chamber of the Supreme Court ordered that the case be
reopened to investigate several issues before a decision could
be made on applying the amnesty.  Supreme Court Justice
Eleodoro Ortiz changed procedures and began interviewing
military witnesses on military bases, rather than in court, so
the press could not subject them to scrutiny.

The Third Court of Appeals reopened the investigation into
possible involvement of several active duty and retired
military officers in the 1974 murder of Movement of the
Revolutionary Left (MIR) activist Lumi Videla, and the Eighth
Court of Appeals overruled a military court's application of
the amnesty to the 1974 disappearances of MIR members Barbara
Uribe and Edwin Van Jurick, on the grounds that the amnesty
could not apply because the cases involved a violation of the
Geneva Convention.  Constitutional specialist Humberto Nogueira
wrote both opinions.  The cases are being appealed to the
Supreme Court but the ruling, if upheld, would set an important
precedent for other human rights cases.

In other cases, military courts continued their long standing
practice of applying the 1978 amnesty law to crimes involving
members of the armed forces, without conducting an
investigation to identify the perpetrators.  In December the
Supreme Court upheld a military court's decision to apply the
amnesty to the disappearances of 78 persons who had been
detained by DINA.  Human rights lawyers had initiated the case
before the amnesty was enacted in 1978, and only one of the
victims' bodies was located.  Under the military government,
the military courts had closed such investigations without
applying the amnesty, but after the 1988 plebiscite paved the
way for a return to democracy (see Section 3), the military
courts began to apply the amnesty.  About 100 cases have now
been closed through the amnesty, 300 cases are active, and an
additional 800 cases remain temporarily closed.

In a case where the amnesty does not apply, the authorities
extradited retired Army Major Carlos Herrera from Argentina for
the 1982 murder of Tucapel Jimenez, but the Supreme Court
transferred him from the custody of prison wardens to
confinement on a military base.  Human rights advocates claimed
that former DINA agents are among his guards, making it
difficult for Herrera to cooperate with the courts.  Retired
Army Major Alvaro Corbalan, the commander of an intelligence
unit accused of committing a related murder, remains under
detention on a military base, but there were newspaper reports
that he held several political meetings while confined.

     b.  Disappearance

There were no reports of politically motivated disappearances.

A number of pre-1978 disappearance cases are still in the
courts.  The Aylwin Government argued that under the amnesty
law, these kidnaping cases cannot be closed and the alleged
perpetrator amnestied unless a court determines that the victim
died while the amnesty was in effect.  That argument requires
that the courts locate the remains of the deceased or determine
the circumstances of their death before applying the amnesty.
However, military courts ignore this view and apply the amnesty
to pre-1978 cases of "illegal arrest" when they presume the
victim is dead.  For example, on September 5, the Santiago
military court applied the amnesty to the 1974 kidnaping of the
Andronico brothers without serving an arrest warrant on Army
Lt. Colonel Fernando Laureani (see Section 1.e.).

In November the First Chamber of the Supreme Court allowed
civilian courts to continue to investigate three disappearance
cases.  Human rights lawyer Nelson Caucoto said the Supreme
Court had denied military jurisdiction only twice before in
such appeals.  Caucoto was one of the lawyers representing the
families of the 78 people who disappeared after detention by
DINA (see Section 1.a.).  When the Supreme Court upheld the
military court's application of the amnesty in that case, he
announced his intention to appeal the case to the
Inter-American Commission on Human Rights on the grounds that
all legal means had been exhausted to bring the guilty parties
to justice under the Chilean judicial system.

     c.  Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading
         Treatment or Punishment

The Constitution forbids "the use of illegal pressure" on
detainees but the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture
found instances of mistreatment and abuse by some Carabinero
and Investigations police units.  CODEPU lawyers visit
detainees during their interrogation (see Section 1.d.) and
represent many suspected terrorists in court.  During a 1-year
period that ended October 1, CODEPU alleged there were 16 cases
of torture by Carabineros, 6 by Investigations police, and 2 by
prison guards which it brought to the attention of the U.N.
Special Rapporteur.  Lawyers on a commission studying judicial
reform believe the inquisitorial approach used in Chile
encourages the use of torture.  Since the judge uses written
records, a confession appears to be important evidence, even if
it was obtained under duress.  In October the Santiago Court of
appeals threw out the convictions of 11 members of the FPMR
because the investigating judge relied on confessions that
police had obtained with torture.  Human rights lawyers hailed
the ruling.  CODEPU also reports that its complaints of police
abuses for a 1-year period ending October 1 resulted in 30
administrative reviews by Carabineros and 11 by Investigations
Police.  The Investigations Police created an ethics squad to
investigate reports of police abuse, including allegations of
torture.

The Minister of Interior normally asks the courts to conduct
independent investigations of credible complaints of police
abuse, but such investigations rarely resulted in arrests, due
in part to the reluctance of members of the judiciary, many of
them appointed by the military regime, to pursue the issue
vigorously.  However, as indicated in the CODEPU report, police
authorities often impose administrative sanctions without
waiting for a judicial ruling.

