Among the images embossed on the matchboxes of wife murderers and rapists is former President Alberto Fujimori, who during his 10-year, authoritarian rule in the 1990s implemented a policy of coercing thousands of poor Andean women into undergoing sterilization surgery.
"To dissolve, to dissolve, organisations which attack order and security..."
On Wednesday, Shining Path guerrillas ambushed a police convoy and killed 5 police officers (early reports say 4, but the number has apparently risen) and injured others.Based on information from a laptop computer belonging to Colombian guerrilla leader Raúl Reyes, Peru’s anti-terrorism police have requested arrest warrants for 14 leftist politicians and trade unionists from Peru for supposed ties to Colombia’s FARC guerrillas.
[...] But two of the people targeted by DIRCOTE -- the secretary general of the Communist Party of Peru-Red Fatherland (PCP-PR), Alberto Moreno, and the leader of the Peruvian Communist Party-Unity (PCP-U), Renán Raffo -- say the request for arrest warrants is part of a government plan to jail opponents.
The PCP-PR and PCP-U are legal political parties that have even held seats in both houses of Congress at one time or another, and which are registered with the national election authorities.
"He did it to live on, to become a part of history. En Tucumán, after the character of [Antonio Domingo] Bussi and the dictatorship, a lot of people have internalised the theory of the 'firm hand', of law and order. And in this context, for a lot of people, "Malevo" Ferreyra wasn't a murderer, he administered justice."
- a journalist, who didn't want to give his name
"He wasn't a murderer like the human rights people say"
- a member of the police
"When we went into one of the dangerous areas, the criminals respected us, because he knew how to get respect"
- another police officer, presumably recalling how extradjudicial executions got things done in the barrios
"I'm going to make sure that there is justice. If I have to kill the son or the grandchild I'll do it"
- Ferreyra's widow
"The atmosphere is very tense and everyone knows that the people who surround el Malevo are people of action. The situation is complicated because, before he died, Ferreyra had threatened those who were accusing him."
- Laura Figeroa, human rights lawyer
The Pentagonito, the military bunker in Lima in which the APEC summit is taking place, has a history of terror behind it. According to witnesses, various people were murdered there during the Fujimori regime (1990-2000).
The Ecuadorian sergeant Enrique Duchicela was one of them. As a worker at the embassy of his country in Lima, he was a spy. The Peruvian military discovered him and, with the help of torture carried out in the Pentagonito, obtained his confession. In the same location, he was incinerated, without complaints from Quito, for obvious reasons.
This story was told by Intelligence agent Jesús Sosa, one of the participants in the execution, and it, among other cases, is related in detail in the book "Death in the Pentagonito", by renowned investigative journalist Ricardo Uceda.
The Pentagonito is, in fact, the headquarters of the Peruvian Army. It got its popular name because of its pentagon-shaped perimeter. In its place for the summit has appeared the euphemistically named Convention Centre of the Ministry of Defense, because it was the location which could offer the most security for the important visitors.
During the government of Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000), which was so closely allied to the armed forced, it was a strategic centre. Even the head of state had an apartment there, in the tower from which there is a panorama over much of the city.
According to the testimony of Sosa, who is now in jail, there were Army Intelligence Service cells in the basement of the Pentagonito, where the baker Justiniano Najarro and students Keneth Azualdo and Javier Roca, who were suspected of being to the extremist armed group Sendero Luminoso, were held, tortured and murdered.
Their bodies were never found because, according to Sosa, they were cremated there too. In fact, this was the speciality of Sosa, an ex-member of military organisation the Colina Group, who was known in military circles by his alias "Kerosene".
After Fujimori's "self-coup" in 1992, prestigious opposition journalist Gustavo Gorriti and Samuel Dyer, a businessman who had clashed swords with presidential aide Vladimiro Montesinos, were taken there. Some say that their captors intended them to disappear, but they did not succeed as the case was made public and their location was leaked.
In any case, the illegal detention of Gorriti and Dyer has been classed as abduction and is part of Fujimori's trial on human rights charges.
But times have changed. Peru, with all its limitations, is now a democratic country, and the Pentagonito and its occupants are no longer feared [Ed. I wouldn't be so sure about that]. In fact, the site, in the middle-class district of San Borja, is favoured by hundreds of athletes who spend their weekends practicing in its grounds.
The victims' families say the suicide was part of a pact of silence - that the ex-police chief would not testify against former colleagues accused of kidnapping and killing some of the tens of thousands of Argentines who died during a period that became known as the "Dirty war".
When asked about the negative aspects of WHINSEC, Rials said, "I don't believe there are any negatives."Controversial school raises human rights questions, concerns (Marquette Tribune)
A report from a medical team in the National Institute of Neoplastic Illnesses (INEN) was read in court, indicating that Fujimori has vascular insufficiency and high blood pressure, as well as risks of developing thrombosis and severe gastritis.
