The U.S. State Department denounces "human rights violations" by the People's War led by the Communist Party of Peru (PCP), in a calculated attempt to gain public support for U.S. intervention and to justify and cover up genocides and massacres committed by the Fujimori regime. In Peru and other parts of the world, the "human rights" campaign of imperialism goes hand in hand with the public relations campaign launched by supposedly "neutral" but well financed human rights organizations in the world such as Amnesty International (AI) and Human Right's Watch (formerly America's Watch). Both parallel the language of the State Department. AI reports on the U.S. bombings of Iraq, Panama, Somalia, and Bosnia confirm this, and Peru is not the exception.AI is not ignorant of the basic realities of Peru. It has an office in Lima that has received and developed data on government atrocities for some years. However, they are not allowed to conduct on-site visits to see villages razed by the Army nor to witness the mass graves denounced by the people. They have to rely on the military reports and the Peruvian press which in its majority is controlled by the government. The very existence of AI (for financial and security reasons) depends on how much they can go along with the slanders of the regime against the revolution. Mr. Abugattas (AI employee in Peru) once told the Peruvian magazine Caretas: "We have no choice but to report the accusations of the government against Sendero in order to reveal the most heinous crimes of the military." Although we acknowledge Mr. Abugattas' honesty, no one can believe that AI is a "neutral" political organization. It was and it is one important tool of U.S. foreign policy in the world.
In November 1991, Al issued a major report on Peru, and called for a year-long campaign in 1992. The report includes exposure of the atrocious crimes of the Peruvian army and the Fujimori government. Unfortunately, the AI reports of 1991, 1992, and 1993, have made a major point of slandering the revolution in Peru apparently to "compensate" its reports on the regime. To do so, AI essentially sustains the State Department's position that the people of Peru, particularly the peasants, suffer human rights violations from each side, and are "caught between two fires," and that the Peruvian Army and the Maoist rebels are equal oppressors and tormentors of the people. At the same time, however, the U.S. backs vigorously in deeds "one of the fires" it condemns in words: the dictatorship of Fujimori, and it also direct the law intensity warfare against the Peruvian people.
The military coup or self-coup (where Fujimori and the military seized all governmental powers for themselves and dissolved Congress in 1992) came not long after the U.S. government and media had launched a "human rights" propaganda offensive against the People's War. In Congressional testimony of March 12, 1992, Undersecretary of State for Latin American Affairs Bernard Aronson said: "The international community and respected human rights organizations (AI, America's Watch) must focus the spotlight of world attention on the threat which Sendero poses." "Latin America has seen violence and terror, but none like Sendero's . . . `and' make no mistake, if Sendero were to take power, we would see this Century's third genocide." (The U.S. State Department defines the first two genocides as Nazi Germany in the 1940's and Cambodia in the 1970s. It suddenly forgets many genocides perpetrated by U.S. imperialism since its origins to the present time in history in Asia, Africa and Latin America. How about the genocide of American Indians by the U.S. "founding fathers?"
A Few days later, Aronson was in Lima to coordinate the implementation of the military "Coup D'etat." Which according to the bourgeois magazine Caretas of September 21, 1995, had as its main objectives:
- the dissolution of the parliament and setting up a subservient Congress instead in order to amend the constitution and reelect Fujimori,
- the co-optation of the judiciary and the curtailment of the constitutional rights by state of emergencies and curfews,
- the total annihilation of the subversives, including its supporters and relatives. (Vo. 1, pg. 11 of Plan del Golpe. It plays a crucial role the death squads)
Thus, the silence and complicity of the U.S. funded "respected" human rights organizations in the military coup were simply a matter of carrying out the suggestion of Undersecretary of State Aronson.
The coup was an attempt by the big bourgeoisie in Peru (and the U.S.) to pull themselves together to defeat the revolutionary People's War led by the Communist Party of Peru (PCP). The coup meant greater centralization of military and police power, and stripped away of anything that stood even slightly in opposition to unleashing the brutal power of the Peruvian state, especially in the cities since in much of the countryside, there exist the open People's Committees and that's why there has been a "state of emergency" for years.
In addition, to facilitate the U.S. military intervention in Peru, the "human rights" campaign against the Peruvian revolution fulfills a preventive role. It tries to prevent the broad progressive sections of the people in the U.S. (especially the low income people or oppressed nationalities), and liberal church groups, supporters of genuine human and people's rights, etc. from supporting the People's War. That is the best way to gain the "moral high ground" for U.S. intervention and government policy in general.