Under intense pressure from Brazil in late 1993, the Supreme
Court appointed Judge Alejandro Solis to investigate
allegations by a Brazilian psychologist, Tania Maria Cordeiro,
that Investigations Police tortured and raped her in March 1993
when they arrested her boarder for possession of arms used by
Lautaro terrorists in bank robberies.  Judge Solis ordered the
arrest of eight policemen including Zvonco Farias, the head of
an Investigations Police station, for procedural irregularities
in the case and for detaining Cordeiro's 13-year-old daughter
as psychological pressure to obtain a confession, but he did
not find proof of torture.  The policemen appealed the charges
and are free on bail.

Chilean prisons are overcrowded and antiquated, but the
conditions are not life threatening.  Food meets minimal
nutritional needs, and prisoners may supplement the diet by
buying food.  Those with sufficient funds can often rent space
in a better wing of the prison.  Although prison guards have
been accused of using excessive force to stop attempted prison
breaks, the guards generally behave responsibly and do not
mistreat prisoners.

A new maximum security prison houses about 80 prisoners, most
of them charged with or convicted of terrorism.  Some of the
prisoners claimed that security measures that prevent them from
meeting as a group violated their rights.  They refused to
leave their cells to appear in court and went on a hunger
strike demanding the conditions be relaxed.  The courts have
repeatedly investigated the complaints, and the Human Rights
Committee of Congress, journalists, and the International
Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) visited the prison.  The
Chilean Human Rights Commission and the congressional committee
criticized wardens for not giving these prisoners the
opportunity to perform prison labor or engage in group
exercise.  The ICRC closed its Santiago office in 1993, saying
that there was no longer a need for prison visits, but it sent
delegates from Brazil for the visit.

     d.  Arbitrary Arrest, Detention, or Exile

The Constitution allows civilian and military courts to order
detention for up to 5 days without arraignment and extend the
detention for up to 10 days for suspected terrorist acts.  The
law affords detainees 30 minutes of immediate and daily access
to a lawyer (in the presence of a prison guard) and to a doctor
to verify their physical condition.  The law does not permit a
judge to deny such access; police authorities generally
observed these requirements.

It is quite common for the police to make arrests based on
suspicion, particularly of youth in high crime areas late at
night.  The Chilean Human Rights Commission reported as many as
a thousand arrests some weeks and said that 80 percent of those
detained are released without charges after a few hours or a
few days.  Arrest procedures do not require police to allow
detainees to telephone their parents or lawyer which causes
particular anguish for distraught parents.  However, statistics
show that the number of such arrests is declining.

There were no cases of forced exile in 1994.  Six Chileans
convicted of politically motivated crimes during the military
regime opted to go abroad as a condition for their release from
jail.

     e.  Denial of Fair Public Trial

The Constitution calls for a judicial system independent of the
other branches of government.  However, the judiciary, and
particularly the Supreme Court, is dominated by appointees
named under the former military regime.  Judges are appointed
for life, and appointments to the appeals and supreme courts
are made by the President from lists prepared by the Supreme
Court.  Gen. Pinochet appointed 10 of the 17 sitting Supreme
Court judges, 7 of them after he lost the 1988 plebiscite.  The
judicial system is widely criticized for being out of date and
inefficient, but the Supreme Court in the past year began
working with the Government on broad judicial reform.  Supreme
Court justices sit on a blue ribbon reform committee, and in
November, a judicial academy was established to give further
training to sitting judges.

The judicial system is based on the inquisitorial system.  The
judiciary relies on the written record rather than oral
testimony, and in most cases the judge renders a verdict after
directing the investigation.  The investigative phase is
considered secret, with limited access for the accused or his
attorney to evidence or testimony accumulated by the judge.
There is a well-developed (but very slow), multistage appeal
process leading ultimately to the Supreme Court; it is not
uncommon for cases to linger for several years.

Under the military government a broad interpretation of state
security laws expanded the jurisdiction of military courts over
proscribed political activities and crimes committed with
firearms.  A 1991 legal reform package, the "Cumplido" laws,
limited the jurisdiction of military tribunals to cases
involving military officers and transferred most terrorist and
human rights cases to the civilian courts.  This reopened many
human rights cases previously closed by the military courts.
However, when formal charges are filed against a military
officer, including Carabineros, the military prosecutor asks,
and the Supreme Court normally grants, jurisdiction to the
military (see Section 1.a.).

The Auditor General of the Army sits as a visiting justice in
Supreme Court chambers that hear appeals of rulings from the
military courts.  The military courts often preempt full
investigation of human rights cases by seeking jurisdiction and
then dismissing the cases.  For example, the Supreme Court gave
a civilian judge jurisdiction over the 1974 disappearance of
the Andronico brothers, both members of the MIR.  She
investigated the case for more than 2 years and found enough
proof to issue an arrest warrant for active-duty Army Lt. Col.
Fernando Laureani, a former DINA squad leader.  After the
arrest warrant was issued, the Supreme Court granted a military
court jurisdiction and the military judge closed the case in
less than 24 hours, citing lack of evidence.  Although a
military court of appeals ordered the case reopened in May and
left standing the original arrest warrant, in September the
military court applied the amnesty without ever calling Lt.
Col. Laureani to testify.  Human rights lawyers appealed to the
Supreme Court and asked that the military judge be reprimanded.
The Supreme Court had not ruled on the request by year's end.

