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Covert Op
By Tom Chalkley
SOURCE: Baltimore City Paper On Line
DATE: June 28 - July 4, 2000
Speaking of human rights, The Sun's Perspective section on June 18 led with a
guest column about the sordid history of the Chilean "tall ship" La Esmeralda,
which has since arrived at the Inner Harbor as part of OpSail 2000. In 1973,
early in the regime of Gen. Augusto Pinochet, La Esmeralda was employed as a
floating prison where at least 110 political prisoners were held without charges
and subjected to beatings, electric shock, and water torture.The ship has been
the object of protest ever since--but you wouldn't know it from The Sun's
special "OpSail 2000 Spectator's Guide," which appeared June 21. Half of this
eight-page puff piece is devoted to Sun boating columnist Gilbert Lewthwaite's
diary of six days on board the former torture ship, illustrated with nifty color
photos. (Apparently half a special section devoted to Lewthwaite's Esmeralda
adventure wasn't enough; another lengthy account appeared in the June 22 Sports
section.) Lewthwaite's stories glossed over the vessel's history, as did Jacques
Kelly's reminiscence (in the OpSail pullout) about the tall ships' first visit
to Baltimore in 1976, when Pinochet was still in power in Chile and La Esmeralda
was greeted by protesters. An editorial in the June 21 Sun (illustrated with a
photo of La Esmeralda) kept up the gloss job with a mealy-mouthed allusion:
"Each of the ships has a past. Some of that history . . . may be controversial."
Several readers wrote letters to the editor to protest the paper's weird
vacillation between journalism and PR fluff; to its credit, The Sun printed
three of them. One writer asked, "Couldn't The Sun have found some other ship to
highlight?"
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