During the Reagan and Bush administrations, the "war on drugs," was the "official story" justifying and covering for U.S. military intervention, and this is still the framework for much of U.S. aid under Clinton. Under the CIA strategy of "war on drugs," the PCP is painted without a shred of evidence as "narco-terrorist." The U.S. has built up military firebase in zones that are strongholds of the revolution; Green Berets are heavily involved in "training missions," logistical support from the air and joint counterinsurgency patrols in strategic areas on the ground (e.g., highways and rivers.) Overall, it has begun to open up a whole new level of relations with its lackeys, the Peruvian government and armed forces. Under the cover of the "war on drugs," the U.S. built up a massive high-tech infrastructure in the Caribbean and in South America. This is similar to the kind of infrastructure built up in Saudi Arabia and used as a command and control center for the war against Iraq. [Clarles Lane, "The Newest War," Newsweek Jan. 6, 92]
But the lies behind the "war on drugs" have become increasingly exposed as facades even by the mainstream press such as the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, who have ridiculed U.S. allegations of drug-trafficking by the PCP, and have exposed Fujimori's government and its military of being thoroughly involved in drug trafficking [New York Times, Feb. 16, 1992.] In 1994, this fact was confirmed when the Peruvian press reported that Army and police officers in charge of the counterinsurgency war in the Huallaga Valley were heavily involved in drug trafficking [Expreso, Nov. 28, 94.]
However, the "war on drugs" alone is not enough to shape public opinion against the revolutionary storm taking place in Peru. The powerful advances of the People's Army of Liberation, led by the PCP require increasingly drastic action from the U.S. and the Peruvian government if there is to be any chance of stopping it. [Gordon McCormick, Director of the School on Low Intensity Warfare, U.S. Navy, "From the Sierra to the Cities," Rand Corporation Jan. 1992.] Of course, now we know that this drastic measure was to carry out the military coup in April 1992, trash the Peruvian constitution, and intensify the "human rights" campaign against the People's War.
Also in 1992, Bernard Aronson called AI and America's Watch for a meeting to coordinate this offensive against the emerging revolution, which according to them was near seizing power in Peru. At the time, the People's War had reached the strategic equilibrium with the old State, however, it did not initiate the protracted strategic offensive as yet. Therefore, the campaign of Yankee imperialism was designed to terrify the middle classes in the United States and Europe on "the horrible crimes of the Shining Path," using this to justify in advance the crimes that the bloody dictatorship of Fujimori was planning to carry out during and after the April military coup. The Aronson's charges against the PCP were soon followed up by AI and America's Watch reports providing "justification" for such baseless allegations.
There is a background regarding the close cooperation of AI and the U.S. government against the Peruvian revolution. In 1991, AI held a major international conference in Japan where it declared that it would put greater emphasis than in the past on criticizing and attacking revolutions through the world, specifically in the form of "equally" criticizing the very selective violence of the revolutionaries and the widespread and vicious counterinsurgency measures of reactionary states. ["AI to Stress Abuses by Rebels," Detroit Free Press, Sept. 9, 1991] In the 1990's, obviously the main target of this counterrevolutionary policy of AI is the People's War in Peru. Indeed, in a newsletter (Amnesty Action Newsletter of Jan-Feb, 92) AI confirmed that the PCP was its main target.
This orchestrated campaign was quickly echoed throughout the mainstream press in the U.S., and repeated over and over again during the military coup and during the genocide of 100 political prisoners and prisoners of war in the CantoGrande prison perpetrated in May, 92. Thus, both crimes against the Peruvian People, the coup and the genocide of Cantogrande were fully "justified" by the U.S. and its "human rights" tools [AI and America's Watch]. The deliberate massacre of 400 political prisoners in the jail of Cantogrande, in which 100 unarmed PCP prisoners of war were murdered, exposed the reactionary role of AI before the people's of the world. How far would Amnesty International (AI) go in carrying out this orientation of criticizing a people's revolution "equally" with the blatant genocides carried out by the government? The answer was revealed during the Army assault on the prison of Cantogrande, the Maoists resisted three weeks of heavy bombardment by the military, and AI did not make any criticism of the butchery. However, it released an "Urgent Action Alert" AFTER the genocide of the best sons and daughters of the Peruvian people by the murderous armed forces of Fujimori, took place.
In sum, it is clear that AI and other "human rights" in the U.S. contribute to the role of the U.S. Congress, and the State Department in "demonizing" and distorting beyond recognition the genuine revolution in Peru. The hypocritical "condemnations" of brutalities of the Fujimori Regime and its Army, generally after the facts, do not relieve their counterrevolutionary role as the "human rights" branch of U.S. Imperialism.
AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL TURNS ITS BACK ON PRISONERS OF WAR
To people who see Amnesty International (AI) as a champion of those who are repressed and persecuted in the world, how incongruous it must be to see it turning its fire against supporters of a people's liberation movement. And how shameful it must be to turn its backs on more than 8,000 women, men and children political prisoners and prisoners of war accused of being members of the PCP who are now being effectively annihilated in the concentration camps of Peru (the jails of Cantogrande, Lurigancho, Yanamayo, Cachiche, Santa Monica, Maranga, Huaraz, Trujillo, Cusco, etc.) The excuse of AI and other NGO Human Rights groups is that those people arrested, disappeared, tortured and murdered in Peru are not "prisoners of conscience" but "terrorists." But what revolution in the world wasn't called terrorist by U.S. imperialism and world reaction?Let's summarize the characterization of the genocidal regimes of Belaunde, Garcia Perez and Fujimori in which even Amnesty International (AI) agrees with us:
- Since the intervention of the armed forces to combat the insurgency in 1982 to the present, most of the country has been in a "state of emergency"; over 30,000 people have been killed in political violence which AI admits is principally the work of the security forces. (From May 1980 to May 1982 only the police participated in the counterinsurgency war.)
