Peru's president-elect, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, outside his home in Lima, while waiting for the vote count to be completed. Credit: Courtesy of La República

By Ángel Páez
LIMA, Jun 9 2016 (IPS)

It is finally official: Pedro Pablo Kuczynski won Peru’s presidential elections by the thinnest of leads, and Keiko Fujimori once again just barely missed becoming president – although her party holds a solid majority in Congress, which means it will have a strong influence during the next administration.

With all of the votes counted, the national election office, ONPE, reported Thursday afternoon that the 77-year-old Kuczynski was ahead with 50.121 percent, against the 41-year-old Fujimori’s 49.879 percent.

The difference was 41,438 votes, which makes the triumph of the centre-right candidate of the Peruanos por el Kambio (PPK) party irreversible, even though some ballots were sent for review.

In the 2011 elections, Fujimori, the candidate for the right-wing Fuerza Popular, was defeated by a narrow margin, when nationalist President Ollanta Humala beat her in the runoff by 51.45 percent to 48.55 percent."The mandate that the people gave us is very clear. We joined the vote for Kuczynski in the second round to block a victory by Keiko Fujimori because she represented the threat of a return to corruption, to drug trafficking's influence on politics, to anti-democratic practices to gain power at any cost." -- Indira Huilca

The near-tie in the Sunday Jun. 5 runoff election has kept the country and the candidates’ campaign teams on edge, waiting for the ONPE to announce the result when 100 percent of the ballots had been counted, although analysts had clarified that it was impossible for the daughter of, and political heir to, imprisoned former president Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000) to overcome the slight difference.

Among the last ballots to be counted were the ones coming in from Peruvian voters in Germany, where Fujimori took aaround 18 percent of the vote and Kuczynski reached 51 percent, in the first round of the elections, on Apr. 10.

The last ballots from within Peru, meanwhile, came from remote villages in the Apurímac, Ene and Mantaro rivers valley (VRAEM), a broad area in central and southern Peru.

In the VRAEM districts – which are mainly communities from the Andean highlands regions of Ayacucho, Huancavelica, Apurímac and Junín, and to a lesser extent jungle areas in Cuzco – the left-wing candidate of the Broad Front, Verónica Mendoza, won more votes than Fujimori in April.

On Jun. 2, Mendoza, who came in third in the first round, urged her voters to cast their ballots for Kuczynski, to block the return of Fujimorismo to the country.

Fujimori’s father is serving a 25-year sentence for corruption and crimes against humanity.

These votes from rural Peru were Fujimori’s last hope, and all the way up to the release of the official ONPE bulletin, she maintained that they could turn the results around.

Political scientist and university professor Fernando Tuesta told IPS that actually, the results from the first round of voting had made it clear that the votes from abroad and from isolated communities would not significantly modify the general tendencies.

Fujimori’s stronghold: Congress

But while voters once again kept Fujimori from reaching the presidential palace, her party will be able to influence the direction taken by the country, from the single-chamber legislature, when the new government takes office on Jul. 28.

On Apr. 10, Fuerza Popular won a strong majority in Congress: 73 out of 130 seats, followed by Mendoza’s Broad Front (20), and Kuczynski’s PPK (18).

The Fujimorista bloc in Congress is known for blocking investigations of cases of corruption involving their representatives, and for pressuring their adversaries.

The big challenge facing the other two parties is keeping Fujimorismo from using its majority to control the government from Congress, and from pushing through measures in favour of its interests.

“The authoritarian temptation is part of the DNA of Fujimorismo,” Broad Front congressswoman-elect Indira Huilca told IPS. “We will never allow Fuerza Popular to use Congress to promote its impunity, to block the fight against corruption, or to cover up for and protect its supporters.”

“We haven’t come to Congress to be witnesses to the eventual destruction of democracy through authoritarian actions,” she said.

But, she warned, “it doesn’t mean that we will give carte blanche to Kuczynski.”

“The mandate that the people gave us is very clear,” said Huilca. “We joined the vote for Kuczynski in the second round to block a victory by Keiko Fujimori because she represented the threat of a return to corruption, to drug trafficking’s influence on politics, to anti-democratic practices to gain power at any cost.”

She is all too familiar with these practices: her father, Pedro Huilca, the long-time leader of Peru’s Confederación General de Trabajadores central trade union, was assassinated eight months after Alberto Fujimori’s self-coup in 1992.

The recent elections were characterised by a lack of transparency and irregularities.

The national election board, the JNE, implemented electoral reforms approved at the last minute by Congress, which gave rise to confusion and the questioning of authority, and undermined the legitimacy of the election board’s decisions.

Two important presidential candidates, Julio Guzmán and César Acuña, both of whom were doing well in the polls, were eliminated by the JNE amidst a climate of suspicion regarding the board’s independence.

What the elections made clear, analysts say, was that Peru needs better electoral laws.

“The anomalies seen in the elections were basically due to the modifications to the election law, and also to the positions taken by the JNE,” a former secretary general of the board, Juan Falconí, told IPS.

“There was a point where people did not know who the presidential candidates would be due to the confusing implementation of the new rules,” he said.

As a result, he said, there were “incidents that cast a shadow over the elections, and people no longer trust the electoral authorities.”

“The JNE has lost legitimacy in the view of voters because it has been clear that it failed to act in a decisive manner and that it lacked credibility and managed things poorly,” he said.

During the debate of the electoral reform proposed by the JNE, Fujimorismo opposed oversight of private campaign funding, and also rejected mandatory supervision by the electoral authorities of internal party elections to select their candidates.

Now that Fujimorismo will be a majority in Congress, a new reform to correct errors and make elections more transparent is unlikely.

“Without Fujimorismo, no electoral reform will be possible. And I don’t think it’s a priority for them,” said Professor Tuesta.

He said that while anti-Fujimorismo defeated the Fuerza Popular candidate, the president-elect will not be able to govern without negotiating with that bloc, which will influence the administration from the legislature.

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

“No Narco-state, No Keiko!” was the chant repeated endlessly by protesters during the massive May 31 demonstrations in Lima and many other cities in Peru against the possible triumph of presidential candidate Keiko Fujimori. Credit: Courtesy of La República

By Ángel Páez
LIMA, Jun 3 2016 (IPS)

Thousands of Peruvians took to the streets of Lima and other cities to protest the likely triumph in the Sunday Jun. 5 runoff election of Keiko Fujimori, the daughter of former president Alberto Fujimori, who is serving a 25-year sentence for corruption and crimes against humanity.

If Keiko Fujimori wins, as indicated by the polls, it will be the fourth time a Fujimori is elected president.

Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000) spent two full terms in office and his third term was cut short (he served less than one year) due to a corruption scandal revolving around his security chief Vladimiro Montesinos. His administration was marked by human rights violations and a self-coup in which he dissolved Congress, suspended civil liberties and established government by decree. “A triumph by Keiko Fujimori represents for Peruvian democracy, on a symbolic level, the exercise of shameful masochism on the part of those who already suffered the crimes and horror of her father’s government…Her election would amount to support for a way of governing that violated all the principles of democracy.” – Julio Arbizu

On May 31 and two previous occasions, enormous crowds of demonstrators took to the streets in Lima and other major cities to protest the candidacy of Keiko Fujimori, in protests similar to those she faced as first lady – a position she held informally after her parents divorced – during the campaign in which her father was reelected to a third term, in 2000.

Keiko Fujimori, 41, is facing off with banker Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, 77, who served as prime minister and economy minister in the government of Alejandro Toledo (2001-2006). They are both running for president for a second time: in 2011 she came in second and he came in third in the elections won by Ollanta Humala.

In the last two opinion polls, Fujimori was slightly ahead of Kuczynski, which could change due to the growing denunciations of corruption and other irregularities against the candidate for the right-wing Fuerza Popular, which groups the supporters of 77-year-old Alberto Fujimori, who has been in a cell in a national police station on the east side of Lima since 2007.

