Chile

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CHILE The Chilean press has been working without serious restrictions. However, there is restrictive legislation ranging from film censorship to the seizure of publications and books. It also includes the most severe regulations on insult and contempt in the continent. Thus, the judiciary is making rulings restricting freedom of expression, supported with case law described by many as against press freedom. On the positive side, the executive branch has announced to the IAPA that it will take the necessary steps to get parliament to repeal all restrictive regulations. In fact, President Lagos has presented bills to repeal Article 6-B of the State Security law and eliminate film censorship. He also will ask Congress to approve regulations ending the judiciary’s legal authority over the right to information. While recognizing the importance of this development, it must be noted that many of these proposals must be approved in parliament. It is hoped that with the executive branch’s support, these bills, many of which have been in the legislature for several years, will be approved definitively. One news ban was imposed but later lifted and there was a trial in the Santiago Appeals Court involving a newspaper in that city. The consideration of a proposed law on Freedom of Opinion and Information and Journalistic Practice has not progressed. When the body of a worker was found in Lanco, in the Tenth Region on February 8, El Diario Austral of Valdivia reported that it was a homicide. A judge in San José de la Mariquina ordered a ban on giving information to the newspaper until February 20 under Article 25 of the Law on Advertising Abuses. On February 5, Senator Francisco Javier Errázuriz filed a complaint in the Santiago Appeals Court under Article 6-B of the State Security law against Enrique Alvarado, editor of the daily newspaper El Metropolitano; Javier Ignacio Urrutia, publisher of the paper’s business section; and Mireya Muñoz, a photographer, for publication of reports about Eduardo Pinto Peralta, a notary who was on trial for allegedly falsifying a public document concerning a business owned by the senator. At the beginning of March, Claudio Huepe, government secretary, met representatives of the Media Federation and the Journalists Colegio to discuss an amendment proposed by the executive branch to the press law under consideration in the Chamber of Deputies. The proposal is to be heard in the chamber in March, and the government has proposed that it be approved in May. This bill for a press law has been in the legislature for seven years. Since it was rejected in August of last year, the administration decided to propose the amendment.

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