Peru: Attacks on TRC

The former commissioners of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission are coming in for further criticism from various quarters.

Let's get this straight; a legitimately-elected government decided on the need for a TC, it appointed the commissioners, it received and accepted the final report. Were the recommendations implemented? To a large extent, no. The report is good on paper (indeed, it is very good, you can read it in English and Spanish here) but in practice, little has changed. Note that the report apportioned almost as much blame to the Peruvian armed forces and police as to the guerrilla groups. Obviously, certain people don't like to hear that.

Now, five years on, voices are coming from the government saying that the commissioners need to keep quiet about the continuing lack of progress in implementing the report's recommendations; well, I don't know, but I imagine that if you've heard all those testimonies which led you to come to the conclusion that you are dealing with the murder of 70,000 people, it's not so easy to just forget about it.

Now Cardenal Juan Luis Cipriani has added his criticism to the mix. During a sermon on the occasion of the festival of Santa Rosa de Lima (patron saint of Lima, and indeed Latin America), he stated:

"It has become fashionable in the past few years to attack the armed forces and the police. Therefore, today we ask Santa Rosa for help, that our Fatherland accepts the presence of a member of the police and some of the armed forces with respect, with gratitude, without ideology and without hate. Human rights are too important to be left in the hands of a small ideological group."

Cipriani entra a debate sobre CVR y defiende a las FF.AA (Peru21)

Wikipedia has a good summary of Cipriani's political views here.

Peru: Exhibition of Clothes in Putis

The authorities in Putis have displayed around 500 items of clothing in the local civic centre, in an attempt to identify some of the over 100 bodies recently exhumed from a mass grave there. Local people can go and attempt to recognise some of the garments their loved ones may have been wearing when they were shot by the armed forces 24 years ago.

Buscan a sus familiares desaparecidos a través de singular exposición de ropa (La Republica)

Blog Round-Up

Death in Peru from Inca Kola news

Images of Peru's commemorations, five years after the TRC report, at APRODEH's Construyendo Memoria [Spanish, but you can just watch the slide show as well]

And videos about the TRC, compiled by Lapicero Digital [all in Spanish]

Guatemala: The forgotten spirits of Rabinal at Upside Down World - this is long but worthwhile. I have a collection of 'unbelievable quotes' from the Argentine generals, but this one is as bad as anything I've read:

The guerrilla is the fish. The people are the sea. If you cannot catch the fish, you have to drain the sea. – Guatemalan President Efrain Rios Montt, 1982

Amnesty International's reaction to Bussi and Menendez's sentence, in Argentina

Subversive Memory, on summary executions in Colombia, by Community Action for Justice in the Americas

Peru: 5 Years after the TRC

It is now five years since Peru's Truth and Reconciliation Commission submitted its final report. At a ceremony to mark the occasion at the memorial called El ojo que llora (the eye that cries) in Lima, a small group of Fujimori supporters caused a disturbance, shouting political slogans and trampling on the candles and photographs laid out to remember the dead. (I always thought it was a given that interrupting funerals and memorial services was a pretty low act... seriously, once you stoop to that kind of tactic you are only an inch away from Fred Phelps and loonies like that).

Anyway, La Republica claims to have identified the ringleader of the protest, Jose Luis Conteras Jimeno (pictured left), with the headline "This is the bully".

Matón que atacó ceremonia de la CVR es el fujimorista José Luis Contreras Jimeno (La Republica)

Reconcilation in Peru still uncertain on five-year anniversary of Truth and Reconcilation Commission report (Peruvian Times)

You can also see the disruption of the ceremony in this Youtube clip (it has been uploaded by a fujimorista and the description insults the TRC commissioners, but the clip is just taken from the television news)

International Day of the Disappeared

Today is the 25th International Day of the Disappeared.

Argentina: Bussi and Menendez Sentenced

It's not such a good time to be a prominent human rights abuser in Argentina, and that has to be good for the rest of us.

Former Generals Bussi and Menendez were sentenced to life imprisonment.

Ex-generals convicted of killing Argentine Senator (Yahoo)

Condenan a perpetua a Bussi y a Menendez (Clarin, also images above)

Meanwhile, Reynaldo Bignone, the last de facto President of the junta, has been remanded in custody to await trial on charges of illegal deprivation of liberty during the dictatorship.

Prision preventiva y embargo de 1 million de pesos para Bignone (Pagina/12)

Peru: Cantuta Exhibition

Micromuseo ("al fondo hay sitio")* has an exhibition about La Cantuta starting today; something to check out for those in Lima.

*Non-Spanish speaker and curious about the name? A "micro" is the name of the minibuses which are used for a lot of public transport in Peru. "Al fondo hay sitio" means "there's room at the back!" and is what the bus conductors will yell at you when you look dubious that you can possibly squeeze into their already-overloaded vehicle.