News releases

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 21, 1999

CHILEAN LEGISLATOR/ACTIVIST LETELIER TO GIVE HUMAN RIGHTS SPEECH

MADISON -- Chilean legislator and human rights activist Juan 
Pablo Letelier will deliver the University of Wisconsin-
Madison International Institute's Annual Human Rights 
Lecture.

Letelier is scheduled to speak Monday, Nov. 1 at 4 p.m. in 
the Pyle Center's Lakeshore Room, 702 Langdon St., Madison. 
The free event is open to the public.

Letelier is the son of Orlando Letelier, the Chilean 
diplomat who was assassinated in 1976 in a car-bomb attack 
in Washington, D.C. Orlando Letelier had been Chilean 
defense minister in the government of President Salvador 
Allende, ousted by General Augusto Pinochet in a bloody 
military coup in 1973. Pinochet is currently facing 
extradition to Spain on charges of human rights abuses. 

In court hearings last year, Letelier testified that he 
believed the plot against his father was carried out by a 
"hit squad" dispatched by the Chilean secret police or DINA, 
and that there was evidence the DINA was directly under the 
control of General Pinochet. Two top officers of the 
dictatorship's secret police are serving prison sentences 
for Orlando Letelier's murder. According to Letelier, 
General Pinochet's detention is legal. 

"Diplomatic immunity," he says, "does not grant a license to 
kill. Immunity should not be confused with impunity."

According to Louis Bickford, associate director of the UW-
Madison Global Studies Program, Letelier offers the Madison 
community a rare chance to understand the global struggle 
for human rights.  

"Beyond his active involvement in the Pinochet case," 
Bickford says, "Letelier has spent the last decade working 
within the Chilean political system to strengthen democracy 
by promoting basic human rights, judicial reform, labor 
laws, and mechanisms for accountability and transparency in 
politics and decision-making."

Letelier was elected a deputy or member of Chile's 
parliament in 1990 as a Socialist, and has served on 
numerous legislative committees. He is currently the leader 
of the Socialist Party's parliamentary delegation. 

Letelier, an economist, holds degrees from Georgetown 
University and the Centro de Investigaciones y Docencia 
Economicas in Mexico. During his three-day visit to campus, 
Letelier, as distinguished visitor in international studies, 
will meet with faculty and students. 

His visit is sponsored by the International Institute and 
its member programs the Global Studies Program and the Latin 
American and Iberian Studies Program. 
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