Since last year, Keiko Fujimori has been seeking to project an image of herself as having nothing to do with the authoritarian practices of her father, in a strategy that has included populist promises aimed at neutralising the anti-Fujimorista vote that led to her defeat in 2011.

But during the campaign that got underway in January, the candidate has faced a growing number of accusations of shady financing, manipulation of the media, false claims about her political opponents, and other practices that put people in mind of the way her father did things.

“Those of us who fought the authoritarianism and corruption of the government of Alberto Fujimori believe that a victory by his daughter Keiko Fujimori would represent a setback to democracy,” said Salomón Lerner, President Humala’s former prime minister.

“Keiko Fujimori, who at the start of her election campaign criticised the excesses of her father, was repeating his practices by the last stage of the campaign. And one demonstration of what I’m saying is the appearance of shady figures, with dubious reputations, who worked with Alberto Fujimori,” Lerner told IPS.

According to Peru’s national elections office, Fujimori has reported more than three million dollars in income, compared to the centre-right Kuczynski’s 2.2 million.

The May 31 protest in Lima against presidential candidate Keiko Fujimori, the daughter and heir to Alberto Fujimori, who is serving a 25-year sentence for crimes against humanity and corruption. Credit: Courtesy of La República

Keiko Fujimori’s main campaign funders include former officials from her father’s regime or people otherwise close to him, some of whom are implicated in the current investigation of money laundering in her 2011 campaign.

Drug trafficking, more than just a shadow

In 2013, the U.S. government accused businessman Luis Calle, who helped finance Keiko Fujimori’s campaign in 2011, of being an international drug kingpin and laundering money.

And in 2014, Peru’s special prosecutor for money laundering cases, Julia Príncipe, sought to lift the parliamentary immunity of Fujimorista lawmaker Joaquín Ramírez, alleging a major discrepancy between his reported income and his 7.1 million dollars in assets.

But the following year, Keiko Fujimori made him secretary general of Fuerza Popular and later threw all her support behind him even after the public prosecutor’s office launched an investigation of him for alleged money laundering.

And she ratified Ramírez in his post after the U.S. Spanish-language television network Univisión and the investigative journalism programme Cuarto Poder, in Lima, revealed in a joint televised news report that the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) was investigating him.

An undercover informant for the DEA, Jesús Vásquez, said he had recorded Ramírez saying Keiko Fujimori gave him 15 million dollars in alleged drug money to launder for the 2011 election campaign.

Although Fujimori dismissed the reports as false, Ramírez was forced to temporarily step down as the leader of Fuerza Popular, after Peruvian authorities announced a trip to the United States to interview Vásquez.

When it looked like the scandal was winding down, the TV programme “Las cosas como son” aired a recording in which Vásquez apparently said he had lied about what Ramírez said. Shortly afterwards the producer of the programme, Mayra Albán, said the recording had been doctored, and that it had come from the head of Fujimori’s campaign, José Chlimper.

It was an operation by the Fujimori camp to discredit the DEA informant, whose accusations reminded analysts and opposition politicians of Keiko Fujimori and her father: during the latter’s government, drug trafficking was one of the biggest sources of corruption, as the justice system proved.

Former anti-corruption prosecutor Julio Arbizu said “a triumph by Keiko Fujimori represents for Peruvian democracy, on a symbolic level, the exercise of shameful masochism on the part of those who already suffered the crimes and horror of her father’s government.”

“Her election would amount to support for a way of governing that violated all the principles of democracy,” added Arbizu, who headed the fight against corruption in the country from 2011 to 2014.

“But as a more in-depth consequence, a victory by Fujimorismo would mean the country would be governed by a criminal organisation (I believe Fujimorismo has always been one), which this time around has a strong coating of formality, but which has given us enough reasons to believe that it has serious ties to the drug trade and money laundering,” he added.

Keiko Fujimori, with Joaquín Ramírez, who has temporarily been suspended as secretary general of her party, Fuerza Popular, because of accusations of drug trade-related activities, although the candidate has confirmed her confidence in him. Credit: Courtesy of La República

Arbizu played a decisive role in the extradition of former president Fujimori, when he took refuge in Chile, in 2007, after he tried to step down as president, while in Asia, in late 2000 and was impeached by Congress for “moral incapacity.”

Congresswoman Rosa Mavila presided over an investigative commission on the links between drug trafficking and politics, which issued a report that mentioned ties with Fujimorismo.

“At the end of Fujimori’s government, when Keiko Fujimori was first lady, she asked her father to pardon the Martínez sisters, who were in prison at the time on charges of drug trafficking,” Mavila, who belongs to a centre-left alliance, told IPS.

Fujimori freed them, and when his daughter was running for Congress in 2006, “the Martínez sisters contributed to her campaign. And this isn’t the only case,” said Mavila.

“During the Fujimori administration, the drug trade had a powerful influence,” she stated.

As an example, she cited the case of drug trafficker Fernando Zevallos, who was acquitted four times during that period, but was sentenced to 20 years in prison once Toledo became president.

“Rather than trying to ward off any doubt, Keiko Fujimori has defended people accused of money laundering, as in the case of Congressman Joaquín Ramírez,” said Mavila, who pointed out that the Fujimorista leader had taken refuge in his parliamentary immunity to escape investigation.

“Immunity is not impunity. The Fujimoristas should understand that,” the legislator said.

In the May 31 march against Keiko Fujimori, the most frequently intoned chant was against the creation of a “narco state”, if the daughter of imprisoned former president Alberto Fujimori is elected Sunday.

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

UNASUR presidents back Nicolás Maduro’s triumph and fly to Venezuela for the inauguration. Credit: Presidenty of Peru

By Ángel Páez
LIMA, Apr 19 2013 (IPS)

Nicolás Maduro was recognised as president-elect of Venezuela by a Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) emergency summit held in Lima to discuss the situation in the highly polarised country, where a narrow electoral result triggered social and political tension.

Meanwhile, Venezuela’s electoral authority said it would audit the ballots that were not already scrutinised on election night, in response to opposition demands.

It was after 1:00 AM Friday when Peruvian President Ollanta Humala announced, at the end of a nearly three-hour debate behind closed doors, the bloc’s support for Venezuela’s election authorities, who had declared Maduro the winner of the Sunday Apr. 14 elections.

Humala publicly congratulated the leftwing Maduro, the political heir of the late Hugo Chávez (1954-2013), who stood by his side smiling and looking clearly relieved. On Friday Maduro will be sworn in.

“With this consensus agreement we want to express UNASUR’s position that we will always be involved in the task of accompanying, strengthening and cooperating in the processes of fortifying the democracy that we have today in the region of South America,” Humala said.

“The idea and spirit of UNASUR is to contribute to and cooperate in the solution of problems that can affect democracy,” he added.

A Peruvian official then read out the summit statement, whose second point indicated that UNASUR urged all sectors that took part in Venezuela’s presidential elections to respect the official results announced by the National Electoral Council (CNE).

The meeting hosted by Humala was attended by presidents Cristina Fernández of Argentina, Evo Morales of Bolivia, Dilma Rousseff of Brazil, Sebastián Piñera of Chile, Juan Manuel Santos of Colombia, José Mujica of Uruguay, and Maduro himself, as president-elect of Venezuela.

Vice President Jorge Glas represented Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa, who is on a tour of Europe, and ambassador Marlon Faisal Mohamed-Hoesein took part in representation of Suriname. The only active member of the bloc not represented at the meeting was Guyana.

Paraguay is still suspended over the June 2012 removal of President Fernando Lugo by the country’s legislature.

The chairman of Peru’s parliamentary commission on foreign relations, Víctor Andrés García Belaúnde of the opposition Popular Action party, stressed the significance of the emergency summit given the political standoff in Venezuela.

