Solidarity won release
for Chilean journalist

Last month in the _ spacious
congress room of the Finlandia
Hall, the scene of the 8th Congress
of the International Organization
of Journalists, a small, trim man
took the podium to accept from the
congress chairman, the IOJ’s
highest award — the Julius Fucik
medal, struck two years ago in
honor of the Czech patriot and
Communist journalist who had
died September 8, 1943 at the hands
of his Nazi executioners. It was a
fitting tribute for the Chilean
journalist, Rolando Carrasco,
himself a victim of two years of
fascist prisons, had also won his
release because of the consistent
solidarity of the IOJ together with
progressive journalists
organizations around the world.

During the Helsinki meeting,
Tribune assistant editor Sean
Griffin, Canadian observer at the
8th Congress, interviewed
Carrasco who is now posted with
Radio Prague where he continues
his work on behalf of the Chilian
resistance.

BY SEAN GRIFFIN

At noon, the transmitters of
radio Luis Emilio Recabarren, the
station of the Chilean Con-
federation of Trade Unions, the
station that for years had proudly
borne the name of the founder of
the Chilean Communist Party,
went silent beneath the crash of
bombs. In moments, the broadcast
studios were filled with soldiers,
the staff seized and arrested.

The day was September 11, 1973.

Along with hundreds of other
journalists — from the radio
station of the State Technical
University, from the newspapers
El Siglo and Puro Chile, even
printers from the publishing
houses — Rolando Carrasco was
taken to the Ministry of Defence to
face the junta’s interrogators.
From there he was moved to the
national stadium in Santiago which
only a year before had resounded
to the cheers greeting the Chilean.
folksinger Victor Jara but which
now only heard the agony of its
prisoners.

Even during the first few weeks
in the national stadium, the outcry
from the "International
Organization of Journalists made
itself heard. ‘It was there in the
stadium that we first heard of the
solidarity actions of international
journalists,” Carrasco recalled,
“after nearly two months without

!

any communication with the
world, after weeks of being sub-

jected to hunger, cold — and
beatings.”
But after an_ initial an-

nouncement that freedom would be
granted — the pro-junta Collegium
of Journalists, under intense
pressure from journalists groups
abroad, had intervened with the
junta Carrasco was moved
again, this time to the con-
centration camp of Chacabuco,
1200 kilometres from Santiago in
the merciless Chilean desert.

“There were 3,000 of us in
Chacabuco;”’ he said. ‘“‘And the
camp itself was an exact copy of a
Nazi concentration camp.

“We were given old army
uniforms to wear and were sub-
jected to the worst military
discipline. There was no com-
munication with the outside world.

‘‘In the morning we received gne
cup of coffee while the first meal of
the day — at noon — consisted of
one cooked potato or a spoonful of
beans. In the evening, there was
soup, again made of potatoes or
beans. Only once every four days
did we get a piece of bread. And all
day there was backbreaking
work.”

Only the twisted minds of their
fascist jailers could have devised
such work: Oneach day they would
be forced to carry heavy rocks
from one place to another; the
following day, they would return
them.

Forcing them to such labor in
temperatures that ranged from 42
degrees Celsius during the day to -5
degrees at night, herding them into
rat-infested barracks where they
slept on wooden planks eighteen to
a room, the junta sought to break
them mentally as well as
physically. But it did not and — as
Carrasco affirms — will not suc-
ceed.

‘We organized ourselves,” he
emphasized. ‘‘We elected leaders
in each barracks who then elected
block leaders. The block leaders
together formed a ‘council. of
elders’ which became the authority
for the prisoners and organized
activities among them.

“The teachers among us
organized classes; we collected
scraps of wood to make carvings;
and we made a huge wall mural to
inspire our fellow prisoners.”

‘On another wall, the journalists
in Chacabuco scratched news to
create the daily ‘“‘newspaper’” —
Chacabuco 73.

Throughout the concentration
camps in Chile — in Chacabuco, in
Tres Alamos, on Dawson Island
and scores of others — prisoners
composed poems and songs which,
since no paper was available, were
committed to memory. They were

- taken out of the prisons in the same

way — by word of mouth — and
wherever they are heard in the
world, they have become a
monument to courage.

‘*When we have a free Chile, we
will take all of these things, the
poems, the carvings made out of
scrap materials, and we will make
a museum as a testament to our
invincible struggle,’’ Carrasco
declared.

The importance of international
solidarity in that struggle for a free
Chile was affirmed in Carrasco’s
own case when his release was
finally achieved. Pressed relen-
tlessly by the IOJ and thousands of
journalists, the junta moved him
and others from one concentration
camp to another — first to a camp
near the port city of Valparaiso,
then to the infamous centre at Tres
Alamos — and then, after two
years in its prisons, expelled him
from the country. .

Having won his release, the IOJ
obtained for him a position on the
staff of Radio Prague which has
regular broadcasts to Latin
America. And from there the
struggle continues, particularly on
behalf of the thousands of political
prisoners still held by the fascist
regime.

