In Peru, we live in a time of war. In more than seventeen years of the victorious and vibrant People's War, reaction has reasons to tremble. We can affirm categorically that the Communist Party of Per£ (PCP), in the light of its ideology Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, Gonzalo Thought, has been correctly managing the laws of war. In this intense struggle, the PCP has always had the initiative, even during the reactionary offensive at the time of the "bend in the road." The landlord bureaucratic State continues to be shaken.There is so much confusion and decomposition in the ranks of reaction that they cannot prevent the daily attacks of the Maoist combatants of the People's Army of Liberation and the PCP generated organizations nationwide.
It is important to report objectively about the war and all the forms of struggle our people develop, even at the risk of those who are interested in hiding the facts, sentence the revolutionary journalists to death or send them to prison for life. Do the criminal policies of the regime scare us? Not at all. The Party publications continue to circulate amongst the masses in Peru, and abroad.
The fear of the truth by reaction today headed by the U.S. puppet, murderer Fujimori, is to prevent the world from learning about the reality of his genocidal dictatorship, and to hide his military and political defeats at the hands of the PCP. With this purpose, it has charged its security forces (the National Intelligence Services SIN) to monitor and regulate the daily work of the national press.
SIN not only censors and jails journalists accusing them of being "terrorists" for reporting what really happens in the battle fields, but through its death squads (e.g., Grupo Colina) it carries out bombings and burnings of publications that publish reports against the regime. This has happened from the beginning of the regime in 1990, with the bombings of the opposition paper El Diario in the early 1990's, and has continued today, for example, with the recent bombing of TV Gobal and a radio station in Puno. Democratic journalists who have no militancy in the PCP such as Javier Tuanama Valera, Hermes Rivera Guerrero, Pedro carranza Ugaz, Antero Gargurevich Oliva, Juan de Mata Jara and Ernesto Llosa Giraldo have been unjustly condemned by hooded judges from 6 to 20 years in jail (La Republica, April 4, 1997.) Has this criminal policy of Fujimori been successful? No. The documents and publications of the PCP continue to be published in Peru and all over the world.
On the other hand, it is public knowledge that the regime and its masters, the imperialist intelligence services (e.g., the CIA) have mercenary journalists carrying out psychological operations against the people. They report fabrication after fabrication against the People's War. They orchestrate events such as "Guzman pleads for peace talks," "defeat of terrorism" and "capture of terrorists," etc.
While there is a universal declaration of human rights agreed upon in 1948 that requires signatory governments to respect and guarantee freedom of expression, this right does not exist in Per£. Opposition journalists have been murdered, jailed, and harassed. In May 1992, the Editor of El Diario, Janet Talavera was jailed and subsequently murdered in the jail of Cantogrande. Her crime: to be a revolutionary journalist. Currently, there are 26 revolutionary journalists in Peruvian prisons. All they have done is write about the sacred interests of the people, in their highest expression of the People's War. In the eyes of international rights organizations such as the Red Cross, UN and OAS (who keep a coward silence on this matter), the regime has condemned these journalists to a slow death in the jails of Cantogrande, Lurigancho, Yanamayo (Puno), Quenqoro (Cusco), and others. What have the internationalist guilds who claim to defend "freedom of the press" such as the Inter American Press Society and the New York based-Committee to Defend Journalists, say about it? They look the other way. But when the butcher Fujimori and his hitman Montesinos have turned against their former crony and image maker, the Israeli businessmen Baruch Ivcher, owner of Peru's TV Channel 2, they cry "censorship!" How about the inhuman prison conditions and slow death faced by the revolutionary journalists in Per£? When we asked them these questions, they sarcastically told us that they "defend" all journalists without distinction.
The bourgeois journalists' guilds in Peru such as the National Association of Journalists (initials in Spanish ANP) and the Federation of Journalists (FPP) have a reactionary position on this matter. Who are these "representatives" of Peruvian journalists? Isn't it true that during the last 17 years, they have carried out their "work" as part of their dirty role in the "low intensity warfare" developed by counterrevolution in our country under the leadership of Yankee imperialism? Here are some of the names of the sell outs and mercenaries: Patricio Rickets (Daily Expreso), Manuel D'ornellas (Expreso), Francisco Guerra, Gustavo Mohme (La Republica), Sakuda, and Muller, among others.