“The case of Venezuela is not similar to that of Honduras (where President Manuel Zelaya was ousted in 2009) or Paraguay. Venezuela is the fourth-largest economy in Latin America, and it is also a member and promoter of the creation of UNASUR, and this decision by the bloc will have repercussions throughout the entire continent, if not the world,” García Belaúnde told IPS.

The third point of the Lima announcement ratified what was stated in the Apr. 15 Declaration of the UNASUR Electoral Mission to Venezuela: that any complaint, question or request for an extraordinary procedure raised by any participant in the electoral process should be channelled and resolved within the existing legal framework and the democratic will of the different parties.

It went on to “take positive note of the CNE decision to use a methodology that would permit the total audit of the polling stations.”

In Venezuela, electronic voting machines produce a paper receipt, which voters deposit in boxes. On Sunday, 54 percent of the boxes were automatically scrutinised. The CNE has now agreed to audit the remaining 46 percent.

In the elections, Maduro took 50.8 percent of the vote, compared to 49 percent for opposition candidate Henrique Capriles, a difference of 270,000 votes. On Monday Capriles called publicly for a total recount, and thousands of opposition protesters took to the streets to back that demand. On Wednesday he filed a formal request with the CNE.

The decision to audit the rest of the ballot receipts, which according to the CNE is the only option provided in the regulations for the law on electoral processes, was accepted by Capriles, who said “with this we are where we want to be.”

In the end, the opposition leader did not fly to Lima as had been speculated ahead of the UNASUR meeting.

The fourth point of the UNASUR declaration called for a halt to any “attitude or act of violence that jeopardises the social peace of the country”. It also expressed “solidarity with the injured and the families of the fatal victims of Apr. 15, 2013” and called for dialogue and the “preservation of a climate of tolerance for the good of the entire Venezuelan people.”

Seven people were killed and 61 injured during the unrest on Monday, according to Attorney General Luisa Ortega.

After the UNASUR declaration was read out, Maduro lifted his right fist and hit his chest in a sign of victory.

While the summit was taking place, a group of Venezuelans gathered outside of Peru’s presidential palace, beating pots and pans and waving signs protesting the presence of the president-elect. But they were drowned out by a larger number of Peruvian sympathisers of Maduro and the late Chávez (who died of cancer on Mar. 5, after 14 years in power).

Legislator Freddy Otárola Peñaranda of Peru’s governing Nationalist Party, a member of the foreign relations commission, said UNASUR’s decision was in line with the fundamental principle that each country must resolve its own domestic problems.

“With this resolution, UNASUR is helping our Venezuelan brothers and sisters to find peaceful solutions to their problems under the principle of respect for the self-determination of peoples, “he told IPS.

“Venezuelans have to work out their own internal questions, without meddling by anyone,” he added.

Farid Kahhat, head of the international politics department at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, said that once Venezuela’s CNE agreed to audit the boxes with the ballot receipts, a UNASUR declaration was no longer necessary.

But he told IPS it was important that the bloc called for dialogue between the Venezuelan government and the opposition, and that it did not merely back Maduro’s victory.

Members of the Israeli company Global CST training Peruvian military in 2009-2010. Credit: IPS

By Ángel Páez
LIMA, Mar 22 2013 (IPS)

The Peruvian legislature is investigating a contract with an Israeli company, entered into by the previous government for advising and training the military, after audit bodies found irregularities in how it was signed.

A congressional oversight commission is investigating three former ministers in the government of Alan García (2006-2011) in connection with the agreement with a private Israeli security company, Global CST.

The contract, signed secretly in 2009, was for supporting the military in its fight against a remnant of the Maoist guerrilla group Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path), active in the Apurímac, Ene and Mantaro river valleys (VRAEM).

(Shining Path was in armed conflict with the state from 1980 to 2000.)

An audit by the comptroller general’s office found that civilian and military authorities had broken laws and regulations in signing the contract with the company, whose founder and director is Israel Ziv, a general in the Israeli army reserve.

The investigation concluded that the Peruvian state had lost 16 million dollars because Global CST failed to fulfil its commitment under its contract with the Armed Forces Joint Command.

Special anti-corruption prosecutors received the report from the comptroller’s office and in the next few days will open a formal criminal investigation against at least 20 former officials, both civilian and military, from García’s second presidential term (he also governed 1985-1990).

The main people coming under questioning by the legislative commission are former health and housing minister Hernán Garrido, former defense ministers Ántero Flores Aráoz and Rafael Rey, and former chief of the Joint Command, retired general Francisco Contreras.

“All those involved in the contract with Global CST must answer as many questions as are necessary to clear up this case, which involves former civil and military authorities from the previous government,” the chairman of the oversight commission, congressman Gustavo Rondón, told IPS.

“We want to know if it was necessary to bring in a foreign company to train soldiers to fight the terrorists. After taking statements, we will come to our conclusions and send a report to the attorney-general’s office, where a criminal investigation is under way,” said Rondón.

After stepping down as minister in October 2008, Garrido joined Global CST in Colombia. The Israeli company was working with the Colombian army which is fighting the Armed Revolutionary Forces of Colombia (FARC).

The Colombian contract with Global CST was signed when incumbent President Juan Manuel Santos was defence minister, between 2006 and 2009.

On Apr. 30, 2009, Garrido and Ziv met in Lima with then defence minister Flores Aráoz, to offer him Global CST’s advisory services in the war against the remnant Sendero group operating in the VRAEM.

The following day Ziv met with Contreras, the chief of the Joint Command, who from then on conducted the negotiations with the Israeli firm.

Five months later, on Oct. 20, 2009, the Joint Command and Global CST signed a secret contract that, according to the comptroller general’s office, was detrimental to the Peruvian state. The company was paid 10.6 million dollars, paid no taxes and got other benefits, raising the state’s losses to 16 million dollars.

Sources close to Garrido told IPS that the former minister merely introduced Ziv to the Peruvian authorities, but played no part in the contracting process and was not paid for facilitating the contact.

However, after the contract was signed, Garrido provided advisory services to social development projects conducted by the Israeli company in Colombia and Guinea.

Former army chief general Otto Guibovich testified before the congressional commission that it had been unnecessary to hire a private foreign company to train elite forces in the VRAEM, because the Peruvian army has plenty of experience.

Guibovich confirmed to IPS what he had said in Congress, and that he had met with Garrido and Ziv on Apr. 30, 2009. But he added that he had made no promises, because he had no plans for using advice of the kind being offered.

Secret documents obtained by IPS indicate that Global CST, in order to accredit its counterinsurgency capacities, gave the Peruvian government letters from then Colombian defence minister Santos and other senior Colombian officials.

In a letter to Ziv dated Jun. 20, 2009, Santos thanked him for “the great work done by the group of Global CST advisers, who with such dedication and skill, under your leadership, have advised the defence ministry of my country over the last three years.”

But Ziv concealed from his Peruvian counterparts that his company was training, in the same year, 2009, a personal guard for controversial captain Moussa Dadis Camara, who had led a coup in Guinea and governed the country in 2008 and 2009.

The comptroller’s office established that neither in the Peruvian Joint Command’s yearly plan of actions, nor in its budget for 2009, were there provisions for a contract such as the one it signed with the Israeli firm.

The command “had no need to hire a foreign company to train the military. It was an invention. And it was an agreement made in the image and to the measure of the proposal presented by Global CST,” sources at the comptroller’s office told IPS. “The worst thing is that they forged a document to authorise the contract with the Israeli firm.”

“Convincing evidence that there was a wilful conspiracy to contract the company recommended by a former minister is that the chief of the Joint Command, General Francisco Contreras, requested funds for the exact amount that Global CST had quoted for its services,” they said.

The accusation by the comptroller’s office against those allegedly responsible for the irregular contract with Global CST includes a former defence ministry inspector, retired vice admiral Carlos Tubino, who approved the company’s services.

