Daniel Sanchez San Juan and his family were persecuted under Pinochet’s regime, but suffered even more with the transition to democracy. Sanchez San Juan tells his story to HELEN BASILI.

Daniel Sanchez San Juan has long been a target of the Chilean police. Arrested and detained eight times under the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet and 15 times under subsequent governments, he is no stranger to a prison cell.

Sanchez San Juan is well aware of the risks he took through his involvement in the pro-democracy movement in Chile. Thousands of democracy activists were tortured or ‘disappeared’ during the Pinochet regime and, despite the change of government in 1991, the torture and repression continued. It was a daunting environment for an activist, but Sanchez San Juan was not about to be deterred. It wasn’t until this year that things got so bad in Chile that he had to come to Australia.

In December 1989, Chile held its first presidential elections since the 1973 military coup. Patricio Aylwin of the Concertacion de Partidos por la Democracia was elected president and came to power in March 1990. To Sanchez San Juan, the idea that Chile became a democracy after Pinochet lost the presidency is farcical. He believes there has been no improvement in the human rights situation under subsequent governments.

"On the contrary, I think the image of Chile became distorted to other countries because of what happened there [with the change of government]," he says.

According to Amnesty International reports, substantial improvements in Chile’s human rights situation have occurred after 1990 but things are far from ideal. Between September 1991 and March 1993, there were over 50 cases of torture and a further 20 complaints of torture and ill-treatment were received from Chilean non-governmental organisations in 1996.

The Chilean constitution, amended by Pinochet’s government, is still effective. This means that political prisoners are tried by military courts and Pinochet will be a senator in the Chilean parliament for the rest of his life. Furthermore, a 1978 Amnesty Law makes it difficult to prosecute those who committed atrocities under the Pinochet regime.

Sanchez San Juan was 16 years old when he joined the Communist Youth in 1985. He organised protests and workshops on human rights and was a prominent public speaker. It was not long before he rose to become a leader at the area level in Santiago.

By the age of 17, Sanchez San Juan was known to the police. He was arrested and detained for one night following his participation in a protest march against Pinochet. It was winter and Santiago was extremely cold. Sanchez San Juan and six fellow student activists were stripped, hosed with cold water and forced to lie on a concrete floor for several hours. "It was both a painful and a humiliating experience for each one of us," says Sanchez San Juan. This was his first, and one of his mildest, encounters with the Chilean secret police.

As Sanchez San Juan’s involvement in politics grew, his parents became increasingly inspired by his ideals. His father joined the Communist Party and his mother, although initially reluctant, gradually began to change her attitude towards Sanchez San Juan’s activities. "[My mother] started to have a certain degree of sympathy for what we were doing after my sister and I were detained. We told her we were [part of the pro-democracy movement] because the Christian values she had taught us could be utilised there," says Sanchez San Juan.

Sanchez San Juan was detained more and more frequently and his experiences became excessively brutal. On 30 March 1992, Sanchez San Juan was going to work as usual:

"Suddenly, I saw a van coming against the traffic which turned and stopped sideways across the road. Four men came out of it, grabbed me and threw me in the van...I was blindfolded and handcuffed with my hands behind my back," says Sanchez San Juan.

The interrogation began immediately. Sanchez San Juan was asked to name the occupants of the house he was living in. He replied that he lived with his parents and younger brother. The men punched him and told him not to lie. The same line of questioning continued for the duration of the journey.

Upon reaching their destination, Sanchez San Juan was thrown into a room. Still he was questioned relentlessly. He was dragged around the room by his hair and punched. Then he was thown in a car, causing his forehead to split open, and driven for about 30 minutes over dirt roads.

At the new destination, Sanchez San Juan was led into another room and made to sit on a plastic chair. He was still blindfolded and handcuffed. Two men came into the room: "The first man said ‘let me talk to him’, and asked me for my name. I said ‘Daniel Sanchez San Juan’, and he said ‘that’s a lie’, and punched me. The same thing, question, answer, blow, was repeated several times. Then he grabbed me by the neck and pulled me up saying ‘that is not your name. I’ll kill you’."

He was left alone for an hour and then the interrogations, and beatings, started all over again. The same pattern was to continue for the next five days. 

Sanchez San Juan was prevented from sleeping, interrogated and beaten periodically. He was forced to listen to the screams of torture victims and overheard his captors flicking through the pages of a book and commenting on prisoners who died during torture.

