Chile's Cops Seize Camera from Journalist

SANTIAGO - The Chilean Press Association protested the actions of police
who arrested a journalist and took away his camera to copy the contents.

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The incident occurred on Sunday, when freelance journalist Marcelo Garay
was arrested by the Carabineros, Chile's militarized national police,
while taking photographs in an Indian community.

The journalist was charged with photographing a private building, still
an offense under Chile's dictatorship-era criminal code, and the first
thing officers did was to seize his camera as part of "intelligence" work.

"In Chile, there is the rule of law and not a state of exception, and it
therefore appears to us that practices of this nature - which we had
believed were banished after the return of democracy - have no
justification, especially when it has to do with journalistic work," the
Chilean Press Association said.

Chile went before the U.N. Human Rights Council on May 8, and among the
77 recommendations that came out of the process was a call for the
investigation of cases involving the arrest and deportation of
journalists and filmmakers who examine the conflict involving the
Mapuche Indians.

The press group's regional office in the southern territory of Araucania
says what happened to Garay has become "a common practice in the area."

The press association plans to request a meeting with Carabineros
director Eduardo Gordon to examine the Garay case and others in which
"journalistic work has been flagrantly harmed."

Chile's URGC photojournalists union staged a demonstration in Santiago
earlier this week to protest the handling of the case involving Agencia
Efe photographer Victor Salas, who suffered a serious eye injury when he
was struck by a mounted riot cop nearly a year ago.

On May 21, 2008, a mounted Carabinero hit Salas in the face with a metal
riding crop as the photographer was covering a protest in Valparaiso on
the occasion of President Michelle Bachelet's annual report to Congress,
which meets in the coastal city.

Salas, winner of Chile's 2007 National Press Photography Prize, has
undergone four operations and was only recently able to resume working,
the union said.

All eyewitness statements and other evidence in the case was presented
to Interior Minister Edmundo Perez Yoma, but the officer involved in the
attack has not been prosecuted or even disciplined, the union said.

Responding to a formal complaint filed on Salas's behalf by Efe, Spain's
international news agency, the Carabineros conducted an internal
investigation of the assault and identified the mounted officer.

Because the Carabineros are part of the armed forces, military
prosecutors have jurisdiction and their approval would be required
before the civilian police could take up the case. EFE