Tubino is now a congressman for the Fuerza Popular party, headed by Keiko Fujimori, the daughter of former president Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000), who is serving prison sentences for corruption and human rights abuses.

Fujimoristas and supporters of APRA, the party of former president García, are critical of the comptroller’s office’s investigation, even though it has been taken up by the attorney-general’s office.

“It’s not an impartial investigation because it is politically motivated. They are trying to discredit the armed forces that are fighting terrorism. We have seen that many of the comptroller’s office’s accusations are baseless,” argued Fujimorista congressman Julio Gagó, a member of the congressional commission.

Supreme Court chief justice Javier Villa Stein holds up ruling that cuts sentences of human rights violators. Credit: Peruvian judiciary

By Ángel Páez
LIMA, Jul 28 2012 (IPS)

Former Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori’s defence lawyers said the Supreme Court decision to reduce the prison sentences of army intelligence agents found guilty of human rights abuses is “relevant” to his case.

They argued that Fujimori, too, should benefit from the decision, as he was convicted for the same crimes.

Fujimori’s lead counsel César Nakazaki said “elements” in the Court’s ruling on Friday Jul. 21 could contribute to a review of the 25-year prison sentence he is currently serving.

Under presiding Judge Javier Villa, five Supreme Court magistrates determined that members of the Army Intelligence Service’s (SIE) illegal Colina Group, widely described as a death squad, were wrongfully convicted for offences that were not actually crimes against humanity.

Vladimiro Montesinos, Fujimori’s de facto intelligence tsar, and former army commander and Colina Group leader Nicolás Hermoza, now a retired general, who were No. 2 and No. 3, respectively, in the authoritarian Fujimori regime (1990-2000) at the height of the counterinsurgency war, were sentenced to 25-year prison terms in 2010.

Montesinos and Hermoza were convicted of ordering the Colina Group to kill 25 civilians in two separate operations, including 15 people at a barbecue in Lima’s Barrios Altos district in 1991, and 10 students and a professor at La Cantuta university in 1992. They were also found guilty of the murder-disappearance of a journalist, Pedro Yauri, in the city of Huacho to the north of Lima, also in 1992.

At the same trial, retired general Julio Salazar, a former head of the National Intelligence Service (SIN), was sentenced to 35 years in prison for the La Cantuta massacre. Majors Santiago Martín and Carlos Pichilingüe, both leading figures in the Colina Group, were handed 25-year sentences for their roles in the killings.

Other former members of the paramilitary death squad are serving prison sentences of 15 to 20 years.

Now, the Supreme Court in a majority verdict, has decided to lop five years off the sentences of Montesinos, Hermoza and Salazar.

Villa argued that the Colina Group massacres were not “systematic crimes”, and the victims were not “ordinary citizens, but terrorists belonging to Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path),” a Maoist organisation which took up arms in 1980.

However, former head prosecutor Avelino Guillén, who prosecuted Fujimori in 2008-2009 for ordering the Barrios Altos and La Cantuta massacres, told IPS that “it has never been proven that the victims were Shining Path members.”

The fundamental issue here is not the matter of sentence reduction, but the attempted change of classification, from crimes against humanity to straightforward murder (“homicidio calificado”) because, as some of the judges said, the Colina Group was organised to “eliminate terrorists,” not to commit indiscriminate murders of civilians.

On Apr. 7, 2009 Fujimori was found guilty on charges of human rights violations and sentenced to a 25-year prison term for having command responsibility for the homicides in Barrios Altos and La Cantuta, and for the 1992 abductions of journalist Gustavo Gorriti and businessman Samuel Dyer, critics of his regime.

The judges at his trial, presided over by César San Martín, determined these crimes met the criteria for crimes against humanity.

Rightwing lawmaker Kenyi Fujimori, the son of the former president, whose sister, Keiko Fujimori, was a presidential candidate in the 2011 elections won by President Ollanta Humala, said at a press conference that the Jul. 21 court ruling “shows that my father is innocent of crimes against humanity, and so we will be taking legal action to change the sentence imposed on him.”

Nakazaki took a similar line and announced he would ask for a review of his client’s sentence. “The members of the Colina Group were not originally accused of crimes against humanity, and neither was Fujimori, which affected their rights as defendants,” he said. “Fujimori was convicted for a crime he did not have the opportunity to defend himself against. This anomaly needs to be corrected.”

In any event, neither Fujimori nor his former chief adviser Montesinos will find it easy to get out of jail in spite of the breach apparently opened up by the Supreme Court.

The former president was convicted in 2007 for usurpation of powers and abuse of authority and sentenced to eight years’ imprisonment; and later in 2009 he was found guilty of theft of public property and misappropriation of funds, bringing with it another seven-and-a-half year sentence.

Montesinos, for his part, is presently serving a 15-year sentence following conviction on several counts of corruption, and a 20-year sentence for facilitating arms trafficking with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrillas.

While Fujimori’s legal team considers whether and how to request a review of his sentence, Víctor García, former president of the Constitutional Court (2005-2006), said Fujimori’s sentence for the Barrios Altos and La Cantuta massacres is final and cannot be appealed.

“The Supreme Court verdict is not binding and may be changed,” García told IPS, adding that “the six-month window of opportunity to appeal or impugn the verdict against Fujimori is past and gone.”

He also stated that “The Inter-American Court of Human Rights determined the Barrios Altos and La Cantuta murders to be crimes against humanity, and it reserves the right to verify that the Peruvian justice system imposes sentences in accord” with the requirements of international law, he said.

Meanwhile the Justice Ministry presented an appeal against the Supreme Court ruling in the High Court on Tuesday, in a move criticised by human rights lawyer Tania Quiroz, who has defended military personnel accused of human rights abuses.

“The Court was mistaken to throw out the concept of crimes against humanity and reduce the sentences. What it should have done was to annul the trial and order a new one from scratch. But this is a legal rather than a political issue,” Quiroz told IPS.

For her part, Jo-Marie Burt, a political science researcher and professor at the George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, said the Supreme Court decision was not an isolated case but reflected a trend within the Peruvian justice system towards favouring former state agents who have been found guilty of violating human rights.

“At least half the accused (in cases of this kind) have walked scot-free. It is a very dangerous trend because it opens the door to impunity,” Burt, with the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), told IPS.

By - - and Ángel Páez
LIMA, Mar 15 2012 (IPS)

The armed forces of Peru have launched a campaign to rescue at least 50 children who are in the hands of the last surviving remnant of the Maoist Shining Path guerrillas.

Military pamphlet showing photos of children in the hands of Shining Path. Credit: Joint command of the armed forces

The rebel group is now only active in the Apurímac and Ene river valley region, an area known as VRAE, which stretches from the southern part of the country’s Andean highlands to the central Amazon jungle region.

The captured children are held in camps where they are indoctrinated and trained in the use of weapons, the authorities say.

Photos and video footage confiscated from captured Shining Path guerrillas reportedly show that dozens of children are being held by the group, including kidnapped local children from the region and the sons and daughters of “Senderistas”.

The armed adult combatants live in the same spot as the children, with the aim of warding off air attacks by the army’s Mi-17 gunship helicopters.

“They use the kids as human shields,” a high-ranking officer of the joint command, which is carrying out operations in the VRAE, told IPS. “They take them everywhere and make them participate in armed actions, as lookouts and messengers, and they even force them to kill off soldiers who are injured in the ambushes.

“If there is one reason the camps aren’t being bombed, it’s because of the presence of the children. They use them to protect themselves,” said the source, who asked to remain anonymous.

The joint command has managed to identify a number of the children, including several from the Ashaninka indigenous community, who live in Peru’s central jungle region.

Posters, leaflets and pamphlets with photos of the children held by the Senderistas have been distributed by the joint command throughout the entire 12,000-square-kilometre VRAE region, with the aim of raising awareness among the local population and persuading them to provide information that would help rescue the children.