Their weak tantrum of "defending freedom of the press" after leaking the boots of the military for decades, show their role as dogged reporters and anonymous tipsters of the puppet Fujimori and SIN. They have succumbed to the subtle blackmail of the military and the regime, who manipulate them through gifts, tips and trips abroad, in exchange for their servility as craving scribes. Even their paymaster Fujimori has recently called them "corrupt."
These journalists at no time hesitated to lie, misinform, and hide what truly happens in our country. Besides their endless demonization of the insurgency, the People's War, led by the PCP, has the highest moral and revolutionary authority in Per£ and the world.
We are in a country at war, and in a war, there is only one solution: victory. To this end, the People's War advances nationwide. It has generated organizations of a new type, crushing the treacherous revisionism.
The "freedom of the press" described in the rag called the "Peruvian Constitution" doesn't work even for the bourgeois journalists who attempt to report the news. Many of them have also been jailed.
The PCP respects freedom of the press and respects the journalists who honestly fulfill their functions as such. It applies just and correct sanction to open informants and genocidals who traffick with this noble and courageous profession. The PCP repudiates the reactionary media that is engaged in lying, distorting, twisting the facts, and orchestrating events with the purpose of seeking repression and genocide as part of the psychological warfare against the people. This was the case of the stunning hit to the TV station Frequency 2 five years ago in Lima. At the time, this TV station was a combat weapon of reaction in the context of psychological warfare, an important component of the U.S. guidance of low intensity warfare. Day after day, its role was to slander the People's War and to create public opinion contrary to the revolutionary work of the people and their leadership, the PCP. This station was fully devoted before the cameras or behind it, to serve the old State, especially its spinal cord, the police and armed forces. Its touted "independence" vanished when genocidal elements (agents of SIN) were deployed by their own vehicular units, to hunt PCP fighters, in several incursions of the armed forces. It even allowed agents of SIN (posing as reporters of Channel 2) to film the political prisoners of war just before the genocide of Cantogrande, where 100 of them were assassinated.
The reactionaries know that the PCP's warning to Channel 2 (and similar "communication media") in Per£ was and still is: "you have been condemned to disappear from the face of the Earth" for the following reasons:
You carried out a systematic campaign of slander against the struggle of the fighting proletariat and called for more genocide against the people. You engaged in creating a negative or unfavorable public opinion against the People's War. You serve as transport and cover for genocidal hyenas of the police and armed forces. For being an accomplice of the old State in the murderous plan of annihilation against the political prisoners of war at the Luminous Trench of Combat of Cantogrande. Encouraged and justified the military intervention of thousands of humble families in the human settlements, towns or shanty towns, and the universities. Promoted new genocide, calling the government and armed forces to implement more reactionary measures to fight the People's War, such as the death penalty. Just like Channel 2, other "media" have become a sewer of reaction. Among them we have Channel 5, Expreso and La Republica (now supporting another faction of the great bourgeoisie), which are all at the service of the old State and imperialism.
In the course of the struggle, the masses learn to differentiate between revolutionary press and reactionary press. The masses put their trust into the leadership of the PCP and the People's Army of Liberation. They greet the revolutionary press, a press of the new type that upholds the flags of the proletariat, and serves the genuine interests of our people. Therefore, our tasks are the following:
To completely and accurately inform the masses about the developments of the People's War as well as create a favorable public opinion for the emancipation of our people. To serve as combat trenches of the revolution, and play an important role in the conquest of Power. To expose the reactionary work of the media addicted to the regime of the genocidal puppet, Alberto Fujimori, enemy of the people. To expose the reactionary role of the bourgeois media and their dark role against the People's War. Despite the lies and distortions of the reactionary press, the People's War continues to develop nationwide.
These are the taks for the international supporters of the People's War as well.