By Ingrid Bachmann
Chile's Law of Transparency and Access to Public information, which took effect last April, is helping national and international organizations that are seeking information about people who disappeared during the military dictatorship. Those people include U.S. citizen Boris Weisfeiler, Inter Press Service reports (in Spanish).
The case of Weisfeiler, a mathematics professor missing since 1985, is being investigated by the National Security Archive (NSA), a U.S. non-governmental organization, and by ArchivoChile, an investigative collaboration that involves reporters, academics, and human rights activists. The organizations, along with Weisfeiler's family, have sought that information about his disappearance be declassified.
The groups are using the law to test how well it works, and to seek more transparency from the government, U.S. journalist John Dinges, a member of ArchivoChile, was quoted by the Associated Press as saying.
Note from the editor: This story was originally published by the Knight Center’s blog Journalism in the Americas, the predecessor of LatAm Journalism Review.