In 1992, the Secretary General of Amnesty International (AI) emphasized: "The situation in Peru is one of the most worrisome . . . the military does not admit violations and attributes them to individual excesses . . . in the emergency zones these violations occur too frequently to attribute them to excesses." Therefore, they are systematic. In 1992 in London, AI also stated: "In Peru, 300 men, women, and children disappeared after being arrested by the security forces . . . torture is still being practiced . . . "; afterwards, "there are 150 cases of disappearances in Peru with the Fujimori government." Disappearances, extrajudicial executions and torture by the political police Dincote, SIN as well as the government's death squads (e.g., Grupo Colina) are common in Peru at present.
- Under the state of emergency and military curfew, which has been applied to most sections of the countryside and most of the young towns of Lima where the revolution has its strength, the military and police are virtually the political authority. They can enter and search homes without warrant or warning; eliminate the right to assembly; and carry out mass arrests without warrant. In his recent book (December 1995), former army general Rodolfo Robles has described in detail the role of the intelligence services' (SIN) death squad "Grupo Colina" that out carried assassinations of several union and labor leaders, peasants' leaders, students and professor at La Cantuta Teachers' University and the University of Huancayo, the crime of the Barrios Altos, lawyers and journalists among others. Most of these crimes were cowardly and cynically blamed by the pro-government's media and the senderologists on the PCP.
- Torture and rape of women are part of the counterinsurgency policy of the security forces. For most peasant women, and especially those accused of being revolutionaries. This is almost automatic when they are arrested. In addition, mothers, sisters and wives of "disappeared" and detained human rights workers (the genuine ones) have been raped as a way to keep them quite. Ayacucho's journalist Luis Morales of El Diario has reported how peasant girls as young as eight years of age have been raped, then killed in the Army garrison of Los Cabitos. Morales also photographed senderologist Raul Gonzales working at the army garrison (this was also published in El Diario.) This journalist was murdered by Fujimori's death squad (Grupo Colina) in Ayacucho for reporting the truth.
- During the 15 years that the Peruvian army has been involved in counterinsurgency, an AI document notes that "the term `subversive' has increasingly come to be applied to all inhabitants of areas where Sendero Luminoso has a strong presence or some degree of control. This happens in the countryside and in Lima. The presumption that entire communities may be considered collectively responsible for Sendero Luminoso actions has been invoked in justification of what amounts to a policy of indiscriminate killing and `disappearance.'" The regime could not hide its crimes any longer. Entire villages have been massacred under this doctrine of "collective responsibility" and the 60 to 1 rule of thumb that began with the general Cisneros Vizquerra and it is being continued by general Hermoza De Bari: "If one out of 60 people killed is `terrorist' that is fine." This is the rule of the contra revolutionary war. Under the "repentance law," thousands of workers, peasants, unemployed, students, professors, lawyers, doctors, and journalists have been arrested, tortured, disappeared, and in some cases executed in the police garrisons and Dincote without trial.
- As part of the psychological warfare against the people, the military, the yellow press, the NGOs and the Church hierarchy in Peru have often tried to make it appear as if the mass murders of the regime are the work of revolutionaries. The army will leave behind fake notes and PCP literature, red flags, paint phony "revolutionary" graffiti on the wall, etc., when it carries out gross atrocities. For example, the case of the Ashaninkas, the killing of top miner leader Saul Cantoral (a great Communist fighter!), the killing of Felix Huarsalla in Puno, Lawyer Alfredo Febres, U.S. journalist Todd Smith, textile worker Castilla, etc. It was confirmed that these crimes were perpetrated by the genocidal regime.
- In rural areas, "civil defense patrols," called rondas, organized and controlled by the military, has been engaged in terrorizing villages, attacking communities considered "red" by the army. These groups serve as cannon fodder or as a buffer for the military, most of the time forced by the security forces to attack and kill supporters of the revolution; but when the People's Army counterattacks the regime and the reactionary press claim "another Sendero massacre of peasants." The military has frequently killed, disappeared, raped and tortured villagers who refuse to join the rondas. This fact is not mentioned in the AI reports.
- The Red Cross, human rights organizations, the national and international press have no access to the emergency zones. In carefully staged propaganda events, progovernment reporters are taken in army helicopters (with all expenses paid) to report alleged "victories" of the government over Sendero. This happened, for example with the visit of Calvin Sims of the New York Times to Huallaga Valley in 1996 or the TV exposure by Univision (Spanish televison in USA), in which murderer Fujimori is shown wearing peasant clothes and dancing. Meanwhile, honest journalists are being imprisoned for reporting the real events. Sixty journalists of El Diario have been imprisoned in the early 1990's. Many of them are suffering from TB in Peruvian jails. Editor Janet Talavera and correspondent Luis Morales were murdered for exposing the military. The office of Amnesty International in Peru was bombed by Fujimori's paramilitary in March 1990. This incident was whitewashed by the leadership of AI in London. This shows that the dictatorship can turn its fire even on its own allies to keep them on line.
