Book review: Finnish diplomat in Chile helped 2,500 escape Pinochet terror
By Veli-Pekka Leppänen
In the battlegrounds of the 1970s where the Cold War flared with great intensity, the Americans lost Vietnam and won Chile. Vietnam was a fiasco for the superpower, but Washington had did not celebrate its success in Chile very conspicuously.
The junta of General Augusto Pinochet took power from the socialist President Salvador Allende on September 11th, 1973. Preparations for the action had been made with the help of a stranglehold put on Chile’s economy by the United States, and with propaganda and material assistance from the CIA to those planning the coup.
When it took power the junta killed at least 3,000 Chileans and imprisoned tens of thousands. Torture, rape, and other desecrations of human dignity became a brutal experience of the nation.
Writer Heikki Hiilamo adequately examines the background of the coup in his book Kuoleman listat. Suomalaisten salainen apu Chilen vainotuille (“Lists of Death. Secret Finnish Aid to the Persecuted of Chile”) from two angles. He also goes more deeply into the most human part of the time of terror: the rescue of thousands of people in danger of death from the hands of the junta.
More precisely, he goes into how two relatively young Finnish diplomats helped many of the persecuted out of Chile.
The help offered by charge d’affairs Tapani Brotherus and deputy consul Ilkka Jaamala was based on spontaneous initiatives, which were kept a secret from the Finnish Ministry for Foreign Affairs, and which went against Finland’s severe policy line to turn people away. They placed humanity ahead of the instructions that they got as civil servants.
Brotherus had previously felt shame at how Finland had returned Soviet defectors.
Both men were also inspired by an individual case. On September 14th Brotherus opened his door to a personal acquaintance, a top civil servant of the Allende period. He was dirty and frightened, and asked for safety. Jaamala was repelled at hearing drunken officers boast about how they “freed” their prisoners - out of a helicopter over the sea.
The activities of the two were soon revealed to the bosses in Helsinki. However, a key goal was to get things going before the Foreign Ministry could intervene, as it is more difficult to torpedo a process that is under way, than to stop something that has not started yet.
At first not even Finnish journalists or politicians knew anything about the matter, and certainly not an inspector of the Foreign Ministry, during whose visit Brotherus hid refugees in different parts of his house.
While all communist countries except China and Romania cut ties with the Pinochet junta, Finland agreed to serve as the “protective state” of the GDR in Chile. A flood of desperate Chileans started flooding into the East German diplomatic quarters that were monitored by Finland. It was left up to the Finns whether or not to send them out of the gate (and leave them to the mercy of the junta) or to offer protection.
The small group of East Germans who remained in Santiago, the Restgruppe, did things without the knowledge of the Finns that went beyond purely humanitarian activities. However, the main direction that events took was that Brotherus and Jaamala organised the departure of refugees from the country - mostly to East Germany, but also to Finland.
The work was slow and dangerous, and there was a constant fear that the activity would come to an inglorious end - a break in diplomatic relations, or the abrupt termination of the diplomats’ own careers. Brotherus continued to take conscious risks even though his Swedish colleague Harald Edelstam had to leave Santiago.
Hiilamo calculates that as a direct result of Brotherus’s activities, 182 Chileans ended up in Finland, and about 1,700 got to East Germany, and that Brotherus managed to improvise the departure of about 500 other refugees. Brotherus’s “balance” reaches about 2,500 people who were rescued.
Compared with the 2,563 Chilean refugees that Sweden took in, the figure for Finland is minimally small, but the decisive aspect would seem to be that some cracks emerged in the wall Finland’s previous policy of total rejection. Next Finland took boat refugees from Vietnam.
The bosses at the Foreign Ministry more or less tolerated Brotherus’s solo act. He was not fired, but he also got no medals. After five years in Chile, his career continued, also as an ambassador.
Jaamala, for his part, did not get the job promised to him by Foreign Minister Kalevi Sorsa, and he quit the ministry before reaching retirement age.
Hiilamo combines a general review of history with astounding personal stories, and ponders the relations between solidarity boycotts and silent aid. At least in Santiago, Brotherus’s low-profile diplomacy bore fruit, for which the newly democratic Chile has expressed gratitude.
Hiilamo has gone through key archives and has interviewed key people, and the text is motivated. The death lists stay in mind as a work which truly reveals something - it brings out important issues that has remained unknown up to now.
It also is a silent reminder of the conditions under which people generally are forced to leave their countries. They are not going on an recreational excursion planned in advance. They are fleeing for their lives.
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 8.4.2010
Helsingin Sanomat
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| 13.4.2010 - THIS WEEK |
 Book review: Finnish diplomat in Chile helped 2,500 escape Pinochet terror |
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