ICTJ in the News

August 29, 2003

69,000 died in strife, Peru says

The Miami Herald

By Tyler Bridges

LIMA - Martin Roca left home to attend university classes one afternoon 10 years ago and "disappeared" at the hands of government security forces who suspected he belonged to the Shining Path guerrillas then terrorizing Peru.

Roca's parents never heard from him again, but they are hoping for answers from Peru's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which reported Thursday that 20 years of civil strife left 69,280 dead -- more than twice the previous estimate -- more than 4,000 "'disappeared'" and more than 600,000 forced from their homes.

"'We would like to have at least a piece of bone to bury," Roca's mother, Ricardina, said in an interview as tears ran down her cheeks.

"We are asking for justice," she added.

"Without justice, there cannot be reconciliation."

Whether Thursday's final Truth Commission report provides either justice or reconciliation won't be known for some time.

The report fills nine telephone book-sized volumes and was based on a 22-month investigation by a 12-member commission and 170-member staff.

A GRISLY TALE

The evidence was meticulously collected in public hearings throughout Peru and tells a grisly story during a dark period, 1980-2000, when the Shining Path and the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement murdered policemen and civilians alike in a failed attempt to topple elected governments, and security forces killed and tortured others in the name of safeguarding liberty.

The report blames the Shining Path for the majority of the extralegal killings and for starting the conflict but also shines a spotlight on an era that many well-known Peruvians would rather forget.

About 75 percent of the victims were Quechua-speaking peasants in remote areas caught between the Shining Path, which brooked no opposition, and government security forces, who often couldn't -- or wouldn't -- distinguish terrorists from innocent farm laborers.

"'Never again can this history be repeated in our country,"' President Alejandro Toledo said at a presidential palace ceremony where the commission formally presented its report to the government.

TRUTH HURTS

Even before Thursday, the commission has come under attack, which Alex Boraine, vice chairman of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, said mirrors the experience in his country after Apartheid. "'People don't like the truth," Boraine said. "It hurts."

Peru''s commission was created after scandal forced President Alberto Fujimori to flee the country and resign in November 2000, ending his 10-year-rule.

FUJIMORI IMPLICATED

The report contains damning information on Fujimori, who during the 1990s succeeded in extinguishing the threat posed by the Shining Path and Tupac Amaru, at the cost of jailing and illegally executing thousands of Peruvians.

The commission reported that it had "reasonable indications" that Fujimori and his top military advisors 'were criminally responsible for the assassinations, forced disappearances and massacres carried out by the [paramilitary] death squad, "Colina," which has been implicated in the murder of 24 people.

The report also implicates Fujimori's predecessors, Fernando Belaunde and Alan Garcia, who held office during the 1980s, and others -- everyone from "the devil to the Cardinal," as Caretas newsweekly magazine put it recently, referring to the demonized leader of the Shining Path, Abimael Guzman, and Cardinal Juan Luis Cipriani, accused of turning a blind eye to government abuses when he was archbishop of Ayacucho, where the worst violence occurred in the 1980s.

REPORT SLANTED?

Guzman, who is in prison, has claimed the report is slanted against the Shining Path because none of his group's leaders were on the investigative panel.

Cardinal Cipriani has said Peru is not prepared emotionally for the report's findings.

Conservatives claim that Marxists dominate the commission and its staff and slanted the findings in favor of the Shining Path. "Instead of leading to reconciliation, the report will open old wounds and polarize the country," said Rafael Rey, a conservative congressman.

In many ways, the truth part of the report -- documenting deaths and supplying dates and statistics -- will prove easier than "reconciliation," said Diego Garcia, who was Peru's minister of justice when the commission was created.

THORNY QUESTIONS

"Reconciliation with whom? With the Shining Path? The public does not want that."

But now the hardest work lies ahead.

The government must decide whether to prosecute soldiers and officers accused of human rights violations, over the objections of some military leaders.

Awarding reparations to victims, as the commission proposed, presents another thorny question for Toledo, who is disliked by most Peruvians and may not have the political capital needed to make tough decisions.

Symbolic reparations would be easy -- building memorials in communities throughout Peru where massacres occurred, for example.

More difficult will be coming up with the millions of dollars sought by the commission to indemnify victims in a country where many children go hungry and many homes do not have electricity or running water.

How the government will finance the huge cost of prosecuting human rights violators -- as well as determining exactly what happened to Martin Roca and other "disappeared" Peruvians -- is another uncertain question.

"Peru doesn't have the money," former minister Garcia said.

MISTAKEN IDENTITY

Gloria Trelles de Mendivil is less concerned about money than bringing to justice those responsible for the 1983 murder of her 22-year-old son, Jorge Luis, who had gone with seven other journalists to investigate the killing of farm laborers by government security forces in a rural area where Shining Path was active.

The government convicted three farm laborers of the journalists' murders, saying they had mistaken the journalists for Shining Path guerrillas.

But she believes security forces played a role in the murders.

"'I'm 71 years old, my health is not good," de Mendivil said. "I'm afraid that I will die before I get justice for my son. If I don't, I will dishonor the memory of my son."