- The military has total impunity for gross human rights violations. This has been legalized with the Law of Impunity promulgated by Fujimori. Show trials to punish "excesses," which are orchestrated by the regime during the time the U.S. certifies its lackey Fujimori for his "human rights" record, and his "anti-drug efforts"or seeking more military aid. One genocide case was tried after 47 men incidents, women and children were killed in Cayara in the department of Ayacucho. Fourteen members of the armed forces were tried and sentenced by a military tribunal from three months to one year in prison. They did not spend a day in jail. Instead, they went back to active service.
The right to a habeas corpus has been virtually abolished with the new constitution amended by the tyranny. This means that "disappearances" are now legal. In areas under state of emergency, the "faceless judges" during business hours are the same cops who pull out people from their homes and murder them brazenly during the night.
The regime (backed by U.S. imperialism) is conducting the annihilation of the relatives and families of the political prisoners of war as part of the low intensity warfare against the people. A government document was published by journalist Hildebrand, in which troops were instructed to "carry out killings without a trace," and without taking prisoners (http://www.electrodata.com.pe/enpersona).
- The regime implements the IMF and World Bank liberal economic policies of hunger and misery against the people. The privatization has resulted in about 600,000 public workers fired. in 1996 over 75% of Peru's total population suffers acute poverty. Under Fujimori, this number grows at a rate of 660,000 people per year. And the regime claims "economic success!" That is the basic picture of the counterrevolution in Peru. AI ignores this fact is a blatant violation of People's Rights and the main reason that justifies the Right of People to Rebel!
Today, the above picture alone provides sufficient grounds for the PCP to continue vigorously the armed revolution, and it clarifies the real nature of the putrid old State. Below are the main postulates of Amnesty International with regards to the People's War:
1) to wage a People's War is a violation of human rights;
2) AI upholds the basic right of the Peruvian regime to wage the low intensity warfare directed by Yankee imperialism if only if is "clean." How about the right of the people to rebel against tyranny and oppression?
The main allegations of AI against the Peruvian revolution are: ALLEGATION one: The PCP has carried out selective assassinations of top military and civilian officials and has killed foreign development workers working on government projects.
FACT. The top military and political leaders are the major oppressors and the real culprits of many crimes against the people, therefore, they are legitimate targets of the revolution. The infrastructures that those development "experts" build, and the government's counterinsurgency projects in which they participate, serve the domination of foreign capital over Peru. Thus, they are direct participants in the counterinsurgency war. These people are warned to leave before action is taken against them.
ALLEGATION two. Local officials have been killed in the countryside. The revolution sabotages public utilities and destroys the livestock and produce of peasant communities earmarked for sale in the cities.
FACT. Local officials working closely with the military in organizing the paramilitary, rondas, "serenazgos" and death squads are legitimate targets of the revolution. The PCP does attack things like electrical towers, bridges and other parts of the infrastructure that serve to mobilize troops and military equipment in the countryside. Poor peasants led by the PCP have taken over land and livestock by which they have established a relatively self-sufficient agriculture based on redistribution of land to the poorest peasants first.
The "community leaders" and officials that the revolution targets are the people who today fight to prop up the remnants of the semi-feudal system in the countryside, and/or who represent the central government. They are given warnings and told to leave their posts. Only after destroying the power of the old system can the people build up a new system, and begin to rule themselves.
ALLEGATION three: The PCP has boycotted elections, threatened and assassinated candidates, and intimidated voters.
FACT. The PCP opposes the electoral circus. The fraudulent elections in Peru are imposed under the bayonets of the military and have nothing to do with the interests of the oppressed. Elections are used to legitimize the current exploitative system. Candidates are invited to resign; people are mobilized to sabotage the electoral farce. The boycott of the April 1994 election was successful (75% of absentees and blank ballots.)
ALLEGATION four. AI "continues to receive reports from the government, NGOs and the Church hierarchy on the torture and killing of captives by the PCP."
FACT. The actual policies of the PCP toward captured enemy soldiers follow those developed in the Chinese Revolution. In an article from the magazine "Si," which is a reactionary anti-PCP publication, described how captured rank and file soldiers were given a choice between joining up with the People's Army, or simply set them free. Captured officers are treated more harshly, and if they have debts with the people (e.g., members of death squads, etc.), are they are tried for crimes they have committed. These policies should be compared to the vicious policies of the Peruvian armed forces toward the civilian population (not to speak of the captured guerrilla fighters, who are almost always tortured and killed.)
ALLEGATION five: The PCP conducts "mock trials" which are travesties of justice.
