CHILE 2003-4
Most antisemitic activity in Chile in 2003 was expressed in threats
and insults, which remained at the same level as in 2002. A much lower degree
of extremist activity was recorded among Palestinian groups. A possible link
between Chile and the 1994 AMIA terrorist
bombing in Argentina has been uncovered.
THE
JEWISH COMMUNITY
The Jewish
community of Chile, numbering approximately 15,000 out of a total population of
14.5 million, is mostly concentrated in the city of Santiago de Chile, with a
scattering in the provinces of Iquique, Valparaíso, Viña del Mar,
Concepción, Temuco and Valdivia. Most Jews are descendants of refugees
from Germany and are religiously unaffiliated. The Representative Committee of
Jewish Organizations in Chile (CREJ) encompasses all the Jewish communities and
organizations in the country. There are two Jewish schools in Santiago and one
in Viña del Mar. Several publications cater to the needs of the
community.
According to a census conducted in the country in
2002, Jews over the age of 15 comprised 0.13 percent of the population (14,976
persons). In comparison, Muslims in the same age group represented 0.03 percent
of the population (2,894 persons).
Extremist
organizations
Islamic Community
City of Iquique
There were several developments
in 2003 relating to the presence of Islamist terrorists in the city of Iquique.
Several companies from the Free Tax Zone of Iquique (ZOFRI) were investigated
on suspicion of raising funds which allegedly arrived in the bank accounts of
Islamist terrorist organizations such as Hizballah, Hamas and al-Qa`ida via
Ciudad del Este in Paraguay.
Suspicions mounted when in July 2002 Asad Ahmad Barakat
was arrested in Brazil. Barakat, who owned two businesses in the city of Iquique,
is considered the main fundraiser for Hizballah in Latin America and the local agent
of terrorist organizations on the Triple Frontier between Brazil, Argentina and
Paraguay. Barakat’s companies in Iquique might have been used for money
laundering for the armed wing of Hizballah. In 2003 the Chilean police raided
26 companies in the Free Zone of Iquique in order to investigate their possible
relations with Islamic terrorist organizations. Numerous documents were
confiscated, demonstrating tight bonds with the Islamic community of Ciudad del
Este, Paraguay. In April 2003 Chilean President Ricardo Lagos
indicated that, according to intelligence reports, there appeared to be a link
between import-export companies operating in Iquique and al-Qa‘ida.
Since April
2003 the possibility of Islamic terrorist activity in Chile has received wide media
coverage. For example, the TV program “MediaNoche,” broadcast by National
Television Channel on 14 April, noted that several perpetrators of the 1994
bomb attack on the AMIA Jewish community center in Buenos Aires might have
escaped through Chile (see below). The same program reported that Chile was a meeting place for
Lebanese citizens belonging to Hizballah. According to CNN, six members of the
radical Islamic al-Tapligh sect were present in the city of Iquique.
Abdul Gafar Qureshi, Sunni president of the Bilal
Mosque and Cultural Center of Iquique, rejected allegations that the community
of Iquique was linked to terrorist activities. In an interview to the online
version of the regional newspaper El Nortino, Shaykh Abdur Rahman,
former imam of the Bilal Mosque, also claimed to have seen no evidence of such
activities, and certainly no links to al-Qa‘ida.
At the beginning of November, El Mercurio, Santiago’s
main newspaper, reported that an anti-subversive brigade was investigating the
Islamic community in the Peruvian city of Tacna, near the frontier with Chile
on suspicion of links to al-Qa‘ida.
A new
book dealing with terrorism in Latin America and in Chile, in particular, was published by Chilean journalist Carlos Valdivia
and Chilean historian Pablo Franco, in early 2003. The book discusses terrorist
groups such as Lashkar e Tayba, al-Qa‘ida, Hamas and Hizballah, which operate
in the Southern Cone of the continent. A chapter in the book is devoted to the
Hizballah, whose members, from Syria, Lebanon, Iran and Iraq, are welcomed by the imam of the mosque in the city of Iquique. According to Chilean
experts, the book claims, Iquique is a highly strategic zone because direct flights from there
to the Triple Frontier enable a quick exit to Peru or Bolivia.
