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On April 14, 1999,
Rafael Huerta, judge of the Santiago High Court, ordered police
officials to go the premises of Planeta publishers to seize the
first edition of The Black Book of Chilean Justice, a book
I had written. The same afternoon, they went to all the bookshops
in the country and took the remaining issues.
That very moment was
the start of the process that has changed my life completely.
All I’ve had I put into it: more than six years of investigations,
more than 80 interviews to people directly involved with the events,
more than a hundred sources and my own personal and professional
experience as a political journalist covering the judiciary. All
this effort ended up in a police cellar just 24 hours after the
launch of the book.
| A
Chilean journalist describes how and why she fled her country
after her book was banned. |
That morning the remaining
1,000 copies that were still in the publisher’s office were
also seized. When the general manager of Planeta, Bartolo Ortíz,
accompanied the agents to the premises, the editor, Carlos Orellana,
called me and gave me the news. My boyfriend and I, having just
arrived a few days before the launch of the book, wanted to stay
one more week in Chile to visit our relatives and friends, whom
we had not seen for a year.
Carlos told me what
was happening and my immediate reaction was: “We have to
contact the press!” Television channels were in their way
to the publishers’ premises when my brother Jean Pierre,
a lawyer, rang. He explained to me the other side of the problem:
what was I going to do!? The arrest warrant was imminent and though
after a few days in jail I could possibly be released on bail,
the judge would probably issue an order that would prevent me
from leaving Chile until the process was over, a possible sentence
of up to five years in prison.
That would destroy
my personal plans and my career. My brother vehemently urged me:
“You’ve got to leave the country immediately!”
I thought I should stay and face the situation, but the publisher’s
executives persuaded me that leaving was the right decision.
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Alejandra
Matus fled her native Chile after a judge banned her book
about corruption in the country's judiciary.
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Thus, in less than
an hour we packed our luggage and, unable to say good-bye to anybody,
went to the airport. We bought the first available ticket to Buenos
Aires and left.
After the difficult
first hours in which we didn’t even know who had issued the
seizure order and why, we learned that everything had been arranged
by Judge Servando Jordán, a member of the High Court and
president of this tribunal from 1996 to 1997. He was one of the
characters of my book though not the only one, not even the main
one.
Chilean law provides
a general framework to restrict freedom of expression and information,
restrictions that I, and the editors, knew beforehand. Human Rights
Watch said in a report published last year that “Freedom
of expression, so central to democracy, is more restricted in
Chile than possibly in any other democratic country in the Western
hemisphere.” We knew that this adventure was a risky one,
but thought that after nine years of democratic recovery, the
consequences couldn’t be so hard. In addition to this, the
judiciary is one of the three fundamental powers in any democracy
and I felt that writing this book was not only a professional
responsibility but a duty as a Chilean committed with the future
of my country.
During the years in
which I worked on the book there were many moments that I thought
I would never finish it. Sometimes, because somebody would alert
me about the dangers. At other times, because I had to write on
the top of my job for various newspapers as a political and judiciary
investigative journalist. Before finishing the book, I received
the Ortega y Gasset award given by the Spanish newspaper El
País for an article I wrote, together with Francisco
Artaza, on the assassination of Orlando Letelier (Washington,
1976).
When I started working
on The Black Book of Chilean Justice, the objective was
just to describe corruption, nepotism and cases of abuse of power
among the members of the High Court, because in early 1990 there
were lots of accusations on private conversations, pointing that
way. Very soon I realized that a recompilation of specific and
even anecdotal cases wouldn’t be enough response to expose
the deficiencies of the Chilean system. These vices seemed to
me just a sign of greater problems.
| “It
was [the military] government that benefited the most from
the insanity of the judiciary.” |
I could not leave out
its political commitment with the military and the lack of independence
of the judiciary during the dictatorship led to the absence of
means of protection for thousands of people whose lives could
had been saved. Neither could I ignore that the Chilean judiciary
was originally conceived to follow the King’s orders and
that Chilean society — especially the political leaders
who had never accomplished their eternal promise of reforming
the judiciary to make it compatible with a democratic system of
government — was for a long time indifferent to this branch.
The Black Book is, then, about the conduct of the High
Court from its inception to the current government of President
Eduardo Frei. I focused on the military government, to which I
have dedicated three out of the six chapters of the book. It was
that government that benefited the most from the insanity of the
judiciary.
The state’s Domestic
Security Law is just one of the legal bodies that gives special
protection to the authorities against public criticism. According
to this law, any offense to the authorities mentioned there —
mainly the president and his ministers, judges of the High Court
or Army generals — is considered a crime against national
security and public order. The sentence could range from 541 days
to five years in prison. Since its approval, 1990, this law has
been applied to 17 journalists, four of them in cases related
to the above-mentioned Judge Servando Jordán.
Certainly, we knew
the risks but what surprised us a lot was the speed and fierceness
with which the magistrate presented the demand against me, and
even more, how quickly the Court of Appeals named one of its magistrates,
Rafael Huerta, who rapidly decided that the best way of handling
the issue was to order the immediate seizure of the publication.
That was the situation
that obliged me to leave Chile.
I waited ten days in
Buenos Aires. In protest, journalists and some members of Parliament
covered their mouths with tape, showing they were censored, in
the building of the High Court. From outside, various organizations
joined together in protest: the Committee for the Protection of
Journalists (CPJ); Reporters sans Frontières; the delegate
of freedom of expression in the OEA, Santiago Canton; the Inter-American
Press Association (IAPA); Argentinean Periodistas and many other
journalistic associations from most Latin American countries.
Personally, I thought
that such a brutal act of censorship couldn’t be possible
in today’s Chile. I was wrong!
I went back to Miami
feeling that I was unable to finish what I started and without
knowing when and how will I return to Chile. Since then, I have
spent my days next to my computer and the telephone, trying to
amend this situation.
| “Personally,
I thought that such a brutal act of censorship couldn’t
be possible in today’s Chile. I was wrong!” |
In these four months,
the judge Huerta ordered the detention and prosecution of the
main executives of Planeta: Bartolo Ortíz and Carlos Orellana.
They are decent people who have had to spend two-and-a-half days
in jail just because they were brave enough to publish an investigation.
Just recently have they been released of charges in the Court
of Appeals.
What is more, the magistrate
dictated an arrest warrant against me and declared me in contempt
of court. This means that at any moment he could ask for my extradition
or ask Interpol to arrest me. Most probably, he will close the
case, leaving the arrest warrant and the confiscation of the book
outstanding, so that if I ever go back, the police will arrest
me and the process against me will restart.
I presented a complaint
before the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights against the
Chilean government. They have already looked into it and have
given ten days to the Chilean government to take all necessary
measures to ensure my personal safety as well as my right to freedom
of expression and intellectual property. Meanwhile, the Chilean
government has reiterated its promise of doing the maximum effort
to reform the National Security Law in the near future.
I would like to think
that that is going to be the case but, so far, the authorities
have proved unable to revert a situation that shames Chile in
front of the international community.
Meanwhile, copies of
The Black Book of Chilean Justice are gathering dust in
a cellar. Chileans can read the book in the Internet, or in pirate
copies made in clandestine prints, but they can’t buy it
in a bookshop what is their right.
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