Chile -- Progress Stalled

Chile's record on freedom of expression has improved little since the end of military rule, Human Rights Watch charged in this report. Although the country has made great progress in prosecuting the abuses of the Pinochet dictatorship, the same repressive defamation laws that the military regime regularly employed against its critics are still in use. Chile is unique among Latin American democracies in considering "contempt of authority" to be a crime against state security, meriting up to five years' imprisonment.