FACT. Mock trails are those in the U.S. in which large masses of Third World people are thrown in jail after mock trials. How about the brutal persecution and deportation (without due process) of immigrant workers in the U.S.? Mock trials are those of the fascist regime in Peru that uses "faceless" judges and imprisons thousands of innocent people without any substantiated evidence. On the contrary, the revolutionary justice of the mass gatherings in which peasants try the landlords, local tyrants, thieves, drug traffickers or other government henchmen of the repressive semi-feudal relations is far superior. These trials represent the genuine political will of the oppressed in Peru. But the official justice system which rubber-stamps the massacres of whole villages, and which sanctions genocide such as the June 19, 1986 genocide of 300 political prisoners in the Concentration camp of El Fronton and the May 1992 mass murder of 100 political prisoners in Canto Grande, AI sees these murders as somehow inherently legitimate (if sometimes flawed). On the other hand, popular trials carried out by peasants in a village after they have overthrown the local tyrants are seen as completely illegitimate and as horrifying examples of violations of basic "human rights." It means the "human rights" guise of Yankee imperialism and its global tools, including the U.N.
ALLEGATION six. "Amnesty International is impartial. It does not support or oppose any government or political system, nor does it support or oppose the views of the prisoners whom it seeks to protect. AI is concerned solely with the protection of the human rights involved in each case, regardless of the ideology of the government or the beliefs of the victim."
FACT. AI impartiality is a farce. It is an organization heavily involved with the foreign policy of imperialism that condones the counterrevolutionary violence against the People's War led by the PCP. AI acknowledges: "AI does not question the right of the Peruvian Government to conduct counterinsurgency operations against armed opposition groups. The difficulty faced by the Peruvian security forces in combating violent opposition groups is fully recognized by the organization. However, it is precisely in these circumstances that governments must act with extra vigilance to protect human rights, in order to ensure that the actions of armed opposition groups are not used to justify human rights violations by the security forces." So, where is the impartiality? It recognizes as valid the reactionary violence of the regime. AI says that it is impartial in terms of social systems, and on the other it does not even question the right of the Peruvian state to enforce its system by violence against any and all armed opposition groups! Yet nowhere do you find a hint from AI that the oppressed have the right to seek relief from impossible conditions by rising up and making revolution. This dubious policy underlies the whole approach of AI to Peru, including AI's claim that the peasantry of Peru is "caught between two fires." That is, the viciousness of the government and the justified violence of the People's War are the same.
Can anyone deny that the Peruvian government wages counterinsurgency war in order to continue to enforce the basic economic relations which have kept the lives of the majority of Peruvians in misery and oppression for centuries? How could such a war possibly be considered "clean?" The violence of the Peruvian state defends the current order. It is aimed at holding down the oppressed and exploited, and the progressive sections that rebel against the semi-colonial domination. This is why the counterinsurgency forces, as AI has exposed, engage in systematic torture and rape. This is why the government utilizes methods like massacring whole villages. This kind of repression isn't new. It has gone on for many centuries. Especially those who have risen up in rebellion have been viciously suppressed, from the days of Pizarro to Fujimori. The dominant foreign power has changed from Spain in the beginning to the U.S. today, but the extraction of wealth from the backbreaking labor of the people, and the wielding of armed force backed by foreign powers to keep people down is basically the same. What is new about the situation today is that the People's War led by the PCP has developed the political strength, organization and methods of fighting which allow the oppressed to meet the most vicious attacks by the government and its U.S. backers-and to continue to advance their struggle. Because of this, that struggle has advanced far beyond anything in the history of Peru.
ALLEGATION. The "people are in the middle." FACT. The "people in the middle," the ones not in active support of either side, are exactly the people that the revolution has increasingly won over to active support as it has advanced across the country. If the PCP supposedly kills the people why does it get the support of the masses? It does not make sense at all. It is "fear," say the Senderologists Degregori, Tapia and Bernales, but the history of violent struggles in Peru buries such myth. The charges that the revolution "attacks those in the middle" have no factual merit. At bottom, what is behind the charge that the peasants are "caught between two fires" is the view that there should not be any revolution at all. Poor pacifist peasants! They don't fight! To paraphrase the old U.S. Constitution to define blacks, they are one-fifth humans! History buries this racist claim of the reactionaries.
Mariategui, the founder of the PCP, taught the way: "The day those Indians who are oppressed for centuries learn the ideology of the proletariat and rebel in arms, the old State is finished!" That's what is happening since 1980 in Peru. The peasants form the majority of the People's Army of Liberation. Peru is a semi-feudal and semi-colonial society in which bureaucratic capitalism has developed. Therefore, the revolution is a democratic one. We think that the democratic revolution must confront three mountains: imperialism, mainly Yankee imperialism, bureaucratic capitalism, and semi feudalism. This democratic revolution demands that we undertake a People's War. This democratic revolution must be followed immediately by a socialist revolution.
In this process, the PCP outlines the different classes and their role: In accordance with these criteria of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, our goal is a united front of classes, with the proletariat as the leading class, the peasantry as the main force, the petty bourgeoisie as an ally which we must pay attention to, and in particular the intellectuals, because they are necessary to the revolution, as Chairman Mao also taught us. And in this front, under certain circumstances and conditions, even the national bourgeoisie can and does participate.
The point is this: the PCP has the strategic aim of uniting a very broad front of classes in Peru, including under some conditions even the national bourgeoisie, that section of the capitalist class which is not tied to and dependent on foreign monopoly capital. The underlying point is that there are many broad "middle class" forces in Peru whose basic interests demand the changes the PCP is aiming at: liberating Peru from semi feudalism and from foreign imperialist domination.