“There are two kinds of
prisoners in Chile: there are the
thousands that we know about —
and then thereare the others, some
3,000 of them, who are- only
‘missing’, whose whereabouts are
unknown,” he explained.

“The DINA — Direcion de In-
teligencia Nacional, the secret
police — seizes people in the night,
holds them and releases no in-
formation as to their whereabouts.
But we know what happens to these
people. They are taken to detention
centres for savage interrogation.
Many will die in these centres and
many others will be maimed for
the rest of their lives.”

Not only are critics of the regime
arrested by the hated DINA;
frequently their wives and families
will also be taken. Carrasco
related the case of the 66-year-old
trade union leader, Bernardo
Arrayo, whose wife and grand-
children were arrested with him in
May of this year. He was tortured

Rolando Carrasco (left) accepts the Julius Fucik award from Congress chairman and:president of the Finnish

journalists, Paavo Ruonaniemi.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—OCTOBER 8, 1976—Page 10

—Sean Griffin photos

ROLANDO CARRASCO
before the eyes of his. family.

Later, his grandchildren were
released but they had gone mad.
Arrayo and his wife have both
since disappeared.

“This is the daily situation -in
Chile,” said Carrasco. “And even
for those who are not in prison, life
is still very difficult. The junta,
together withits corporate backers
such as ITT and Kennecot, is
reducing the country to a state of
misery that it has never before
known.

“There are more than 1,000,000
without work, there are children
who cannot go to school and many
of those that do, faint from hunger.
Prostitution is rampant.

“The cultural life of the country
has been taken back to the Middle
Ages. It is forbidden to teach the
works of classical Spanish poets —
even Cervantes’ Don Quixote is
banned.

“But on the other hand, the
speeches of Hitler and Mussolini
are obligatory for schools.”’

Yet even inthe prison camps and

the misery that is Chile itself, the’

resistance is growing and is
manifesting ‘itself not in
dramatic ways, as Carrasco
emphasized, but nevertheless
containing, as he put it, “‘the seeds
of the new Chile.”

Such is the savagery of the
fascist regime that it has alienated
virtually all sections of the
population, particularly the
Catholic Church which once was
considered a mainstay of reaction.

Many priests have been mur-
dered by Pinochet’s forces and
even a cardinal was attacked with
the result that the Church has been
increasingly critical of the junta
especially on questions involving
the violation of human rights. In
the clandestine unions, says
Carrasco, Catholics work closely
with Marxist forces, creating an
increased consciousness of the
need for anti-fascist unity.

The same process is at work
within the Christian Democratic
Party. ‘‘When I was in Tres
Alamos, I met many leaders of the
Christian Democrats. Among them
was an increasing spirit of
resistance and movement towards
the position of Popular Unity. And

whereas before the 1973 coup, right
wing forces dominated the
Christian. Democrats, now the
progressive forces are
predominant.”

The movement within the

Christian Democrats is of a new
order as former’ Christian
Democratic president Eduardo
Frei discovered when, last year,
seeking to capitalize on the junta’s
isolation, he posed himself and the
right wing of his party as ‘“‘a real
alternative for Chile.’ But his

pronouncements found favor with
neither the Chilean people — nor
with Pinochet. ‘

Carrasco pointed out that Frei
received some initial support from
the army for his ‘‘real alternative”
but Pinochet responded with a new
round of arrests and executions.

“No, the only real alternative for
Chile is that posed by the anti-

fascist forces,” Carrasco stressed,

“by the parties of Popular Unity
and the workers’ organizations
which are striving to strengthen
the unity of those opposed to the
junta.”

Unfortunately, for many on the
ultra-left many of whom are
members of Movement for Popular
Resistance (MIR), the crucial

importance of anti-fascist unity

has yet to be learned.

Carrasco stated: ‘Tragically,
for the ultra-left, the coup had to
happen in order to make the lesson
known. But even more tragic is
that fact that many have still not
learned.

“The most important lesson of
the coup is that the working class
became isolated,” he emphasized.
“Now we must unite and broaden
the anti-fascist forces.”

10J eapdonta
assassination

HELSINKI—In a telegram to UN

general secretary Kurt Waldheim —

September 23, the 8th Congress of
the International Organization of
Journalists condemned “in the
strongest possible terms’’ the
assassination in New York of
Orlando Letelier, former defence
minister in the Popular Unity
government of Salvador Allende.

Letelier was killed September 21
when a plastic explosive blew up

thecar in which he was riding. The

use of plastic explosives has long
been recognized as indication of
the involvement of DINA, the in-
famous Chilean secret police which
has operations outside the country
as well as within Chile.
The IOJ’s telegram charged ‘‘the
fascist forces of general Pinochet”

with the assassination and
demanded that those responsible
be punished.

The United Nations was also
called upon to investigate the

condition of more than 3,000 ©

political prisoners in Chile, known
to be held by the junta but about
whom no information has been
released. ;

The International Organization
of Journalists represents 150,000
journalists and has affiliated
organizations in more than 100
countries.