A gun was held to his head and Sanchez San Juan was asked about his involvement in the kidnapping of Cristian Edwards, the son of Chile’s wealthiest media tycoon. He knew nothing about it.

Sanchez San Juan says the worst part of his ordeal was when his parents and two siblings were brought in for questioning: "They forced me to listen while they interrogated my mother...then they interrogated my father. I wanted to die but at the same time I did not want my mother or my father to know that I was there so I did not utter a sound."

Sanchez San Juan and his siblings were eventually released but his parents were not so lucky. He was shocked to discover that his parents were accused of the abduction of Cristian Edwards and were convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Edward’s father, Augustin Edwards, is a sixth generation English immigrant. His ancestors established a newspaper business in Chile in 1877 and by 1990 the Edwards family owned at least three national newspapers, 16 regional newspapers, a radio station and a number of other media outlets. Most notable is the publication El Mercurio, a right-wing newspaper with a circulation of five million in Chile and abroad.

According to former CIA officer Ralph McGehee, El Mercurio received more than US$15 million in funding from the CIA in the early 1970’s. In his self-compiled database, CIABASE, McGehee wrote: "Besides funding political parties, the CIA supported El Mercurio, the country’s largest newspaper and the most important channel for anti-Allende propaganda. For the CIA, these efforts played a significant role in setting the stage for the military coup of September 11, 1973 [which overthrew the Allende government and brought Pinochet to power]."

The Edwards family openly prospered under Pinochet’s regime, a fact that did not go unnoticed by pro-democracy activists. In September 1991, Cristian Edwards was abducted by the Manuel Rodriguez Patriotic Front (FPMR). He was kept in captivity until February 1992, when he was released after his father paid a ransom of US $1.5 million.

Sanchez San Juan’s parents were tried, unrepresented, before a military court. According to an Amnesty International ‘urgent action’ report released on 2 April 1993, Sanchez San Juan’s mother, Maria Cristina Sanchez San Juan Avila "was given a cup of tea containing a drug that made her drowsy and filmed while a man made her repeat after him a description of the kidnapping of Cristian Edwards, who had allegedly been held in her home."

Sanchez San Juan is particularly anxious about his mother. She has been held in a men’s prison and is extremely ill with two rare medical conditions - lupus erythematosus and Takayazu’s disease. As a result, she has a severely weakened immune system but she has been denied specialist medical attention.

Last November, Sanchez San Juan’s mother was assessed by a psychiatrist, Dr Daniel Diaz Paredes: "She is held in a room of six square metres, being confined here all day long and having an outing of just two hours a week to visit her husband," wrote Dr Paredes in a medical report. He concluded that "the stress generated by the conditions in which she is kept...increases and worsens these auto-immune illnesses."

In March this year, Sanchez San Juan was forced to leave Chile and came to Australia. He felt guilty leaving while his parents were in prison but he was not prepared to put up with the death threats he had received following the arrest of Pinochet in London. Since the arrest there has been a re-emergence of many right-wing groups: "These fascist groups believe it would be good if they killed some people as punishment for what Pinochet is going through," says Sanchez San Juan.

This alarming phenomenon is also discussed in Amnesty International’s 1999 Annual Report on Chile: "Following the arrest of former General Pinochet in October scores of human rights defenders and relatives of victims of past human rights violations were subjected to death threats and harrassment," the report said.

Sanchez San Juan believes that El Mercurio might be behind the group that has been harassing him: "First they sent me some mail where they called me a communist dog. Later there were telephone calls at home and they started following me. I can’t say for sure but because they always mentioned what happened to Cristian Edwards it was probably El Mercurio or people close to them."

Along with many Chileans in exile, Sanchez San Juan is following the legal proceedings against Pinochet with great interest: "I hope he is sent to prison. It doesn’t matter in which country, but he should really be in jail. I do feel that [his imprisonment] could affect the destiny of the Chilean people."

Sanchez San Juan is attempting to forge a life for himself in Sydney. He is learning English and working for a Latin American program, Romperemos, on community television. But he still suffers physical problems as a result of the beatings he experienced in detention. He is also burdened with the knowledge that both his parents are in jail on the other side of the world. His mother’s health is an ongoing source of anguish and, although he writes to her regularly and campaigns for her release, there is the frustration of never being able to do enough. Sanchez San Juan lives with the hope that one day, his parents may be freed.