The PCP seeks to win over these people by political means, as well as by advancing the strength of the revolution overall.
One concrete example of how the PCP deals with this is the role of merchants in the base areas. The merchants are not eliminated, but are allowed to operate as their functions are necessary for the development of the economy as it exists. The commissioner of economy and production in a People's Committee is charged with ensuring that the small businessmen who come in to sell fertilizer are limited to a 30 percent profit rate. Before, these products were marketed at a profit rate of up to 300 percent, which made it impossible for the peasants to plant anything other than coca.
The challenge for the peoples of the world who have the courage to stand up against oppression in Peru is to expose and unmask the government's propaganda; it is to refute the lies and misinformation of the anticommunist liberal outlets in the U.S. and Europe that slander the revolution. Most of these gentlemen make gross unsubstantiated charges that the revolution as a matter of policy and basic approach kills everyone "in the middle." That the PCP gratuitously kills members of Peru's irrelevant legal left, and other allegations fabricated by the enemy in the midst of psychological warfare against the Peruvian people and the People's War led by the PCP.
In the press of the U.S. it is virtually a requirement that every article on Peru must refer at least once, if not repeatedly, to the "terrorist Shining Path," the "brutal insurgency" or "bloody Shining Path." Even the Hollywood movies are mentioning the "dangerous Shining Path." This filthy and orchestrated anti-Communist tactic serves to hammer into people's minds a distorted image of the largest and better organized Communist Party in the Americas, the glorious Communist Party of Peru (PCP) as an "isolated group which carries out violent acts against the people." The objectives of this counterrevolutionary tactic are primarily the following:
THE CHARGE OF TERRORISM TO HIDE THE PEOPLE'S WAR 1) To justify the direct military intervention of Yankee imperialism in Peru, which directs the low intensity warfare against the People's War, and,
2) To prevent the people of the world from learning and following the example of this genuine revolution as well as to prevent widespread international support for the Peruvian revolution.Most of the allegations made by world reaction have little to do with reality. They are biased and subjective. In their attempt to demonstrate that "Communism is dead," the reactionaries deform beyond recognition the principles and democratic character of the Party leading the revolution. They don't even call it by its own name: COMMUNIST PARTY OF PERU (PCP.) This character assassination is nothing new in counterinsurgency. U.S. imperialism used the label "Vietcong" to discredit the revolutionaries during the Vietnam war. By using the derogative term "shining path" to refer the PCP, Amnesty International (AI) bolsters this basic view.
Let's debunk their unsubstantiated allegations: first it is worth looking at the views of an important counterinsurgency expert, Gordon H. McCormick, Director of the postgraduate school at the US Naval Military Academy in Monterrey, California. He is an analyst on Peru working as a Consultant to the Pentagon (USDOD) through the RAND corporation. Mr. McCormick, utilizing US intelligence data, on March 12, 1992, told the Congress Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere Affairs, House Committee on Foreign Affairs:
"The often heard claim that Sendero is nothing more than a `terrorist' organization that does not and cannot pose a viable threat to the central government of Peru is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the insurgency and the underlying dynamics of Shining Path activities. Sendero's operations, which have increased regularly since 1980, are the product of a much more extensive set of a political and social networks that exists underneath the surface of large segments of Peruvian society. Between 25 and 40 percent of Peru is now estimated to have come under either open or shadow Sendero administration. Collectively, this administration represents an attempt to build an institutional alternative to the State. It is their presence, which serves as the basis for the guerrilla military position rather than their militant actions per se, that poses the greatest long term threat to the central government . . . "
He is talking about the power exercised by the Open People's Committees, which are made up of a combination of peasants, especially the poor peasants, the working class through the PCP, and the petty bourgeoisie. This revolutionary achievement did not fall from the sky, nor was it built up by terrorizing the masses as the senderologists defame. Let us recall to our enemies that the People's War was launched in 1980 with almost no arms at all, and has gotten the overwhelming majority of the arms it has now by taking them from the Peruvian army and police. This is an irrefutable truth.
The Peruvian revolution receives no foreign economic or military aid. No genuine revolutionary movement in history has advanced by terrorizing the masses, though this is always the baseless charge of the counterrevolution. President Gonzalo, the leader of the PCP, whose capture in combat (1992) has taught us the lesson that 'the masses make history', is hated and viciously attacked by world reactionaries (e.g., they go as far as fabricating fake "peace" letters and videos showing Chairman Gonzalo as a vulgar capitulator. The same U.N. was used as a circus to show this farce.) President Gonzalo stated the following in his Interview with the editors of El Diario newspaper in Lima, [See this Web page, The Interview with Chairman Gonzalo, English edition pg. 33, 1988]:
"... We can conclude that those whose reasoning is colored by desperation because the earth is trembling beneath their foot's wish to charge us with terrorism in order to hide the People's War. But this People's War is so earthshaking that they themselves admit that it is of national dimensions, and that it has become the principal problem facing the Peruvian State. What terrorism could do that? None."
