All fascist dictatorships in history, including Nazi Germany always showed themselves as "lawful" and "humanitarian" on the surface, while at the same time were arresting, torturing and murdering their political opponents. Likewise, the genocidal regime in Perú commits blatant crimes "legally," while that on "humanitarian" grounds releases a few of the hundreds of innocent citizens arbitrarily imprisoned. This duplicitous policy is analogous to what a good-cop and bad- cop do during a police interrogation. While the first cop tries to soften the innocent man arrested as "terrorist" in Dincote headquarters, the second one (the political police SIN) sharpens its knives to butcher the suspect.The fascist faction of the armed forces led by the genocidal General Nicolas Hermoza Rios through his figurehead, Fujimori, has hired the services of Javier Valle Riestra as part of the regime's psychological operations. This old APRA mercenary (crony of Garcia Perez) tried to wash the bloody face of the dictatorship with farcical statements and demagoguery, which did not change a dent the genocidal and country selling nature of the Fujimori regime.
We do not question this gentleman's claim to be an heir of "El Jefe" Haya de la Torre, who was another fascist politician and anti-Communist who have allied his APRA party to the military dictatorships of General Odria in the late 50's (coalition APRA-UNO) and General Morales Bermudez in the late 70's (Constituent Assembly). What is in question here is the political record of Valle Riestra at the time he was a Senator in charge of the "Commission of Human Rights" during the regime of Garcia Perez, and his role in the regime headed by the murderers Hermoza, Montesinos and Fujimori. Two genocides carried out by the APRA regime (1985- 1990) will be enough to unmask this bogus "human rights" fighter: one is the genocide of Cayara, where more than 40 peasants among them children and women were murdered and dumped in mass graves by the armed forces. What was the conclusion of the Senate "Human Rights Commission" whose prominent members were APRA Senators Valle Riestra and Enrique Melgar? They concluded that "since the bodies of the victims were not found on time, then there was no crime." The second genocide in which Valle Riestra's Commission was involved was the genocide of El Fronton where 300 unarmed political prisoners of war were assassinated by the armed forces and police. He justified the APRA crime.
Today, Valle Riestra announced the release of a handful of innocents from the prisons. However, this has been going on for the last two years as a result of the daily struggle of the Committee of Families and Relatives of Political Prisoners Perú and the international campaign against the criminal regime. We must denounce that a release of one or two prisoners today is generally accompanied for more arbitrary arrests of others. With this policy, the regime has been trying to legitimize the human rights-NGOs, the Catholic Church and its own Commission headed by the Belgian priest Hubert Lanssiers (also playing a role in counterinsurgency) who praise the handful of releases but remain silent on the new arrests. Also, in several occasions, the regime has listed twice or three times the same names of individuals being released. Thus, Valle Riestra announced the names of Cesareo Lupaca, Zacarias Merma, and Ruben Acurio who were released long before for lack of evidence. The other actions of the Prime Minister such as to dismiss the indictment for "treason" of the tortured former SIN agent Leonor La Rosa, already living in Mexico, or his bluff of releasing Lori Berenson (later denied by Hermoza Rios and his handlers in the State Department) is cheap demagoguery. The same puppet Fujimori has indicated that the main components of the regime such as the military tribunals to try civilians, the elimination of the habeas corpus, the denial of due process and legal defense, and the continuing state of emergency, will remain in force and effect. Despite that thousands of political prisoners and prisoners of war face a slow death in concentrations camps of the tyranny, among them hundreds of innocents, this self-proclaimed "constitutional" lawyer, denies a basic right of a bourgeois judicial system: the writ of habeas corpus (to produce a prisoner before an impartial court to review the legality of the conviction or senternce). Valle Riestra said (La Republica- June 19, 1998): "habeas corpus is not an issue for the great masses of today, but for intellectual minorities." For this apprentice of fascism, the appropriate laws of today are military tribunals, hooded judges, arbitrary arrests and genocides.
It is clear the role assigned to Valle Riestra by the genocidal government of Fujimori: He will publicly announce harmless resolutions and will be presented by the yellow press in Perú as the "liberalizing" and "democratizing" force of the bloody regime.
One loquacity of Buffoon Valle Riestra was his announcement that there is a "parallel government," and revealed the names of a handful of low rank myrmidons (cacasenos), who according to him, are manipulating the "brainless" figurehead Fujimori. Here, the Buffoon's disinformation role is clearly revealed: He is trying to hide the fact that the U.S. government, through the genocidal armed forces headed by Hermoza Rios and the inteligence services led by the killer Montesinos, is governing Perú.
He repeated again the tale raised by reactionaries and revisionists in Perú, just after the hoax "struggle for peace accords" was crushed by the PCP in 1995, that Chairman Gonzalo had privileges in prison (this was later denied by the same armed forces.) The logic of these reactionaries was that if he wrote these "peace letters," then he must have privileges in prison. In reality, Peruvians know that the "peace letters" was a gross fabrication by the intelligence services. If not, why doesn't the regime allow him to have visits of his lawyers, relatives, friends and international organizations, in willfull violation of the Peruvian and international law? On the other hand, no one can deny that the APRA cadre Polay Campos has indeed these rights in prison -which we must support (this has been reported in an interview given to the New York Times by the mother and brother of the MRTA leader, who acknowled this fact).
We must remind Fujimori, his cronies in the armed forces, and all his puppeteers, that they will be held fully accountable if anything at all happens to President Gonzalo in prison. As far as we know, the October 7 PCP Central Committee Resolution on this matter, is still fully enforceable.
In sum, Valle Riestra was the cosmetologist of the dictatorship who tried to apply snake oil to the smelly face of the criminal regime of Fujimori. And cosmetologists are good for make-ups of queens and dictators but lack political power. This is confirmed by an official of the Yankee State Department (CIA) who told Clifford Krauss of the New York Times (June 23, 1998): "His power remains to be tested." Yes sir, it has been already tested: He was a powerless Buffoon that hardly lasted 45 days.