"The Madres de Plaza de Mayo movement marks a before and after in Argentina history, in many respects. In this sense, you could say that its role is underestimated in our history. Perhaps the fact that it is a political movement which is still active, and that the history is too recent, leads certain political factions to obscure or underestimate the role played by the Madres de Plaza de Mayo in the last thirty-odd years."This comment [trans. mine] is from Ulises Gorini, who has just published a second volume of his research into the Argentine Mothers. This book, La otra lucha (The Other Struggle) will continue the story from the transition to democracy in 1983 to 1986, when the Madres split into the two organisations which exist today.
- What impression did the Madres have of the new era which began with the return to democracy, understood as the postdictatorial period?
- The Madres remain on alert, because when Alfonsín takes over he isn't a new character for them. They know him well. They also know his policies quite well. As well as the national government, they also know many members of parliament. And they also know that the judiciary will continue to be made up of an enormous majority (over ninety percent) of the same people were in office during the dictatorship. It was practically an unchanged judiciary, with some exceptions which Alfonsín introduces in the Federal Court in the capital city, which is going to be responsible for the famous Trial of the Junta. Therefore, they are on alert because they notice that there are a lot of people, too many, who they know how they acted under dictatorship and fear that ties and complicity remain. And so they remain in a state of alert. And what does this mean? Well, this is what they say during the last march under the dictatorship. They announce that the next week when they meet in the Plaza again, with Alfonsín in the Casa Rosada, "another struggle" will begin.
- Did Alfonsín's government see it as a contradiction that, under democracy, there was a resistance movement that was looking for "the impossible"?
- In the first place, Alfonsín's government - including before it even was the government - begins to put pressure on the Madres movement, with the idea that when the new constitutional authorities assume their offices, the Madres must change its role, its behaviour in politics. That, from when the new authorities take power, the Parliament, judiciary, and national government are those charged with managing the problems and legacy of State terrorism in Argentina. And, in any case, the Madres may play an accompanying role to these institutions, supporting the actions of these institutions.
- And how do the Madres react?
- The Madres aren't going to agree with this, on principle, because this pressure begins before the assumption of power and the Madres are not at all sure how Alfonsín is going to act. They aren't sure if they are going to agree with his policies or not. And in fact, the differences do show themselves very soon. Therefore, they plan for the resistance to continue. [...]- What was the debate that occurred around the term "Aparición con vida" [literally "appearance with life", one of the Madres' main slogans]
"Aparición con vida" is born in the middle of the dictatorship. And it is born as a literal demand. That is to say, in the face of the all the dictatorship's announcements that all the disappeared were dead (sometimes, these were informal announcements, leaks, and at other times more formal attempts to establish the death of the disappeared), the women coin this phrase. But at the same time its meaning changes over time. When Alfonsín takes power, the Madres are aware that the majority of the disappeared have been murdered. But they were not trying to claim something absurd, impossible. Rather, this slogan stated the necessity of reconstructing everything that had happened and not simply using the word "dead" as the only word which is used for a situation which is much more complex, in which there had been abductions, tortures, oppression, hiding of bodies, and above all, people who had committed these crimes. Therefore, “Aparición con vida” raises the possibility, at this early moment, that the Conadep commission will end up by saying simply "they are dead" and will not take account of a much more complex reality.
"Things have not changed…people feel that all they get from the state is repression," he said. "Putis is not one place. There are many Putis in Peru."
The Congresswoman’s [APRA representative Mercedes Cabanillas] proposal would create a pardon committee to release from prison those who -- she argues -- were "unjustly" convicted.
Aurelio Pastor, spokesman for the APRA legislators, told IPS that the ruling party will back the draft law for a pardon, and may also support the proposed amnesty.
"What we want is for (President Alan García) to receive proposals for pardons for members of the police and military who did not violate human rights and are facing trial or have been sentenced," said Pastor. "This is a measure to strengthen the process of reconciliation. Obviously we aren’t suggesting that those who are guilty be pardoned."
Cabanillas and Núñez argue that hundreds of members of the security forces who fought the leftist guerrillas from 1980 to 2000 have been tried and sent to jail "merely on the strength of accusations by the victims."
To illustrate their point, the two legislators cite supposed legal proceedings against the members of the Chavín de Huantar commando, which carried out a spectacular rescue of 72 hostages held for four months by the insurgent Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA) in the Japanese ambassador’s residence in 1997.
But both Defence Minister Ántero Flores Aráoz and National Ombudswoman Beatriz Merino clarified that not a single member of the Chavín de Huantar commando has been tried, let alone jailed.
When Congresswoman Cabanillas was asked in an interview by the press to mention an emblematic case of judicial bias against a member of the security forces who deserved to be pardoned, she was unable to name any single case, and merely said that all of them were important.
After years in relative obscurity, the Shining Path, one of Latin America's most notorious guerrilla groups, is fighting the Peruvian military with renewed vigor, feeding on the profits of the cocaine trade and trying to win support from the Andean villagers it once terrorized, according to residents and Peruvian officials.