When President Aylwin took office in 1990, the Social Aid
Foundation of the Christian Churches (FASIC) reported 350
prisoners in jail charged with violating state security laws
for politically motivated crimes committed during the military
regime.  They have all been released.  President Aylwin granted
presidential pardons to 151 prisoners, 32 of whom agreed to
remain outside Chile for the remainder of their sentences.
FASIC now counts one detainee as a political prisoner because
he was arrested after 1990 for a crime committed during the
military regime.  CODEPU says there are seven.

     f.  Arbitrary Interference with Privacy, Family, Home, or
         Correspondence

The Constitution prohibits searches of the home and
interception of private communications, unless either a
civilian or military court issues a search warrant for specific
locations.  The 1984 antiterrorist law allows court supervised
surveillance of those suspected of terrorist crimes, and for
the interception, opening, or recording of private
communications and documents in such cases.  Privacy laws do
not permit the release of telephone records nor the use of
caller identification services.

Since the return to civilian rule, there have been a number of
incidents involving supposed espionage.  In a 1992 political
eavesdropping scandal, it was clear that an army unit was
recording cellular telephone conversations of political leaders
of all persuasions, including members of Congress.  While it is
against stated government policy to engage in this kind of
political espionage, it is not clear whether or not it
continues.

Section 2  Respect for Civil Liberties, Including:

     a.  Freedom of Speech and Press

The Constitution provides for freedom of speech and the press,
and the authorities generally respected these rights in
practice.  The press maintains its independence, criticizes the
government, and covers issues sensitive to the military,
including human rights issues.

Military courts still assert their authority to charge and try
civilians for defamation of military personnel and sedition,
but their rulings can be appealed to the Supreme Court.  In
April a military prosecutor charged Hector Salazar, the lawyer
for victims' families in the 1985 murder of three Communist
Party members, with sedition.  In an interview after the
sentencing of the Carabineros, Salazar had questioned whether
Carabineros would obey Gen. Stange's orders when others under
his command had just received life sentences.  A military court
ordered Salazar's arrest and jailed him overnight before he
could make bail.  On appeal, the two civilian members of the
military court of appeals voted to drop the charges while the
three military members upheld them.  In August the Supreme
Court ruled that Salazar's statement did not constitute
sedition, and the military court of appeals dismissed charges
against him.  However, on December 30 the Third Chamber of the
Supreme Court authorized the military prosecutor to file new
charges.

In November former Navy Captain Humberto Palamara was sentenced
by a naval court to 6 years' imprisonment for disobedience.  He
wrote a book, "Ethics and the Intelligence Services," that the
court had ordered confiscated in 1993.  He appealed the
sentence and remains free on bail.

The Supreme Court was at the center of another controversy over
press freedom.  The Communist Party newspaper El Siglo printed
an article in 1993 critical of the Supreme Court, and the
court's prosecutor filed charges for offending the judiciary
under state security laws.  The editor of El Siglo and a
journalist spent 15 days in jail, and then were released on
bail.  In January 1994, a court sentenced them to 300 days'
imprisonment, but freed them on bail while they appeal.  Human
rights lawyers questioned whether the lower courts could issue
an impartial ruling in this case.

The Government revised a draft press law that had been proposed
by the Aylwin Government in 1993, and resubmitted the bill in
September.  Like the original version, the new bill would
transfer cases involving freedom of speech for nonmilitary
personnel from military to civilian courts, including charges
of defamation and sedition.  Although Congress continues to
debate the law, it remains the subject of considerable
controversy with press organs arguing that it may affect
freedom of expression and the protection of anonymous sources.

     b.  Freedom of Peaceful Assembly and Association

Citizens have the right to peaceful assembly and association.
The law requires official permission to hold rallies and
demonstrations on streets and public plazas.  The authorities
normally authorize demonstrations, but may suggest an
alternative location to minimize inconvenience to the public.
Prior to September 11, the anniversary of the coup, the Frei
administration asked Santiago authorities not to authorize
demonstrations near La Moneda presidential palace, the site
where most of the fighting took place on the day of the coup
and where former President Allende died.  The governor of
greater Santiago had promised the organizers of an anticoup
demonstration that they would be able to march past the palace,
and he resigned when he felt his authority to authorize such
marches was not being respected.

     c.  Freedom of Religion

The Constitution provides for freedom of religion, and the
Government respects this right in practice.  All denominations
practice their faiths without restriction.

     d.  Freedom of Movement Within the Country, Foreign
         Travel, Emigration, and Repatriation

Chileans by law are free to move within and to enter and leave
their country.  The National Office of Returnees--established
by the Congress in 1990 to facilitate the reincorporation into
society of the more than 56,000 Chileans who returned from
exile--closed in August.  It assisted returnees and their
families by providing special access to customs exemptions,
health care, housing, and information on job opportunities.