For the first time in the history of the country, the number of political prisoners and prisoners of war nationwide, will soon exceed those jailed for common crimes. The number of people imprisoned for their political beliefs, most of them for their membership and support of the PCP and the People's War, is estimated to be 10,000. This number excludes the 116 innocent people released from prison on June 25, 1997. Fujimori's Review Commission is headed by the Belgium priest Hubert Lanssier who reported that there are still 400 innocent people kept in jail (AFP, June 25, 1997.).According to Congressman Manuel Piqueras (La Republica June 11, 1997), the total number of registered prisoners in all jails of Peru is 22,210. This number excludes the political activists and suspects detained in several military garrisons and Dincote interrogation centers. A total of 8,274 prisoners are in jails of Lima and 13,936 prisoners are in jails of the provinces. About 91.85% of them are men and 8.10% are women. More than 75% of prisoners are jailed without ever being tried and 24.5% have been tried and sentenced (most of the political prisoners were "sentenced" in mock trials by hooded judges in military tribunals.) The jails of Peru have no programs of "rehabilitation" at all. They are places to slowly murder and annihilate the prisoners, especially the prisoners of war. That's precisely why the PCP has turned the jails into luminous trenches of combat and resistance, against the murderous dictatorship of Fujimori and imperialism.
The policy of genocide in the prisons began with the regime of Garcia Perez in 1986 when 300 political prisoners of war were murdered in the concentration camp located in the island known as "El Fronton." In 1992, Fujimori assassinated another 100 political prisoners in Cantogrande, and since then several prisoners were tortured periodically to death or poisoned by military wardens under the disguise that they were planning an escape. Here are a few examples reported recently by the reactionary press in Peru:
- The police stopped the escape of 300 prisoners of the Maoist PCP in the jail of Huamancaca Chico, in the province of Huancayo. A tunnel of 70 meters in length was built . (Gestion, June 9, 1997)
- The Army Intelligence Services (initials in Spanish SIE) reported that a guerrilla attack by the PCP was being planned against the high security prison of Yanamayo as part of the celebration of the Day of Heroism (June 19th.) For this reason, military reinforcements by air and land were sent to protect the prison. (La Republica, June 9, 1997)
- The jails of Juliaca and Challapalca along with Yanamayo located at more than 5,00O meters above sea level are designed to annihilate the political prisoners. Most of the prisoners, especially those from coastal areas, are suffering from very serious respiratory diseases and TB. (Caretas, May 15, 1997) Among the most notable political prisoner in Yanamayo is Dr. Alfredo Crespo, a prominent lawyer and defender of political prisoners. In 1992, this courageous young attorney defied the hooded judges and the military tribunals by coming forward in defense of the life of President Gonzalo.
- As we approach the two year deadline given by Fujimori to murder President Gonzalo (Interview with Brazilian paper O'Globe), there has not been any public announcement on Chairman Gonzalo's health. Encouraged by its "victory" on the traitorous revisionist group MRTA at the Japanese Embassy, the regime has been preventing the International Red Cross from visiting and evaluating Chairman Gonzalo's health. Meanwhile, the hypocritical human rights groups maintain a cowardly silence on this basic violation of human rights. It is time that a resolution against the regime be issued at the OAS's International Commission of Human Rights. This is a flagrant violation of International Law. No political prisoner in the world, of the stature of Chairman Gonzalo, has ever been treated in such a manner. The regime has reported several times that he is being kept completely isolated from the outside world in a concrete cell underground of a Navy Base in El Callao. The intelligence services' widely publicized "peace letters" and "videos" were completely discredited and exposed as "hoaxes" tailored exclusively to split the PCP. They failed. And that's why precisely the threats of Fujimori to murder Chairman Gonzalo have increased. The Fujimori government and its armed forces are completely responsible for his well being and will be held accountable if anything happens to him.
To understand how the PCP defends the life of President Gonzalo, see the 1995 document of the PCP's Central Committee "Overcome the Bend on the Road, Developing the People's War."
More than 200 Italian Congressmen have signed a petition demanding from the Fujimori's regime the immediate release of the Anthropologist, Sybila de Arguedas (60), a survivor of the genocide of Cantogrande. Ms. Arguedas, a widow of the great Peruvian writer Jose Maria Arguedas, is in poor health at the women's prison of Chorrillos in Lima. She was arbitrarily detained by the military in 1990 after the magazine Caretas published an unsubstantiated allegation that she was a leader of the PCP. (La Republica, May 28, 1997.)
