/DEVELOPMENT BULLETIN 05/PERU-U.S.: Fujimori Visit Overshadowed by Detained New Yorker

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

NEW YORK, May 25 1996 (IPS) - The fate of a 26-year-old New York woman is casting a pall over the U.S. visit of President Alberto Fujimori of Peru, who is this week trying to drum up investment for his country.

Lori Berenson was sentenced in Peru in January for her alleged role in the leftist Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA). A secret military court, headed by a hooded judge, found Berenson guilty of treason against Peru and sentenced her to life imprisonment.

But several rights groups have deplored Peru’s use of secret military courts to try MRTA and Shining Path suspects.

“You’re guilty until proven innocent,” said Geoff Herzog, a spokesman for the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES), which supports Berenson’s case. “We feel Lori is being made a scapegoat, an ‘outside agitator’.”

The case may have already had an impact on Fujimori’s visit. Although the Peruvian government had clearly hoped for a meeting between U.S. President Bill Clinton and the Peruvian leader who visits Washington Tuesday, the White House has said there is no scheduled meeting. The U.S. State Department has already criticised Peru for the lack of due process in Lori Berenson’s trial.

As Fujimori visited New York Monday evening, a crowd of protestors greeted him outside his country’s U.N. mission, saying that the detention of the young journalist clouded Peru’s hopes of improved U.S. investments.

“Fujimori has said that he wants to see democracy in Peru,” Rhoda Berenson, Lori’s mother, said. “One important step toward that would be by ending the military trials where people are presumed guilty.”

Berenson has herself admitted sympathy for the MRTA rebel movement. The MRTA and the Maoist ‘Shining Path’ insurgency have been Peru’s two main guerrilla groups. Berenson denies anything other than non-violent support for the rebels.

The Fujimori government, however, contends that the U.S. citizen is actually a “leader” of the MRTA.

Herzog called the charges “preposterous”, and noted that Berenson had only been in Peru for some six months before she was arrested and accused of being an MRTA leader.

Berenson’s father, Mark, argues that in a secret trial where his daughter had no opportunity to refute evidence or cross-examine witnesses, she never had a chance to prove her innocence.

“Lori has the right to a fair trial,” said Mark Berenson, a professor at the City University of New York. “Otherwise, Peru is no different from a military dictatorship.”

Human rights groups, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch/Americas, say hundreds of Peruvians have been denied fair trials through secret military courts.

The New York Times, in a January editorial, noted that “the Peruvian people are subject to arbitrary arrest, unfair trials and other abuses of their most basic rights.”