The revolution has targeted the oppressors of the people: the police, death squads, agents of SIN, Dincote, paramilitary, informants, active members of the army, and direct collaborators of the military who have debts of blood with the people. It has rallied the people, especially the peasants, to rise up, break the power of the landlords, take over the land, abolish centuries of feudal degradation, and set out to build a new society. It has shown an uncompromising determination not to quit until the people of Peru Conquer Power countrywide, and stand firmly at the same time for revolution worldwide.
The same imperialist mouthpiece New York Times (Sept. 7, 1984), two years before the genocide of 300 PCP political prisoners in the concentration camp "Luminous Trench of Combat" of El Fronton, reported an interview with one of the imprisoned women revolutionaries that revealed the kind of political awakening of the basic people supporting the PCP:
"In Peru's traditional society, many people have been shocked by the fact that women have not only joined the guerrillas but frequently led the attacks. Holding her baby, born in jail two months earlier, Lilian Torres, 23 years old, said she had worked as a maid and street vendor in Lima since she was seven. She had been afraid at first `of joining the Party,' she said, but became aware of her responsibility when she learned about `the class struggle' and the `offensive of the world revolution' taking place in Peru. `Now I am happier,' she said. I have stopped being a vegetable. I am a revolutionary woman."
While the "reputable" human rights groups produce documented reports on the blatant crimes of the Peruvian government (those crimes the regime cannot hide any longer,) especially in the countryside and in Lima's young towns, the allegations against the PCP are virtually hearsay, made by government officials and their agents (the senderologists.) These are unsubstantiated fillers used to "balance their information," apparently to justify the grants received from their foreign masters, and in some cases to cover themselves against Army and police repression. It is the same method used by the mainstream press in Peru with its myriad of official propaganda based on the premise: "Guilty or innocent, who cares . . . they are terrorists!" In synthesis, 100 percent psychological warfare. Below are six examples that substantiate our point:
Example one. The AI Report "Peru: Human Rights in a climate of terror, 1991," pg. 19, has a section which reveals some army and police "disappearances" of people in the emergency zones which is arbitrarily concluded by a quote from an unnamed source who says: "If the authorities don't eliminate us, we will be eliminated by Sendero Luminoso . . . "
Example two. On the first page of the report cited above in item one, it says that "thousands of people have been killed by Sendero Luminoso, who frequently tortured their captives and subjected them to mock trials before killing them, in a parody of justice." As usual, no source was given for this serious charge. However, for other allegations in the report the Peruvian "Senate Special Commission on Violence" is repeatedly cited as the source of this kind of information. Giving credibility to this kind of "body count," made by the Peruvian government's own Senate Committee, is ludicrous.
Considering the dictatorship's judiciary, the government can act as the prosecutor and judge at the same time. For instance, the same military involved in torturing and murdering political prisoners acts as the "faceless judge" in the military tribunals. Shame on AI that bases its reports on information generated by the Peruvian government.
Example three. The execution of the "poverty queen" M.E. Moyano, who according to them was a "popular leader killed by Sendero." In reality, Moyano was a government authority (Vice-Mayor) during the Apra and Fujimori regimes, and what is more important, she was an organizer of paramilitary rondas and an informant that caused the disappearance of at least 15 Communists at the hands of a Navy death squad.
Example four. The alleged execution of Ms. Pascuala Rosado by a PCP women's contingent. This incident occurred on March 8, 1996 in a Red Zone of Lima known as Huaycan. First, Ms. Rosado had been under the government's "Witness Protection Program" run by the intelligence agencies, SIN/DINCOTE (political police), for being a collaborator since early 1992. At that time, Fujimori's Army had invaded and ransacked each home in Huaycan. The press reported that 600 people were detained, accused of being supporters of the PCP. Huaycan has been a stronghold of the revolution and has a history of resistance against the military occupation (there is an Army base there.)
Second, on March 10, 1996 the Spanish TV Program in the U.S. "Univision" confirmed that Ms. Rosado was living in the city of Santiago, Chile for two years (1994-1996) under the protection of Pinochet's military (this also confirms the well publicized 'counter terrorist agreements' of Peruvian general De Bari Hermoza and his Chilean counterpart.)
The same "Univision" showed an interview with Mr. Steve McFarland, an US Embassy operative in Lima, who clearly said: "Pascuala Rosado has been a close friend of our Embassy. The pacification program in Peru owes her so much." No further comment is needed to demonstrate whose interests this "popular leader" served. What valuable information has Pascuala Rosado provided to the government's counterinsurgency program? How did she help Fujimori's pacification program? Only the 1,000 eyes and ears of the fighting people of Huaycan know the truth.