Represores de negro y pantaloncitos cortos (Pagina/12)
Their names were José Francisco Bujedo and Angel Narciso Racedo, they were football referees in the '70s, but history will remember them more as agents of the dictatorship. They officiated in the Mar del Plata league; Bejedo as the principal referee and Racedo as his assistant. By contrast, when they carried out clandestine operations from the naval base (both belonged to the Navy Intelligence Services) these roles were reversed: Racedo was the boss, going by the alias Comisario Pepe, and Bujedo was his subordinate. The former was remanded in custody in the prison of Batán in the cases 4446 and 4447 concerning crimes against humanity under investigation by the Federal Court No. 3 in Mar del Plata. His comrade and fellow referee remains at large, although the families of disappeared people have already served judge Rodolfo Prada with a petition for his detention.
[...]
The referee is now 73 and his linesman 68.
The chairman of the congressional committee on defence and internal order in Peru, Edgard Núñez, has introduced a draft law to grant an amnesty to members of the military and police facing trial for human rights violations.
"There are members of the military and the police, especially rank-and-file troops, who have spent more than 36 months in prison and have not yet been sentenced," Congressman Núñez told IPS.
"Some have been persecuted by the justice system for 20 years. For how long are they going to persecute these people? The only thing they did was to stick out their necks to save us from terrorism and offer us peace and democracy. My draft law is aimed at putting an end to this situation," he said.
"Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) live off of persecuting the brave people who defeated the subversives," Núñez told IPS. "All they do is defend the human rights of terrorists."
"Why follow international standards or the guidelines of the San José Court? They aren’t familiar with the reality here. The country has to be grateful to its soldiers and should automatically amnesty them," he argued.
Left-wing Argentine daily Pagina/12 runs an article on documentary El diario de Agustín (dir. Ignacio Agüero), which deals with the Chilean newspaper El Mercurio and its relationship to the Pinochet regime.One of the most shocking parts of the documentary is when it is mentioned that when Salvador Allende won [the election], Agustín Edwards, the newspaper owner, met Henry Kissinger and the director of the CIA, Richard Helms, with the aim of making it impossible for the socialist leader to take up his post. What interest did El Mercurio have, so that it involved itself in this operation? Agüero explains, "The interest has to have been the defense of their own newspaper because they thought that Allende's government was totalitarian, that it was going to expropriate the paper. In the end, Agustín Edwards was defending his own economic interests...."(Translation mine)
Agüero concludes, "we are showing El Mercurio's criminal anticommunism. That is to say, El Mercurio has the right to be opposed to the Communist Party, but what the paper did during the last forty years is a direct action of repression which resulted in deaths among the opponents of the dictatorship".
On the day that Helms received his instructions from Nixon, the owner of El Mercurio, wealthy Chilean businessman Agustin Edwards, conferred with top officials of the Nixon administration.61 The El Mercurio network consists of newspapers, radio station, ad agencies, and a wire service; it dominates the Chilean media in audience, size, and prestige, and includes the three principal newspapers of Santiago and seven provincial papers.62 In the seven-month period from September 9, 1971 to April 11, 1972 the CIA spent $1.5 million on El Mercurio,63 but the funding also preceded and followed this period. [...] The El Mercurio network was used by the CIA to "launder propaganda, disinformation, fake themes and scare stories which were then circulated through 70 percent of the Chilean press and 90 percent of the Chilean radio. The USIA and the Inter-American Press Association (IAPA) in turn circulated these stories all over the world."67
- Even before Allende was inaugurated as president of Chile, Edwards came to Washington and discussed with the CIA the "timing for possible military action" to prevent Allende from taking office.
- President Nixon directly authorized massive funding to the newspaper. The White House approved close to $2 million dollars - a significant sum when turned into Chilean currency on the black market.
- Secret CIA cables from mid-1973 identified El Mercurio as among the "most militant parts of the opposition" pushing for military intervention to overthrow Allende.
- In the aftermath of the coup, the CIA continued to covertly finance media operations in order to influence Chilean public opinion in favor of the new military regime, despite General Pinochet's brutal repression.
Pagina/12 published the above image in one of their articles surrounding the 25th anniversary of the return to democracy (here). Is it just me, or is this a very odd picture? It shows Argentine President Christina Kirchner clasping the face of former Argentine President Raul Alfonsin, who headed the first legitimate government after the end of the dictatorship in 1983. Therefore he's been receiving all sorts of attention in the past few weeks, including having a bust unveiled at the Casa Rosada, the presidential palace in Buenos Aires.The men were among the 69 people murdered in August 1985 in one of the army’s bloodiest operations against civilians during the 1980-2000 "dirty war" against the Maoist Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) guerrillas.
So far, 36 bodies have been recovered. In another mass grave discovered this year, the remains were so damaged and intermingled that it is still not known how many people were buried there.
To dig up the remains of civilians is also to dig up the truth.
The basement is dark, and there is water on the floor and mildew on the walls. By smashing a hole in the wall, the investigators found another lightless room where files containing the names and records of political prisoners were discovered in a pile of garbage.
According to Almada, winner of the 2002 Right Livelihood Award -- also known as the Alternative Nobel Prize -- Paraguayan, Argentine, Brazilian, Uruguayan and Chilean political prisoners were tortured in the basement, victims of Operation Condor, a coordinated plan among the military governments that ruled those countries in the 1970s and 1980s that was aimed at tracking down, capturing, torturing and eliminating left-wing opponents.
Posts
All Comments