Indoctrination, military training and the use of children in combat are part of the strategy followed by Shining Path since the start of the 1980-2000 armed conflict.

Quispe Palomino, the chief of the Shining Path remnant active in the VRAE, is himself the son of Martín Quispe Mendoza, a Sendero leader who was killed in fighting with government forces in 1991.

Martín Quispe made his sons Víctor, Jorge and Martín Maoist “pioneers”, and the three now head up the last remaining Sendero faction, since the Feb. 12 capture of the last of the original Shining Path leaders, Florindo Flores, who controlled the Huallaga Valley in the Amazon jungle in northern Peru.

“The worst massacre of campesinos (peasants) committed by the Senderistas was in Lucanamarca, Ayacucho on Apr. 3, 1983. They killed 69 people for opposing the armed struggle. One-quarter of the victims were children. ‘José’ was one of the attackers, and he was only 22 years old,” anti-terrorist prosecutor Julio Galindo told IPS.

“For Quispe, children are instruments of war. Part of his policy is for the Senderistas to have children in the camps, so they can receive instruction from a very young age,” he said.

“Víctor Quispe is reproducing his own personal experience. His father indoctrinated him and trained him in military tactics with the idea that he would continue the struggle, and now he is repeating the method with the children that he holds captive in the camps. He believes that some of those kids will stay in the armed struggle. It’s madness,” Galindo said.

In 2011, an army commando ambushed a Senderista camp and managed to rescue a young woman and her baby boy. The 19-year-old mother, whose identity has been kept secret for safety reasons, said she was kidnapped when she was just nine years old.

When she was older, she was forced to become the girlfriend of a Senderista fighter, who got her pregnant, she said.

María del Carmen Santiago, the head of the directorate of children and adolescents in the ministry for women and vulnerable populations, told IPS that the government had decided to take action with respect to the children held captive by the Senderistas in the VRAE region.

She said that in this case, Peru is acting as a signatory to the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict.

“The children who are rescued are given all the necessary care to help them recover from the extreme situation they have experienced,” said Santiago, explaining that the victims receive psychological treatment, education and healthcare.

In the VRAE region there are government centres run by the National Institute of Family Welfare, as well as municipal centres “that provide assistance to these minors who are at serious risk,” Santiago said.

Article four of the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child specifically states that “Armed groups that are distinct from the armed forces of a State should not, under any circumstances, recruit or use in hostilities persons under the age of 18 years.”

“As a result, the State is obliged to make every effort to protect children who are exploited by an illegal organisation. These minors are violently subjected to a way of life that we reject,” said Santiago.

Galindo said that when the Senderista chiefs are brought to justice, they should not only be tried for terrorism but also for kidnapping children.

“I have seen the images of the children receiving lessons on Marx, Lenin and Mao, and then training with weapons,” he said.

“They teach them to hate and to kill. This should not happen in a civilised society. By doing this they are violating national laws and international regulations on protection of children,” he added.

On Jan. 23, 2010, the police captured Víctor Quispe Zaga, the oldest son of Víctor Quispe Palomino. He said he had escaped from a camp belonging to his father’s organisation.

The Sendero leader’s son agreed to cooperate with the legal system, to provide information on crimes that he had committed, as well as details that would help lead to the arrest of his accomplices.

He said that at the age of five he was sent to a Sendero camp to live with his father, where he grew up. He said he had received ideological indoctrination and military training, and was assigned to tasks as a combatant. He also confessed that he took part in several armed operations.

But when he found out that his father, “José”, had killed his mother, he escaped from the camp, where he said he had been living in horrible conditions. “I hate my father because he killed my mom,” he told the authorities.

“In those camps, the children are turned into little seeds of hatred,” said the high-ranking joint command officer.

Excerpt:

The capture in Peru of the last major leader of the Maoist rebel group Sendero Luminoso is a mortal blow to the movement that managed to survive thanks to its connection with the production of coca and cocaine in the north of the country.

President Ollanta Humala talks to captured Sendero leader. Credit: Office of the president of Peru

On Sunday Feb. 12, Artemio was captured by a joint police-army patrol in Cashiyacu, in the northern region of San Martín. The intelligence operation began on Feb. 9, when the rebel leader was shot and injured by one of his fellow insurgents.

The insurgent, a police informant, reported Artemio’s location to the security forces. But the Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) leader was not actually found until Feb. 12, with a badly injured and infected hand.

“It is without a doubt a very important capture, but the drug trafficking industry will continue operating,” Nobel Panduro, an experienced radio journalist based in the area where Artemio’s group was active, told IPS by telephone.

He said “Artemio forged strong ties with the coca growers and the trafficking ‘firms’, but his imprisonment will not prevent them from finding someone else to protect their operations, whether a member of Sendero Luminoso or anyone else who has an armed group.”

Panduro lives in Aucayacu, within the area that was under the influence of the captured Sendero leader for the past 30 years, and he interviewed Artemio in 2001, 2003 and 2006.

“Sendero Luminoso received ‘cupos’ (war tax payments) from the drug traffickers to make sure drug production continued unimpaired, which is why the Maoists attacked the antinarcotics forces and the teams tasked with ‘eradicating’ coca crops (by hand). With Artemio in prison, anyone who can offer the mafias security will replace him,” the reporter added.

Artemio was born in 1961 in Camaná, a coastal town in southern Peru, and after completing his compulsory military service he joined Sendero Luminoso at the age of 20. The rebel group was founded in 1970 by Abimael Guzmán, who was captured in 1992 and is serving a life sentence at a naval base.

Artemio, who is now 50, quickly rose up in the ranks of Sendero, thanks to the military commando training he received in the army.

In a video of a 1988 meeting of Sendero’s Central Committee, Artemio was seen sitting next to Guzmán and the rest of the group’s top leaders, which confirmed his status in the organisation, where he was in command of the Huallaga Regional Committee, which covered the regions of Huánuco and San Martín, where the main trafficking organisations active in the flourishing drug trade were based.

When Guzmán was captured in 1992 and declared the end of the armed struggle against the Peruvian state, Artemio refused to surrender. The Sendero remnant he led survived the governments of Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000), Alejandro Toledo (2001-2006) and Alan García’s second term (2006-2011).

The group’s support base was the poor local coca-growing population, and it was financed by the cocaine trafficking groups that paid it in exchange for protection.

“The drug traffickers have lost a major source of support with Artemio’s capture. But the armed apparatus that he headed remains intact,” another prominent reporter from Huallaga, Felipe Páucar, told IPS.

“Another leader will undoubtedly replace him, and even if he won’t have Artemio’s level of political, ideological and military skills, he will try to continue serving the drug traffickers,” he said.

“The climate of violence generated by the drug mafias will prevail until the main lines of production are destroyed. As long as the drug trade exists, there will be subversion,” said Páucar, who lives in the town of Tingo María, in the region of Huánuco. The police team that captured Artemio was set up in 2007 as the special investigations division, DIVINESP, a unit in the anti-drug police.

After the Peruvian government demonstrated to the United States that the Maoist organisation in Huallaga Valley was linked to the production of drugs, it began to receive economic and technological support from the U.S. Embassy’s Narcotics Affairs Section (NAS) and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

NAS finances the operations that use UH1H helicopters, while the DEA provides a fund for paying informants, as well as a wiretapping team known as “Constellation”.

And in July 2010, the U.S. government offered a five million dollar reward to anyone who supplied information that led to the capture of Artemio.

In 2011, DIVINESP agents recruited a member of Artemio’s inner circle as a paid informant, with the aim of tracking down the rebel chief. The police infiltrator finally led them to him, and he was taken on Sunday to the Santa Lucía anti-drug military base in Huallaga Valley.

President Ollanta Humala visited the base to assess the state of the captured leader and urge him to call on his followers to lay down their arms.

