Human Rights Watch announced today that an exiled Chilean journalist, Alejandra Matus, is among the recipients of this year's Hellman-Hammett Awards, given to writers who have been victims of persecution. Prominent writers and journalists from all over the world have been recipients of this award since its establishment over a decade ago.
Matus is the author of The Black Book of Chilean Justice, an exposé of corruption in the Chilean judiciary, which contains a searing critique of the judicial system under the dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet. Immediately following the release of the book in April 1999, a Chilean judge ordered the confiscation of all copies of the book on the grounds that it violated article 6(b) of the Law of State Security. Police subsequently raided the warehouse of the book's publisher as well as bookstores across Santiago, impounding the entire stock of the book. Fearing imminent arrest, Matus fled to Argentina and later to the United States, where she was granted political asylum. The Chilean government has yet to lift the ban on Matus' book.
Article 6 (b) of the Law of State Security, established in 1958, criminalizes the publishing of statements considered defamatory by senior government officials, the armed forces or the judiciary, and gives judges the flexibility to order the seizure and ban of any books containing such statements.
"This law stifles legitimate political debate," said José Miguel Vivanco, executive director of Human Rights Watch's Americas division. "Despite real democratic progress in Chile, many people in power still have a deep distrust of free debate. This is the legacy of Gen. Pinochet's seventeen years of dictatorship."
A November 1998 Human Rights Watch report, The Limits of Tolerance: Freedom of Expression and the Public Debate in Chile, documented the cases of twenty-five people who have been charged under this law since Chile returned to democracy in 1990.