ITALIAN CONGRESSMEN DEMAND FREEDOM OF SYBILA ARREDONDO DE ARGUEDAS
Ancash, April 19, 1997. Based on a report released by the armed forces, the reactionary media and the U.S.funded human rights groups in Peru (Aprodeh and Coordinadora) launched a slanderous campaign against the PCP. Specifically, they accused the Maoist combatants of kidnaping the Italian priest, Daniel Augusto Borelli, and requesting a ransom of $50,000 and later on murdering him. The priest worked at the Church of Saint Louis in the province of Carlos Fermin Fitzcarrald, where there is strong support for the People's War. Both the PCP and the local Church strongly rejected the specious slander. It turned out that the priest was assassinated by army-run paramilitary (rondas) while celebrating a mass in the Town of Yauya, Callejon de Conchucos. The next day (4/20/97) most reactionary papers published that the culprit was not the PCP but "common criminals." The term "common criminals" is used by the armed forces to cover-up the crimes of their death squads.
BOURGEOIS PRESS BLAMES THE PCP ON CRIMES COMMITTED BY FUJIMORI'S DEATH SQUADS In another incident in the city of Huancayo, the nun Edna Moreno Esposito and several teachers of the High School Maria Auxiliadora, were kidnaped by members of the police with their faces covered by masks. The nun was the principal of the school. They were freed after their relatives paid 27,000 dollars of ransom. While the regime initially was trying to blame the PCP for this despicable crime, it acknowledged that the culprits were members of the police "working on their own" (El Comercio, May 26, 1997). Why didn't the nearby local police precinct act during the six hours that the nightmare lasted? The reality is that the old State is rotten to the core. The institutions, especially the police and armed forces are collapsing. A New State must be built.
Since the tyranny of Fujimori assumed power, in terms of human rights, it has manipulated and misled with impunity the UN, OAS, the Red Cross and even Amnesty International (AI).
DICTATORSHIP BULLIES THE INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS
- The repressive forces bombed the offices of AI and this organization did not say a word (this crime was swept under the rug by the leadership of AI in London). AI has no access to Political Prisoners of War in Peru.
- During the genocide of Cantogrande where 100 political prisoners were deliberately murdered by Fujimori, the OAS's International Commission of Human Rights (ICHR) was humiliated, pushed around by the government and ridiculed by the progovernment press as an irrelevant entity. Recently, the magazine Caretas, reported how, during the June 1997 OAS's conference in Lima, a meeting between the ICHR and Fujimori's "loyal/legal opposition," was abruptly interrupted by Beatriz Ramacciote (an Argentinean working for Fujimori as Peru's Ambassador to the OAS). She demanded that the ICHR cancel this meeting.
The above leads us to believe that the 150 criminal cases against the regime which were reported for investigation and resolution to the ICHR, and the five cases in the Inter-American Court are going nowhere.
- With respect to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), during the limited contacts they had with the political prisoners they have been accompanied by members of the intelligence services. Our sources inform us that they are not allowed to visit and provide medical attention to Chairman Gonzalo, who is completely isolated underground at the Navy HQ in El Callao. The same thing is happening in all prisons and military detention centers of the country where about 10,000 political prisoners are being tortured and facing a slow death. While the Red Cross provided daily and complete service to the wealthy criminals kept as hostages by the MRTA in the Japanese Embassy, they haven't shown up for years in the concentration camps where the best sons and daughters of the Peruvian people are chained. Lately, the Red Cross faced two humiliating incidents: First, the tyranny expelled Jean Pierre Schaerer, one of its team members working in Peru. (El Comercio, April 22, 1997) The second one was when representatives of the ICRC visited the Upper Huallaga Valley by a military plane to investigate several crimes of the armed forces. The ICRC looked the other way and saw nothing. The genocidal General Nicolas Hermoza congratulated the leaders of the ICRC for this new type of partnership, "in the struggle for human rights."
- Lastly, the U.N. reporter on human rights is Enrique Bernales Ballesteros, an opportunist who has supported every dictator in place since General Juan Velasco. He is a biased anti- Communist politician who at the time of Garcia Perez, was a Senator who openly called for an anti-terrorism front and "death penalty" for Senderistas. He along his former cronies of the revisionist United Left supported the election of Fujimori in 1990. Having Bernales as an "independent observer" of human rights in Peru is as if one of the lawmakers of Radovan Karadzic were to be the UN's human rights observer in Bosnia.
It appears that while the bloody dictatorship of Fujimori has the support of its masters in the White House, it will continue to commit crimes with impunity.
Carlos Mesner Talledo, a former special agent for the Army Intelligence Services (SIE), who provided the evidence that Fujimori's death squad Grupo Colina had assassinated labor leader Pedro Huillca in1992, was arrested and jailed. He was put in the same cell where a political prisoner is dying with tuberculosis. Due to the very contagious nature of this disease and the lack of medicines, Agent Mesner's relatives denounced that the regime is deliberately trying to murder him.
TYRANNY JAILS FORMER AGENT WHO EXPOSED DEATH SQUAD "COLINA"