Now there is only one active Sendero leader, Víctor Quispe, alias “José”, who operates in the Apurimac and Ene Rivers Valley (VRAE).

On two occasions he sent armed columns to the Huallaga Valley in failed attempts to eliminate Artemio and seize control of the organisation.

The group led by José, like Artemio’s, depends on support from impoverished local coca farmers and “protection payments” from the drug traffickers.

“One of the possibilities that occurs to me is that José, taking advantage of Artemio’s fall, will once again try to occupy the Huallaga Valley with his own people, and recruit the followers of the imprisoned Sendero chief,” retired general Otto Guibovich, a former army commander and analyst of security affairs, told IPS.

“It will be easier for him now because he will no longer run into resistance from an organisation that has been virtually demolished,” he said.

“What the Peruvian government has to do is consolidate its victory over Sendero Luminoso in the Huallaga Valley. The police and military must continue to exert pressure on Artemio’ scattered followers, to keep them from regrouping,” the retired general said.

In his view the government “should apply a vigorous economic and social programme in the regions of Huánuco and San Martín, where more than 50 percent of the population lives in poverty, which makes it an attractive breeding ground for subversion.

“In these areas, spending is needed on health, education and infrastructure. If this doesn’t happen, the violence could break out again, especially in an area where drug trafficking is a powerful economic activity,” said Guibovich.

By - - and Ángel Páez
LIMA, Dec 29 2011 (IPS)

The Peruvian government will propose that the Organisation of American States review the powers of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), and is seeking the support of Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela. The move is a reaction against a lawsuit brought against it by the IACHR.

Sources at the Peruvian Justice Ministry who preferred to remain anonymous told IPS the IACHR had committed an “excess” in forwarding to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights the details of alleged summary executions of three captured guerrillas by an army commando that raided the Japanese ambassador’s residence in Lima in 1997 to free hostages.

The three insurgents, members of the leftwing Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA), were purportedly killed in cold blood after they handed over their weapons to the Chavín de Huántar commando unit, after a successful raid to free 71 hostages who had been held for four months.

The IACHR, which is part of the Organisation of American States (OAS) human rights system, argues that the Peruvian state has failed to investigate the incident and punish those responsible. All 14 MRTA members who participated in taking the hostages for the purpose of exchanging them for imprisoned guerrillas were killed in the operation.

But the ministry sources claim that the Peruvian justice system is taking legal action against suspects of the alleged summary executions.

They point out that in January 2011 the attorney general’s office requested a 20 year prison sentence for Vladimiro Montesinos, former intelligence adviser to then president Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000), 18 years for former army commander Nicolás Hermoza, and 15 years for officers Jesús Zamudio and Roberto Huamán, for their involvement in the killings.

“If they say the Chavín de Huántar commando did not violate human rights, why have Montesinos and Hermoza been accused of these crimes that the state says did not exist?” asked lawyer Gloria Cano of the Asociación Pro Derechos Humanos (APRODEH), a local human rights group.

“The IACHR recommended investigating and resolving this contradiction, but the Peruvian state has not complied, which is one of the reasons why the IACHR initiated the lawsuit,” Cano, who represents the relatives of Eduardo Cruz, Víctor Peceros and Herma Meléndez, the three alleged victims of unlawful killings, told IPS.

“There is evidence of these crimes. In two cases we have the testimony of former Japanese official Hidetaka Ogura, who was one of the hostages, as well as forensic evidence, while for Cruz we also have the testimony of two police witnesses,” she said.

“Although these events took place 15 years ago, no one has yet been convicted,” she complained.

“Instead of complying with the IACHR’s recommendations, the Peruvian state questions the Commission’s competence and rejects the lawsuit against it. That is exactly the way the Fujimori government behaved,” Cano said.

But in the view of constitutional law expert Enrique Bernales, the IACHR should not have initiated the suit against the Peruvian state, because the case in Peru is still ongoing.

“In the irreproachable trial and sentencing of Fujimori, Peruvian justice has shown its high standards, so there can be no doubt that it will leave no stone unturned to bring cases of human rights violations to justice,” he said.

“According to my information, prosecution of the perpetrators of the alleged summary executions is ongoing in this country. Therefore the state has a right to reject the lawsuit brought by the IACHR,” he said.

Bernales also said that the government has the right to propose changes in the Commission’s operating rules. “The inter-American human rights system cannot remain motionless in time. Everything changes, and regulations must also reflect reality,” he said.

The IACHR sent a confidential report on the case to the Peruvian Justice Ministry on Jun. 13, which concluded that the Fujimori regime had prevented prosecution of those responsible because it was implicated in the crimes.

The document, a copy of which was obtained by IPS, states that the authorities at the time also refused to hand over the bodies of the guerrillas to their families, and ordered instead that they be buried secretly in different parts of Lima, without ever having published autopsy reports as required by law.

The document also highlights that on Aug. 12, 2002 Peru’s Supreme Court accepted an application for the members of the Chavín de Huántar commando unit to be tried by the military justice system, despite the fact that military courts do not have jurisdiction over crimes against humanity, according to the American Convention on Human Rights.

The IACHR recommends that the Peruvian state investigate members of the Chavín de Huántar commando unit, since only Montesinos and Hermoza, already serving lengthy prison sentences for other human rights abuses, Zamudio who is a fugitive from justice, and Huamán, who is not in custody, are being prosecuted for the crimes.

The Commission’s final report was delivered to the government of Alan García (2006-2011), but it was only leaked to the press after President Ollanta Humala took office Jul. 28. When no reply was received, the IACHR forwarded the case to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, based in San José, Costa Rica.

When news of the lawsuit broke, Humala, a former military officer, said he would protect the members of the Chavín de Huántar unit, because they are “national heroes.”

Rocío Silva Santisteban, executive secretary of the National Coordinating Coalition on Human Rights (CNDDHH), said she does not understand why the government does not simply back the existing proposal for restructuring the IACHR. The OAS formed a working group based on that proposal, which has been meeting for over a year, chaired by Peruvian ambassador Hugo de Zela.

“What people should know is that 70 civil society organisations from all over Latin America have sent a letter to de Zela, demanding that the inter-American human rights system be strengthened, not weakened,” Silva Santisteban told IPS.

Excerpt:

By - - and Ángel Páez
LIMA, Dec 13 2011 (IPS)

Peruvian President Ollanta Humala is taking an increasingly hard-line stance against protests, and is losing important allies less than five months into his term.

The centrist party led by former president Alejandro Toledo, as well as left-wing leaders, pulled out of the government after retired army officer Oscar Valdés was promoted from interior minister to prime minister.

Valdés replaced Salomón Lerner, who stepped down as prime minister on Dec. 10 in disagreement over Humala’s declaration of a state of emergency and the subsequent deployment of army troops to the northern highlands region of Cajamarca to crack down on protests by local authorities and indigenous and peasant communities against the Conga gold mining project that would transform four high mountain lakes into reservoirs.

Lerner wanted to continue negotiations in Cajamarca, which had stalled, but Humala opted instead to send in troops, as Valdés advised.

The state of emergency declared in the south of Cajamarca, the arrest of one of the leaders of the protests, social activist Walter Saavedra, and the blocking of national government funds to that region were all initiatives of Valdés that Lerner opposed.

By adopting these measures to quash the protests, Humala distanced himself from Lerner and the moderate and leftist factions in the government that backed the former prime minister.

Former president Toledo (2001-2006) announced that his party, Perú Posible, had pulled out of the cabinet because “we cannot form part of a regime with a militaristic, authoritarian bent.”

He said “we supported Humala as a guarantee of democracy, but now we will not back a government whose decisions are taken by a ‘petit comité’ made up of retired military officers like Humala.”

He was referring to Valdés; the head of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINI), Víctor Gómez; and the president’s security adviser Adrián Villafuerte.

