187. Telegram 2055 From the Embassy in Chile to the Department of State1
2055. Subject: Chile—Prospective Modifications in Human Rights Practices For Assistant Secretary Rogers from Popper.
1. Summary. After meeting with junta, Min Econcoord Raul Saez informs us he expects GOC to announce within a week series of measures which if effective would result in some improvement of Chilean Govt human rights practices. Saez is pushing for additional measures. Believes failure to include Chile in Secretary’s Latin American itinerary would set back his efforts, unless entire trip were called off. End summary.
2. As you know, I have been talking discreetly for the last week or so with FonMin Carvajal and Raul Saez, to see what might be done in the human rights area to make it easier for the Secretary to included Chile in his trip. While full of good will, Carvajal has so far been unproductive. Saez however, is desperately seeking progress in the human rights area in order to salvage Chile’s tottering foreign credit standing. He succeeded in arranging a meeting evening April between the four members of the junta and its economic team (Saez, Minister of Economy Fernando Leniz, Minister of Finance Jorge Cauas) and filled me in on results April 6.
3. Saez says he put the case for an improvement in human rights practices very strongly, having in mind your private talk with him when you were here, and mine thereafter. Pinochet reacted explosively, but subsequently calmed down, and by end of meeting agreement had been reached on following points.
4. First, a decree law modifying the constitution is to be issued—Saez believes, by April 8—which will provide that notwithstanding [Page 505] the existence of any declared State of Emergency, any person detained by police or security forces must have his case presented to the appropriate tribunal within five days of arrest. Choice of tribunal (whether military or civil) will depend on provisions of Chilean law with respect to alleged offense. In effect, decree would restore concept of amparo (habeas corpus), making legally impossible the prolonged secret detention of internal security detainees which is now common.
5. Second measure will be publication of a new anti-terrorism law which will modernize inadequate and outdated Chilean legislation in this area and thus serve to clarify proper role of internal security authorities and courts in this field. New law, which junta has been promising for weeks to produce, exists in draft. It will stand until superseded by a new-code of National Security.
6. Third step, to be taken partly to help in dealing with current dispute in Germany over economic assistance to Chile, is a clarification of what GOC will do to release internal security detainees now in custody. Saez says he may himself be able to announce in few days that Chile will release all 1,107 detainees currently held without charge under state of siege provisions, as soon as countries can be found to receive them. (Up to now, Chileans have been insisting first increment of one hundred must be fully placed before others can be processed.) Saez also expects a more definite commitment from Government that internal security detainees being tried or already sentenced, numbering three to four thousand in all, will eventually be permitted to go into exile.
7. Fourth measure will be a formal request from Pinochet to commission [garble] of jurists junta early on appointed, for a progress report on new constitution it is drafting. So far, commission has been moving at a snail’s pace, purpose would be to energize it, and I presume to stimulate discussion re the kind of new democratic system the projected constitution is to embody.
8. Fifth, Pinochet will announce that a new system of voter registration and identification is to be worked out to avoid repetition of the electoral fraud which allegedly inflated the Allende regime’s pluralities. No commitment as to when or how an election or plebiscite would be held, but the implication would be clear.
9. Sixth, Pinochet will continue to demand that the UN Human Rights Commission seek to send study commissions to the USSR and Cuba, but will admit the Chile study group regardless of the response.
10. On one point, Saez failed to get the junta’s agreement. He tried hard to arrange for the appointment of civilian sectors to replace the military men heading up Chile’s two leading universities: the University of Chile and Catholic University in Santiago. He will revert to this matter. Further, at a meeting with the junta scheduled for April 8, he [Page 506] intends to press for increasing civilian participation in the cabinet. Specifically, he wants the ministers of public works, housing, mines, and justice (i.e., one held by each of the armed forces and one carabinero) to be headed by civilians. The military occupants of the first three posts, he points out, have no conception of how to use properly the substantial public funds they control.
11. I complimented Saez for his political courage and told him I thought that if his program were actually carried out, it might mark something of a turning point in the human rights situation here. The root of the problem seemed to me to be the absolute power of DINA (National Intelligence Agency) to do whatever it desired in detaining and handling suspects. The most difficult problems we had in our Embassy had to do with allegations of torture. Could not something be done to make it clear that the government opposed maltreatment? If as we had heard, officers and men had been punished for torture, could not the government publish the facts?
12. Saez said he had remonstrated with Pinochet about DINA, so far without much success. He was also pushing for the return to Chile of Renan Fuentealba, a Christian Democratic leader summarily expelled from Chile some months ago on very flimsy grounds. He believed he had heard that over two hundred persons had been punished for mistreating detainees. Some had received long prison terms. I said this was an astonishing figure, but I urged that if his information were correct, it be published at once. Saez said he thought it might already have been used, in a television program in Germany last week.
13. Comment. Saez made it plain that he has been having hard sledding. He complained of what he termed fascist advisers to the junta. He believes, nonetheless, that the six decisions listed above will become matters of public knowledge within one week. I am not so sanguine, given the government’s propensity to wobble on matters of central significance to it. But if Saez keeps pushing, as he will, I am inclined to believe that the financial squeeze may eventually be effective in bringing the junta around. These measures will not in themselves dismantle the junta’s internal security system. But they could start a trend toward confining that system somewhat more closely to actions actually necessary to prevent subversion.
14. Finally, Saez said he hoped the Secretary would not omit Chile from his South American itinerary. Failure to come here would set back efforts to liberalize the situation, this would not be the case if the entire trip were cancelled, but it would be if the Secretary visited other South American countries.
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Summary: Minister of Economic Coordination Saez informed Popper that the Chilean Government planned to announce a series of measures that would result in an improvement of Chile’s human rights practices.
Source: Ford Library, National Security Adviser, Presidential Country Files for Latin America, Box 3, Chile, State Department Telegrams, SECSTATE–NODIS. Secret; Immediate; Nodis. On April 10, Popper reported that Saez had informed him that the inclusion of more civilians in Pinochet’s Cabinet would help bring about improvements in the human rights area. (Telegram 2160 from Santiago, April 10; ibid.) The Decree Law on National Security, April 30, decreed that detainees would either be charged or released within five days, and that notification of family members would take place within two days. However, the Embassy reported that the measure represented “little substantive change from legal situation concerning national emergency and status of detainees which has existed since Sept 1973 coup.” (Telegram 3084 from Santiago, May 2; National Archives, RG 59, Central Foreign Policy File, D750155–0617) Although the Minister of Justice assured U.S. officials that the law would change the Chilean Government’s detention practices, the ICRC reported that no such change occurred. (Telegram 4454 from Santiago, June 23; ibid., D750218–0556)
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