Other Islamist
Activity
The Cultural Islamic Center of Santiago, directed by Shaykh Abdul Karim
Paz, was active during the year in trying to spread a benevolent vision of the
Islamic world and refute its connection to terrorism. Paz is also imam of the
At-Tahuid Mosque in Buenos Aires. The Lebanese shaykh Hasan Yusuf `Abdallah, a
founder of the Chilean Islamic Center, is suspected by Chilean intelligence of
being a member of Hizballah.
Chile and the AMIA Case
A possible link between Chile and the AMIA bombing has been detected. In
August 2003 the British authorities arrested, at the request of the Argentinean
government, Hade Soleimanpour, who was Iran’s ambassador in Argentina during
the 1994 attack on the AMIA. In September the media revealed that Ibrahim
Husayn Berro, of Lebanese origin, was the suicide bomber in the AMIA building.
He entered Argentina in 1994 via the Triple Frontier with the aid of
businessman Asad Ahmad Barakat (see above). It is suspected that on his arrival
in Argentina, Berro stayed in a mosque in Cañuelas, in the Province of Buenos
Aires, paid for by Soleimanpour, until the attack on the AMIA.
After the Iranian embassy in Buenos Aires was closed
in 1998, the security services concluded that Chile might have been the transit
center for cells of Hizballah and other Islamist groups connected to the AMIA
bombing, as well as to the 1992 attack on the Israeli embassy.
Judge Galeano, who presided
over the AMIA case in Argentina, ordered the capture of 13
people implicated in the case, most of them Iranian diplomats involved in
setting up an Iranian intelligence network in South America.
Besides Soleimanpour, the warrants include several diplomats who served in the
Iranian embassy in Santiago from the early to mid-1990s.
The Palestinian
Community
A much lower degree of extremist
activity was recorded among Palestinian groups such as the Union General de Estudiantes
Palestinos (UGEP), the Asociacion de Jovenes por Palestina (AJPP), Palestinian
Foundacion Belen 2000 and Club Palestino, from the second half of
2002 onward (see ASW 2002/3).
The UGEP and the AJPP participated in joint events in 2003 such as a rally at the
Israeli embassy on 15 May, Israel’s Independence Day, to
commemorate the naqba (Palestinian tragedy), at which comparisons were
made between Israel and Nazism/neo-Nazism and a life-size
puppet representing Sharon, with a Star of David on its
torso, was hung from a tree. They also took part in events of left-wing
organizations, but unlike in previous years, there were no significant anti-Zionist/antisemitic
activities.
Extreme Right Wing
As part of its struggle for official recognition as a
political party, the extreme right Patria Nueva Sociedad (PNS) has
streamlined its internal organization and developed a political strategy for
the municipal elections which took place in October 2004. As of July 2004 they had
not gathered enough signatures for any candidate so they were unable to run in
the elections.
At the end of the year the PNS had some 200 members,
50 in Santiago and the rest in outlying areas, and had regional
headquarters in Antofagasta, La Serena, Quilpue, San
Javier, Lota, Talcahuano, Angol, Temuco, La Unión, Puerto Montt and Isla
Huar.
PNS leader Alexis Lopez told the Spanish website Anillo
Nacional Socialista that 55 persons or movements represented models for the
group, among them, Benito Mussolini, Hitler’s National Socialism, the Egyptian
Muslim Brothers of Hassan al-Banna and the movement of the Great Mufti of
Jerusalem, Haj-Amin al-Husayni, in Palestine. The PNS continued to cooperate
with Alejandro Biondini’s PNT in Argentina. In 2003 the organization invited Hecto
Buela, an Argentinean who won a suit earlier that year against the Simon Wiesenthal Center which
had accused him of discrimination. During his visit they announced that in 2004
a ‘Fourth Ideological Encounter of National Socialists’ would be held in
Argentina, in the city of San Luis (the meeting did not take place), and the
fifth, in the following year would take place in Chile, in the city of Negrete.
