RIGHTS-PERU: Opposition Announces Risk of Police State

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Abraham Lama

LIMA, May 20 1998 (IPS) - Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori defended his top intelligence adviser Vladimiro Montesinos, pinpointed by international groups as the country’s leading violator of human rights.

Montesinos was also accused by General Barry McCaffrey, the director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, of using a video on the U.S. official’s recent visit to Peru to whitewash his own image.

Fujimori said he considered McCaffrey’s remarks personal, “because I do not accept meddling in our affairs by any country.”

If that were permissible, “I could say, for example, that the death penalty is not applied to minors in Peru, as it is in some U.S. states, which is a human rights violation…But that is a matter that does not concern me as head of state of another country,” he added.

The president also said the human rights violations cited by McCaffrey were isolated incidents involving a few military officers “who are being investigated and will be punished” for actions against their subordinates.

McCaffrey’s remarks, made last week at a Washington press conference on his return from a tour that included Peru, have been taken up by the political opposition here to demand that Montesinos – an honorary presidential adviser – be removed from his de facto position in the leadership of the National Intelligence Service (SIN).

The opposition accuses Montesinos of heading a plan to use special legislative faculties recently granted to Fujimori to turn Peru into a police state and remove the legal barriers to a third consecutive election – prohibited by the constitution – for the president in the year 2000.

Fujimori requested the special faculties in order to tackle the explosive rise in common crime, which opinion polls highlight as the country’s most pressing social concern.

The president – who staged a “self-coup” in April 1992, in which he dissolved Congress – said he planned to put the police under the command of SIN, which up to now has only been in charge of fighting enemies from abroad and internal terrorism.

Critics are concerned about the resultant increase of the influence wielded by Montesinos, who along with Fujimori and armed forces commander General Nicolas Hermoza is one of the leading power-brokers in the government.

“The conditions are being created to turn Peru into a police state, administered by a National Intelligence Service eager to exercise political control over citizens,” jurist Victor Garcia Belaunde maintained.

“The growing but furtive control over the legal system already exercised by the intelligence apparatus will increase and eventually be unmasked. Neither the rights of the people nor the rights of institutions will be respected,” he added.

Former justice minister Valentin Paniagua said “the extraordinary faculties granted the executive branch are imprecise, and allow for unlimited modifications of legislation relating to any issue qualified by the government as a matter linked to national security.

“The measure is a new expression of the gradual process of de- constitutionalisation being put into practice by the Fujimori regime,” he contended.

“Montesinos is the regime’s manipulator,” said former leftist parliamentarian Carlos Tapia. “He is participating in planning and organising the maneuvres designed to dismantle the legal obstacles standing in the way of an illegal second reelection for Fujimori.”

Tapia agrees with the view shared by a majority of Fujimori’s adversaries that without the support of the armed forces chiefs, the president will be unable to push through the necessary legal changes to make a third consecutive election possible.

“Little by little, with the support of the ruling majority in parliament and the silent backing of the military brass, Fujimori has taken the steps necessary to weaken or control institutions like the constitutional and supreme courts which could stand in the way of his candidacy,” he said.

The opposition has been trying to drive a wedge between Fujimori and Montesinos for the past two years, since it became clear that the president was seeking reforms of the legal system that would make a third term possible, because the adviser is seen as a key player in what many describe as Fujimori’s authoritarian exercise of power.

“The opposition strategy is clear: first of all, remove Montesinos in order to make way within the armed forces for the sectors opposed to the current military chiefs, and then push General Hermoza into retirement,” said analyst Flavio Lopez.

Because Montesinos holds no official post, opposition lawmakers have no way to formally question him or demand that he testify before a parliamentary commission.

Referring to the McCaffrey incident, legislators Lourdes Flores of the Christian Democratic Party, Jorge del Castillo of the Social Democratic Aprista Party, and Fernando Olivera of the Independent Moralising Front argue that Montesinos should distance himself from the government to avoid becoming an obstacle in relations between Lima and Washington.