Valdés was one of Humala’s instructors in the Chorrillos Military School; Gómez was one of his classmates; and Villafuerte headed his election campaign in 2006, when he was narrowly defeated. The three retired officers already had close ties with Humala before he became president on Jul. 28.

The leader and spokesman of Perú Posible, Juan Sheput, told IPS that “from now on, we are not responsible for Humala’s decisions.”

Ana María Solórzano, spokeswoman for the parliamentary bloc of the governing Gana Perú party, expressed her total support for Valdés. “Someone who applies the letter of the law cannot be called militaristic or authoritarian,” she told IPS.

“In his role as interior minister, with respect to the Conga case, Valdés demonstrated efficiency, energy and resolution. It’s not a question of gauging an official by whether he is on the left or the right, but by his effectiveness,” Solórzano said.

The exodus of left-leaning leaders from the Humala administration began on Nov. 24 with Carlos Tapia, Lerner’s adviser, and continued with the minister.

Then Aída García Naranjo resigned and was replaced by Ana Jara Velásquez at the head of the ministry of women and social development; singer-songwriter Susana Baca was replaced by Luis Peirano in the ministry of culture; and Ricardo Giesecke was replaced by Manuel Pulgar-Vidal as environment minister.

Escalation of force

Analyst Fernando Rospigliosi had warned that social conflicts “will reveal Humala’s authoritarian streak.”

“The president believed his leftist allies, because of their alignment or close ties with the leaders of the protest against Conga, would help him resolve the problem easily,” Rospigliosi told IPS. “However, not only did they not do so, but they torpedoed him from within the government. As a result, he has kicked them out or they have left.

“What is dangerous is that now the faction that has military origins will consolidate their position around Humala. The temptation for the president to turn to the armed forces every time a social problem crops up, as Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000) did during his government, is growing stronger and stronger,” he added.

In response to the first major protest since he took office, Humala declared a state of emergency in four provinces: Cajamarca, Celendín, Hualgayoc and Contumazá, in the region of Cajamarca.

Two days later, anti-terrorism police arrested Saavedra, president of the Environmental Defence Fund of Cajamarca and one of the leaders of the movement in Conga, in Lima.

The government said he was arrested as a suspected member of the Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA). But the insurgent group was active between 1980 and 2000, and analysts and political leaders believe it is now defunct.

And on Thursday Dec. 8, the economy ministry cancelled the transfer of central government funds to the provincial government of Cajamarca, led by Governor Gregorio Santos, who supports the protest against the gold mining project.

The Conga mine is to be run by the U.S.-based Newmont Mining Co, which operates the nearby Yanacocha mine, the largest gold mine in Latin America.

Economy minister Luis Miguel Castilla admitted that he took the step of cutting off funds at the request of Valdés, who claimed the leaders of the demonstrations were using local government funds to mobilise protesters.

On Friday Dec. 9, Humala cancelled his attendance at the swearing-in ceremony of re-elected President Cristina Fernández, and reports of Lerner’s resignation began to circulate, and were confirmed the next day.

When he was appointed as the head of the 18-member cabinet, Valdés said the Conga project would be subjected to an evaluation by international experts due to the “reasonable doubts” expressed by local residents in Cajamarca.

Catholic priest Marco Arana, who has a degree in social conflict resolution and heads GRUFIDES, a Cajamarca-based human rights, development and environmental organisation that works with local communities impacted by mining, says the promise of an external audit of the Conga project will not resolve the conflict.

“The technical evaluation is only one component of the conflict,” he told IPS. “There is another extremely important issue that the new prime minister has said nothing about.”

The question is whether the communities that will be affected by the gold mining project will be consulted, said the priest, who has made an international name for himself as an environmental activist – he was on Time magazine’s Heroes of the Environment 2009 list.

Under Peruvian law, mining companies must consult local communities and obtain prior approval before conducting any operations.

Arana also wondered how Humala will regain the trust of the people of Cajamarca, after specifically promising them on a visit during his campaign that he would not accept abuses by mining companies.

Excerpt:

Local residents and authorities in the northern Peruvian region of Cajamarca say they will continue to protest the Conga gold mine, despite the state of emergency declared by President Ollanta Humala.

Local residents opposed to the Conga gold mine hold a vigil at one of the lakes that the project would affect in the highlands of Cajamarca. Credit: Courtesy of the La República newspaper

The 4.8 billion dollar Conga gold mine project, to be run by the Yanacocha mining company, is backed by the government of Humala, a left-leaning former army officer who took office in July.

Yanacocha operates the largest gold mine in Latin America, 25 km southwest of Conga, and is owned by the U.S.-based Newmont Mining and the Lima-based Buenaventura corporations.

Peasant farmers, backed by local and regional authorities, environmental activists and independent experts, say the Conga mining operation would cause irremediable damage to four high mountain lakes, and deplete their water supply.

Newmont and Buenaventura have promised to replace the lakes with artificial reservoirs.

Last week, Newmont suspended work on the project, which affects the Cajamarca districts of Encañada, Sorochuco and Huasmín, where the mainly impoverished rural highlands population depends on agriculture and livestock for a living and needs abundant clean water.

The 60-day state of emergency was imposed by Humala after Prime Minister Salomón Lerner failed – after 10 hours of negotiations Sunday in the city of Cajamarca, the regional capital, 160 km from the lakes – to convince the demonstrators to call off the protests, which have brought activity in the city to a halt for two weeks.

“We will agree to sign the agreement if Yanacocha removes its machinery from the Conga project area, because its mere presence there is a provocation for the peasants,” the president of the Cajamarca Defence Front, Idelso Hernández, told IPS.

“But minister Lerner told us that we couldn’t force Yanacocha to pull its machines out – which made it clear to us which side the government is on,” he said.

“Even though Yanacocha suspended the Conga project on Nov. 29, it left its machinery in the area, which means the police are still there, to protect the equipment,” Hernández said. “The aim is to seek any pretext to trigger an outbreak of violence. The government is offering dialogue with one hand whole holding a club ready in the other.”

The head of the Cajamarca Environmental Defence Front, Wilfredo Saavedra, concurred with Hernández, telling IPS that “we even called off the shut-down of activities in the city on Friday (Nov. 3) to facilitate the talks, which shows that we are not intransigent.

“However, the government deployed a large number of troops over the weekend, and even brought in the head of the joint forces command, General Luis Howell, on Sunday. That means everything was prepared for the declaration of a state of emergency, and they were just looking for a pretext for a military crackdown on the social protests,” he added.

The two-month state of emergency, which covers the provinces of Cajamarca, Celendín, Hualgayoc and Contumazá in the south of the region of Cajamarca, suspends constitutional rights such as freedom of assembly, association and circulation, and gives the security forces the right to search homes at will. Humala also said the armed forces would help the police maintain public order.

The aim of the measure was to reopen schools, businesses, the airport, bus stations and markets in the city of Cajamarca, which had been shut down by the protesters since Nov. 24.

When he visited Cajamarca as a presidential candidate, Humala expressed his support for the protest against the Conga project.

But he has now decided that it will go ahead, on the argument that if the gold and copper mining project is properly managed, the local residents will benefit from the “canon minero” – the direct economic compensation received by areas where minerals or oil are extracted.

Cajamarca is one of the Peruvian regions that receive the largest amounts of revenue from the canon minero.

Figures from the Ministry of Economy and Finance indicate that since 2007, the district of Encañada received 8.1 million dollars in canon minero funds, Sorochuco took in 2.1 million dollars, and Huasmín 661,000 dollars.

But that money has done little or nothing to change the lives of local residents. The latest report from the national statistics institute, dating to 2009, shows that 75 percent of people in Encañada and Socochuco are poor, as are 63 percent of people in Huasmín.

The most recent report from the Defensoría del Pueblo (ombudsman’s office) says that nearly 60 percent of the 154 active social conflicts in the country’s 25 regions involve socioenvironmental protests, like the one in Cajamarca.