About the time of Buela’s visit to Chile, Alexis López lodged a counter
complaint against the Simon Wiesenthal Center with the Argentinean embassy in Chile.
Fuerza Nacional, founded by nationalist youths
in Santiago in 1999, calls for a struggle on behalf of the homeland and
against “globalization and yankee-Zionist imperialism.” The group includes a
commando unit, Komando Oriente, and the La Reina division, which operates in the
La Reina district of the capital. Its propaganda is disseminated through a web
page and through leaflets they distribute outside schools in the La Reina
district. Their goal is to form a metropolitan movement which will “eradicate
Jewish domination, Peruvians and communists” from Chile.
The antisemitic journal Nuestra Voz appears both
online and (though not widely circulated) in print. In 2003 it referred negatively
to the Jewish origin of public figures. It also insulted the ex-president of
the Chilean Jewish community. The group’s web page has links to the Islamic
organization AJPP.
The esoteric neo-Nazi figure Miguel Serrano continued
to defend his thesis about a “Zionist invasion of the south of Chile” through
the purchase of land, among others, by the (non-Jewish) American
multimillionaire fashion magnate Douglas Tompkins, who has been buying up large
tracts of land in southern Chile to create a national park, and the Rockefeller
family.
At the beginning of the year the National
Socialist Chilean Movement (MNSCH) appeared as a link on the homepage of the
Argentinean PNT website Ciudad Libertad de Opinión. The movement
is a merger of two neo-Nazi groups, Vanguardia Nacional Socialista,
founded in 2001, and Lucha 45, founded in July 2002. The former once
offered courses in Nazi ideology to its own members and to those of other
organizations. The 45 in the name Lucha 45 is inspired by the 45 mountains
around Valparaiso. Members of both groups wear black shirts. The movement’s
main symbol is a red swastika with white borders. On 3 January 2003 they reportedly held a meeting to attract more supporters.
ANTISEMITIC
ACTIVITIES
On 11
July, unknown people robbed and vandalized the Aish Hatora synagogue. It is not
certain that the motive was antisemitic. In addition, a fight broke out in a
discotheque in December 2003 between about ten Palestinians and Jews after the
Palestinian youths called a Jewish girl “an ugly Jewish dog.” No one was
injured.
The level of threats and insults
recorded in 2003 was almost the same as in 2002. Most of the incidents involved
insults shouted by an individual passing a Jewish community institution or
offensive telephone calls to Jewish institutions. For example, a man shouted
the slogan “Long live the Nazis” from a car as it passed the Instituto Hebreo
in Santiago in September 2003. The same school had received an anonymous bomb
threat on 19 June. On 11 September the Instituto Hebreo de Viña del Mar received an antisemitic phone call from a person who said,
inter alia: “You Jews are dogs, we will make you miserable.” Death
threats against a community activist at both his home and his office were also
registered. A radio broadcaster Eduardo Bonvallet at Radio W continuously
made antisemitic comments about two community activists in August and
September 2003.
The trend noted in 2001 of persons observing and
photographing Jewish institutions continued in 2003 (see ASW
2001/2, ASW
2002/3). In November a German national was arrested after
he was reported photographing cars inside a Jewish cemetery in Santiago.
In the second half of 2003 there was a great increase
in graffiti, particularly neo-Nazi signs such as swastikas and “Heil Hitler,”
detected in Santiago and Viña del Mar, including on Jewish community
buildings.
Public Opinion Poll
According
to the results of the third national survey on discrimination and intolerance
conducted by the Ideas Foundation (Fundacion Ideas), published in October 2003,
antisemitic attitudes among Chileans rose to 23 percent compared to 20 percent in 2000. The increase is
explained mainly by the tensions in the
