By IPS Correspondents
LIMA, Aug 26 2005 (IPS)

“I have to go to the judicial police” Friday, Salomón Lerner, who chaired Peru’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, commented offhandedly.

Paradoxically, Lerner is facing eight lawsuits filed against him by Peruvian military officers accused of violating human rights in the Truth Commission report released two years ago, on Aug. 28, 2003.

Activists and human rights experts are disheartened by the lack of progress made since then in bringing about institutional changes recommended by the Truth Commission with the aim of preventing a repeat of the political violence that claimed nearly 70,000 lives in this South American country in the 1980s and 1990s.

Lerner’s office, where he was interviewed by IPS, is adorned with several typical Peruvian retablos or triptych altarpieces from Ayacucho, the southern region that bore the brunt of the violence, especially after 1980 when the Maoist Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) guerrillas began their armed struggle in the Ayacucho town of Chuschi.

The Truth Commission’s task consisted of exploring the causes and effects of the violence. It focused on the two decades between 1980 and 2000, which comprised the presidential terms of Fernando Belaunde (1980-1985), Alan García (1985-1990) and Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000).

The results of the investigation were shocking: the death toll was found to stand at over 69,000, instead of 25,000, a figure that had been bandied about for years, without any basis in fact.

The report found that 46 percent of the victims were killed by Sendero Luminoso, 30 percent by the police, army, self-defence groups armed by the military and paramilitary militias, and the rest by smaller insurgent groups like the Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement.

Two years after the release of the final report, the outcome of the process has been “bittersweet,” said Javier Ciurlizza, the executive director of the Institute of Democracy and Human Rights at the Pontificia Catholic University in Peru.

There have been advances and setbacks, he told IPS, as well as unbelievable situations, such as the “judicial persecution” against Lerner, who is currently facing eight lawsuits for falsehood or “general misrepresentation”, brought by eight army generals and colonels who are accused of human rights violations in the Truth Commission report.

One of the officers accusing Lerner is General José Valdivia, who is facing charges himself of ordering a May 13, 1988 massacre of at least 30 peasant farmers in the Ayacucho village of Cayara in reprisal for a Sendero attack on a military patrol.

Another of Lerner’s accusers is General Wilfredo Mori Orzo, who is also facing legal charges and who was political-military chief of Ayacucho in December 1984, when at least 123 people became the victims of extrajudicial executions in the villages of Putis, Orccohuasi, Cayramayo and Vizcatampata.

But Lerner did not seem overly concerned about the lawsuits against him. Three days before the second anniversary of the release of the Truth Commission report, he preferred to talk about the lack of compliance with the report’s recommendations, remarking that the area where the least progress has been made is institutional changes.

“Reforms of the national police and the armed forces have ground to a halt or have been merely superficial,” said the former chair of the Truth Commission.

Although the police force has been partially demilitarised and human rights concepts have been introduced in the military academies, other recommendations set forth by the Truth Commission were not accepted.

One of these was the implementation by the armed forces of an ethics code that states that members of the military have the duty to disobey orders that clearly run contrary to human rights.

Other recommendations that have not been adopted involve the military courts, which during the armed conflict tried civilians and committed a wide range of abuses, according to the Truth Commission.

The Truth Commission report clearly stated that the military courts and other areas of public administration were in need of “major surgery” in order to prevent a future repeat of the violence.

A new law that went into effect on Jul. 29 grants reparations to survivors and the families of victims of the armed conflict.

The reparations include physical and mental health coverage and free housing and education. However, the law does not cover monetary compensation, unlike similar legislation passed in neighbouring South American countries that were ruled by dictatorships in the 1970s and 1980s.

The government of Alejandro Toledo is also carrying out a Peace and Development Plan in Ayacucho and the neighbouring regions of Huancavelica and Apurímac – the areas hit hardest by the violence.

The reparations plan was largely the result of the work of a “high level multisectoral commission” (CMAN) set up by the government to follow up on compliance with the Truth Commission’s recommendations.

The law providing for reparations also stipulates the creation of a national registry of victims of the political violence.

“The route that has been followed by Peru is complex, and one obstacle that it has run up against is the fact that so far there is no public institution or agency that has assumed responsibility for ensuring that the Truth Commission recommendations are put into practice,” said Ciurlizza.

It is not yet clear whether it will be the CMAN or a new body that will be in charge of implementing the reparations law.

The situation is also unclear in the judicial sphere. While Lerner is facing legal charges for his work with the Truth Commission, only seven of the 43 possible lawsuits that the Truth Commission referred to the office of the public prosecutor have been assigned to a judge up to now.

Attorney General Nelly Calderón told IPS that “none of the cases presented by the Truth Commission have been paralysed” and that they are all moving forward at a normal speed.

But Ciurlizza and Lerner, as well as a number of human rights groups, say the human rights cases have been dogged by delays.

With respect to the charges against Lerner, Calderón said that “any citizen has the right to bring a lawsuit.”

She also said a prosecutor should have been present when the Truth Commission questioned human rights abusers and victims – an assertion that Ciurlizza described as “nonsense”.

Civil society, meanwhile, is organising several commemorative events, to culminate Sunday in the inauguration of the “Boulevard of Memory” in Lima’s biggest park, Campo de Marte, which will include a sculpture named “The Eye that Weeps”.

Attending the ceremony will be Lerner, the other 11 former members of the Truth Commission, representatives of a number of human rights organisations, and hundreds of relatives of the victims of the violence.

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