30.01.1997

Peru persecution

As Tupac Amara’s hostage siege drops quietly out of press attention, John Stone of the LCMRCI takes a look at the conditions of oppression in Peru under Fujimori

The list of human rights violations in Peru is a long one.

In the maximum security prison inside the Callao navy base, cells are eight metres underground. The prisoners there are detained in cells with no natural light.

All prisoners are held in total isolation for their first year; thereafter they are allowed only 30 minutes in the yard each day. Only immediate family members may visit them. Prisoners are not allowed books, newspapers, or radios. Women prisoners are guarded by men.

Some maximum security prisons, like the one in Yanamayo, are built in regions whose climates are so harsh that prisoners suffer serious health problems as a result. Guards are allowed to mete out punishments as they see fit.

In extremely short trials, defendants are often sentenced by the military to life in prison. The judges are masked and thereby remain anonymous to the defendants.

Since 1990, the construction of high security prisons has increased dramatically in Peru. Most of these are designed to confine prisoners in isolation conditions. The experiences of Germany in this field have led to several visits by high-ranking Peruvian officials to consult with their German counterparts.

Isolation detention is part of the “psycho-social campaign” designed to break the prisoners and force them to abandon their struggle. The maximum security prisons, which President Fujimori once described as “prison tombs”, are, in short: “The place where they will rot and only come out when they are dead.”

The anti-terror laws now in force in Peru were enacted in May 1992. This state of emergency allows for the mass arrest of opposition activists. Mechanisms of protection, codified in international accords against torture and inhumane mistreatment, have been eroded by these laws. All prisoners are tortured and mistreated, and they are subjected to unfair trials. Since 1983, thousands of people have “disappeared” due to state-sponsored murders or torture. Almost none of these acts of state-sponsored human rights violations have ever been investigated.

On the contrary. On June 16 1995, President Fujimori issued a general amnesty which quashed all investigations or indictments of human rights violations occurring after May 1980. The few persons who had been convicted of such crimes before this amnesty had their sentences annulled, and if any happened to be in prison, they were released. This get-out-of-jail-free policy, therefore, freed all state murderers and torturers.

This criminalisation of the victims is also in line with Fujimori’s economic policies, which have been enacted on the backs of Peru’s poorest people.