Example five. According to reports in the progovernment press and the senderologists, "a new wave of Senderista attacks is taking place," and in a well-publicized campaign on March 10, 1996, the UN's Food and Agricultural Organization joined the Army's civic action in Huaycan to hand out food to the hungry of Huaycan. Jaime Yoshiyama, Fujimori's Minister of the Presidency at the time stated: "The government combats terrorism with food." He was referring to the operation "beans and bullets" of the armed forces in the young towns." This also includes the registration of the population by the military. On the night of March 9 (one day before of the handouts of food) 12 community activists in Huaycan (suspected of being PCP supporters) were kidnaped from their homes by a hooded military squad. Have we heard any AI's denunciation of this blatant violation of people's rights? Not at all. On the contrary, AI issued a press release paraphrasing the government's position:
"AI reiterates its condemnation for the killing of popular leader Rosado and thousands of others committed by Sendero in the last 15 years." [La Republica, March 10, 1996.]
Example six. Several Army chiefs, notorious for their crimes against civilians are being sent abroad as Embassy personnel. The case in point is General Howard Rodriguez, who since January 1996, has been the new military attache in Washington. This General was in charge of death squads operating in Ayacucho (1989), also he was involved in the killing of Martha Crisostomo (key witness of the "Cayara" genocide), and in the assassination of Journalists Hugo Bustios and Luis Morales. What does AI say about it?
People should ask, if the allegations against the PCP throughout the AI reports are supposedly true, and if we should take them seriously, why then is there such little attempt to document them? We think that anyone who really investigates this matter will soon find out that this kind of reporting is hollow, because never before in history has a revolutionary movement been sustained for almost 17 years by just "terrorizing its people."
The pompous reports of AI: "Caught between two fires," shows evidence only for the fire of the armed forces against the people. But it offers no proof on the groundless allegations against the PCP. The required evidence for responsible reporting is discounted by the reactionaries "as given" since the worldwide imperialist media, quoting senderologists and the regime, has already fed misinformations into the public psyche. The old phrase "peasant victim of terrorist violence" has been used for years by the reactionary governments and the revisionists of the legal left to attack the revolution. It is preposterous to compare the very selective executions by the PCP with the wholesale murders by the armed forces.
There is no doubt that the Peruvian government and its armed forces have been the perpetrators of so much more violence than the PCP could have. "States," as Max Weber put it, "have a monopoly on violence--for good or for bad." It is solely that violence that allows them to dominate the society. The oppression and repression perpetrated by the reactionary State which allows the maintenance of the semi-feudal and semi-colonial status of the country--with all its privileges to the ruling classes--are not being given up peacefully by the old State. Revolutionary violence is required to overthrow it. The violence of the old State is not as visible as that of the PCP because the government's violence is the norm rather than the exception. Those arguments that condemn the PCP's revolutionary violence against the old order are not only short sighted, but serve the interests of the big Peruvian bourgeoisie and imperialism.
Another question intimately tied to human rights is the "legitimization of Fujimori" which is a key ingredient of the Yankee strategy of low intensity warfare, whereby the allied regimes should be "democratically" elected and should satisfy basic necessities, and "respect human rights."
But neither the votes obtained by Fujimori in the 1994 Presidential election, 18 percent (18%) of the registered votes, nor the election of his Congress with less than 15% of the votes, in an election enforced by the guns of the military, can legitimize the regime. The null and absentee votes reached more than seventy five percent (75%). The PCP called for a boycott of the electoral farce. In addition, the growing poverty among the Peruvian people increases even more the lack of moral authority of the U.S. lackey Fujimori, who applies the economic policies of the IMF; and his military coup of 1992, with which he wiped out the "residues of democracy" to impose fascism, cannot legitimize him.
It would be unfair to single out Amnesty International as the only so-called "reputable human rights group" whose work in the main serves the foreign policy of Yankee imperialism. There are other groups who are even more directly controlled and fully funded by the imperialists through U.S. and European NGOs. The most visible cases are the discredited America's Watch and Peru's "Coordinadora of Human Rights," clear examples of how the U.S. foreign policy uses `human rights' on the one hand, and directs the military's bloody counterinsurgency war on the other hand.
What did these "human rights" groups to prevent the premeditated murder of 100 PCP political prisoners and prisoners of war in the prison of Cantogrande in May 1992 by the genocidal army? Almost nothing. AI issued an ambiguous one page "human rights alert" that circulated in few of their Chapters. In this case, America's Watch maintained the "silence of the lambs," La Coordinadora in Peru cried "excesses" but kept its head down like an ostrich. But no matter what AI did after the crime, the people of the world vigorously condemned this heinous genocide.
Why have the lives of the best sons and daughters of the people imprisoned in Cantogrande been seen by these "respectable human rights groups" as no big deal? Because these youngsters who were cowardly killed in prison, were Communists fighting for a new society, they were anti-imperialists and internationalists. This category did not fit into the hypocritical definition of "human rights," nor into the subterfuge of "prisoners of conscience."
The strength of the PCP and its powerful ideology openly challenges the imperialist "New World Order." U.S. military intervention is already a reality. A massive direct military intervention or one that can be done through (proxis) neighboring countries is a serious threat.
The distortion and vilification of the revolution under the guise of "human rights" provide active assistance for U.S. preparations for direct military intervention. Revolutionaries worldwide need to reexamine and denounced the massive disinformation campaign waged by world reaction against the PCP.
Peru People's Movement (MPP).
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