Neo-Nazi Threats Cause Concern Among Jews And Gays In Chile

by Gustavo Gonzalez

(IPS) SANTIAGO -- The Chilean government banned a march by neo-Nazi groups under a homophobic, anti-Semitic banner scheduled for May 15, but another organization defining itself as "national socialist" plans to field candidates in the October municipal elections.

Although there is no hard data on the influence of neo-Nazism in Chile, the Jewish community as well as organizations representing sexual minorities have expressed concern over the virulence of the threats attributed to "racist skinheads."

The group 'Nuestra Voz' (Our Voice), which produces an on-line magazine of the same name, was the main organizer of the march announced for May 15, which was prohibited after an intense campaign and legal complaints by the Jewish Youth, the Movement of Homosexual Integration and Liberation (MOVILH) and several lawmakers.

Nuestra Voz and seven other extreme-right groups, which range from fanatic evangelical sects to nationalists nostalgic for the dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990), organised the march under the theme 'we must save our fatherland and our race from the scum.'

The pamphlets, e-mails and on-line announcements of the demonstration included attacks on the Jewish community and complaints about the supposed "Zionist penetration" of Chile.

The groups said there is a growing Jewish influence in the government, and protested the "appropriation" of land in Chile's southern Patagonia region -- an allusion to Pumal’n Park, which belongs to U.S. multimillionaire and conservationist Douglas Tompkins.

The organizers of the demonstration also lashed out against sexual minorities. The march was to include protests outside the offices of Chile's gay rights newspaper, OpusGay, and the home of the president of MOVILH, Rolando Jimenez.

In the pamphlets, Jimenez is equated with businessman Claudio Spiniak, who is facing charges since October 2003 as the ringleader of a pedophilia network that sexually exploited street children.

"We must save our fatherland and our race from these scum. We must not allow our children to be abused by these degenerates," state the neo-Nazi groups, who call activists and others who advocate for respect for the rights of sexual minorities "sodomites."

Danilo Munoz, acting mayor of the Metropolitan region of Santiago, officially announced on May 3 that the neo-Nazi march would not be allowed.

President Ricardo Lagos' spokesman Minister Francisco Vidal said "everyone has the right to express themselves in accordance with the law, but let us not be confused that this right, so sacred in a democracy, can be used to threaten. That will not be tolerated by the Chilean government."

On its web site, Nuestra Voz complained about the decision to ban the march. "Decency has found its tomb. The immense silent majority have once more lost the opportunity to express themselves."

"Pseudo-democratic authorities have withdrawn our authorization to march peacefully and to show the degenerates, mental retards, delinquents and miserable scoundrels that we Chileans no longer tolerate them," added the publication, which accused the government of favoring "brainless punks, incendiary Communist Indians and Marxist terrorists."

Jimenez said the ban on the march provided a measure of tranquillity for activists, but added that MOVILH would go ahead with legal action against the neo-Nazi groups in the courts.

In a conversation with IPS, the gay activist pointed out that Chile adhered to a resolution against neo-Nazism in the last session of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, which was approved by 36 votes in favor, 13 against and four abstentions.

In the resolution, the members of the Commission rejected "the persistence and resurgence of contemporary forms of neo-Nazism, neo-fascism and nationalist prejudices, which cannot be justified under any circumstance," said Jimenez, who attended the UN Commission's sessions in Geneva, Switzerland as an observer.

The resolution also stated that neo-Nazi groups fuel racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and intolerance, which is all too clear in the Nuestra Voz on-line publication, which launches systematic attacks on Jews and immigrants from other Latin American countries, especially the Peruvians who have flocked into Chile over the past decade.

Jimenez called for "a more vigorous and consistent" stance by the center-left Chilean government towards the neo-Nazi groups, as well as solidarity from human rights organizations.

He particularly criticised the journalists' association, which failed to react to the threats against OpusGay, the newspaper produced by MOVILH.

Verbal attacks on the gay and lesbian movement by neo-Nazi groups in Chile also include insults to politicians and journalists who call for tolerance.

According to Nuestra Voz, Alejandro Guillier, the new president of the journalists' association, defends "homosexual pot-smoking progressives" on the TV news program he hosts.

Parliamentary Deputy Mar’a Antonieta Saa, who sponsored the law that legalized divorce in Chile on May 7, is termed a "Marxist and lesbian Sephardi Jew," and the 'Fundacion Ideas' (Ideas Foundation), which has carried out studies on discrimination, is described as "a Masonic pipedream financed by Jews."

The neo-Nazi groups' description of themselves as pacifist is contradicted by the e-mails they have been sending to MOVILH since April.

"Don't think you'll get your way. We'll stop you. We'll shatter you. Heil Hitler!" read the e-mails, which contained images of swastikas.

Alexis Lopez, the head of the Patria Nueva Sociedad (New Society Fatherland), another national socialist movement, sought to mark a distance from Nuestra Voz and the rest of the groups that were organizing the banned march.

"We have no links. In fact they attack us and accuse us of being homosexuals," Lopez told the local daily La Cuarta.

Patria Nueva Sociedad is the best organized neo-Nazi group in Chile, and the one that has the greatest public presence, by contrast to Nuestra Voz and its allies, which hide in anonymity.

Lopez's group says on its web site that it already has branches in at least 16 municipalities in this South American country of 16 million, and that it will field some 20 candidates, who will run as independents, for town councillor in the October elections.