More unionists sent to exile

Press, 1 July 1983, Page 6

More unionists sent to exile

NZPAReuter Santiago Chile’s military Government yesterday sent five more people into internal exile as a group just returned told of life in a broken-down hotel, fending for themselves, and largely cut off from the outside world. The five include two officials of the peasants’ union, Segundo Cansino and Sergio Willalobos, and three people whose jobs were not identified. They bring to 10 the number of opponents the Government has exiled to the wintry south during the last few days.

The measures came after protests against the rule of the President, General Augusto Pinochet, and a series of strikes culminating in a general strike which collapsed at the week-end.

The Government has a policy of using such “administrative measures,” with no

recourse to the courts, against those considered to be communists.

Five of the 34 people banished on March 29 to the coastal village of Pisagua, almost 2000 km south of the capital, Santiago, told a news conference yesterday that they would not have survived the first week there but for the help of local people and the Church.

They said that the group had been housed in an abandoned hotel, which had broken doors and windows and only two toilets. They had no food supplies or prospect of work. In a now-celebrated episode, the Spanish service of Radio Moscow got through to the one public telephone in Pisagua and conducted interviews with the group. Soon after they were broadcast, the telephone stopped working.