“The people of Cajamarca weren’t expecting a state of emergency to be declared,” Mesías Guevara, who represents the region in Congress for Perú Posible, a party allied with Humala’s Gana Perú party, told IPS. “It is an extreme measure that will fuel the discontent.

“The people of Cajamarca are not anti-mining,” the lawmaker added. “What we want is respect for our rights, such as the obligatory prior consultation. I would think that people in Cajamarca who voted for Humala are feeling pretty disillusioned.”

Under Peruvian law, mining companies must consult local communities and obtain prior approval before conducting any mining operations.

Besides demanding the removal of Yanacocha’s machinery from the area around the lakes, the local and regional authorities and social leaders were asking for 24 hours to consult with the mainly indigenous protesters holding a vigil at the site of the Conga mining project, which is located in the Andes highlands over 4,000 metres above sea level.

“We told Lerner that we couldn’t sign anything without informing and consulting with the peasant protesters in the mountains, because that’s how we do things among our people,” said Saavedra. “But the prime minister didn’t understand, and insisted we sign immediately.”

The Defensoría del Pueblo’s special envoy, Rolando Luque, a specialist in social conflicts, who was present at the talks on Sunday, said both sides were respectful, and that the negotiations were “broad and participative.”

He added that even though no agreement was reached, due to the disagreement over the removal of the machinery, he was optimistic.

“Although unilateral measures have been taken, the talks have not collapsed,” Luque told IPS. “We have been following the process over the last few days, and are confident that the negotiations will continue and that an agreement that is beneficial to the people of Cajamarca will soon be reached.”

Peruvian Navy personnel in operation against illegal mining in Madre de Dios. Credit: Marina de Guerra de Perú

By - - and Ángel Páez
LIMA, Dec 2 2011 (IPS)

The armed forces in Peru, which already have an active role in fighting drug trafficking, are being given greater responsibility for maintaining public order under the government of President Ollanta Humala. They will now also be expected to crack down on illegal mining, and to intervene in social protests.

Peruvian Navy personnel in operation against illegal mining in Madre de Dios. Credit: Marina de Guerra de Perú

The rationale is that in the VRAE, Sendero guerrillas are allied to the drug traffickers, so the military is fighting what are termed “narco-terrorist enemies.” These military operations were stepped up in 2008, during the 2006-2011 government of Alan García.

Between Oct. 7 and 12, army troops seized 1.5 tonnes of cocaine and arrested a group of suspected traffickers headed by a Colombian who was operating in the VRAE.

And in the first week of November, 2,000 soldiers launched a major operation against illegal miners’ settlements on the main rivers of Madre de Dios, a jungle region in the southeast, bordering Brazil and Bolivia.

Unauthorised gold mining in Madre de Dios has a serious impact on the environment because of the intensive use of mercury, heavy dredging equipment and deforestation of pristine jungle.

Military action against drug trafficking and informal mining is carried out within the scope of the law, the defence minister, retired general Daniel Mora, told IPS.

“The armed forces act in accordance with the decisions of the authorities. Military interventions are carried out strictly under the rule of law. We take action because the law authorises us to do so, and we do not transgress the bounds of our established duties. The armed forces do not seek confrontations with the civilian population; that is what we like least,” said Mora.

“Not only do we require an order,” he added, “we intervene only if the conditions are right. We do not want any human rights problems. That’s why we act only where an illegal situation exists.”

The government of President Humala, a retired army officer who took office Jul. 28, apparently wants to widen the scope of action of the armed forces.

Mora himself, who is also a Congressman and a member of the Congressional Defence Commission, voted in favour of a draft law that would expand the attributions of the armed forces to include breaking up social protests that “disturb the peace.”

On Nov. 22, the Defence Commission approved the bill, which empowers the armed forces, in areas where a state of emergency has been declared, to take control of internal order and governing of the zone, and carry out military actions with the support of the national police to maintain internal order; and they may use force in the face of other “violent situations,” the bill says.

In areas where a state of emergency has been declared, depending on the circumstances, the police may be subordinated to military command, says the bill.

According to the Ombudsman’s Office’s monthly report, in October there were 217 social conflicts nationwide, 154 of them active and 63 of them quiescent. Of the total, 124 were related to socio-environmental issues arising from extractive industries.

The bill also provides a legal framework for military participation in anti-narcotics operations.

In areas where an emergency has been declared, the armed forces – whether or not they are in overall control of public order – are empowered to carry out ground, sea and air interdiction of suspects of illegal drug trafficking, the text says.

The expansion of military powers with regard to public order is supported by representatives of the governing party, Gana Perú, and of Fuerza 2011, the party of former president Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000), who is serving prison sentences for crimes against humanity and corruption.

Together, the two parties have a majority in Congress, but the bill may also have support from smaller parties which usually back the government, like Perú Posible, the party of former president Alejandro Toledo (2001-2006), to which minister Mora belongs.

The militarisation of public order is being encouraged and social protests are being criminalised, said Aldo Blume, a researcher at the Legal Defence Institute (IDL), a local human rights organisation.

The bill augments legislative decree 1095, signed Aug. 31, 2010 by then president García, which opened the door for the military to exercise these new roles.

This phenomenon “does not belong in a democratic regime where the rule of law prevails,” Blume said in a commentary published on the IDL web site.

“It is true that public insecurity and the fight against crime, especially drug trafficking, are ever more complex problems, but repressive measures and restriction of civil rights are not the solution,” he added.

In the view of analyst Javier Azpur, coordinator of the Citizen’s Proposal Group (GPC), a coalition of NGOs active around the country, the Humala administration has a tendency toward militarisation.

During his electoral campaign, Humala promised that the defence and interior ministries would be run by civilians. But the present ministers, Mora and Óscar Valdés, respectively, are retired military men.

“It is fairly clear that the president wants to give the armed forces a significant role in spheres he regards as crucial to his administration. This seems to be due to his own training and background, as well as out of conviction,” Azpur told IPS.

“The army has a strong influence in the work of the interior ministry. It is also apparent that the presence that the military had in the VRAE under the previous government has been expanded. In addition, they have a leading role in the necessary fight against illegal or informal mining,” he said.

On Nov. 24, local people in the northern highland region of Cajamarca began an indefinite strike against the Conga gold mining project, which is jointly owned by U.S. mining giant Newmont and Buenaventura, a Peruvian company.

Local small farmers oppose the mining project in the area, because it would involve moving the water from four lakes high in the mountains into reservoirs the company would build, and the water displacement would affect an important aquifer and reduce water availability in the area.

Denying rumours that 2,000 soldiers had been sent to Cajamarca, the chief of the armed forces joint command, General Luis Howell Ballena, stated that “if the police feel they are being overwhelmed, they can apply to the president” for military support.

“If the armed forces intervene, it would mean the end of Humala among the rural sectors that gave him mass support, and of the strategy of dialogue and political solutions that the government has promoted,” said Azpur. “His avowed aim of representing the interests of the poor would lose credibility.

“To impose the Conga project by means of intense repression would mean adopting the policy forced on the country since the Fujimori regime. Broad sectors of society would view (Humala) as just another representative of the economic powers-that-be,” Azpur warned.

Excerpt:

By - - and Ángel Páez
LIMA, Oct 28 2011 (IPS)

“I caught tuberculosis, but I’m lucky because it’s been cured,” says Hernán Arévalo from his bed in the new hospital at the Peruvian prison of Lurigancho, one of the most crowded and dangerous in Latin America. “Before, whoever came in here was unlikely to get out alive.”

Lurigancho prison health centre Credit: Marco Simola/The Global Fund

The 54-year-old prisoner did not need to be told how dreadful health care used to be, before the hospital was built in Lurigancho, which had 10,000 prisoners in 2008 and today has 6,000, although it was designed to hold 3,500.

Arévalo, who was sentenced to 20 years for drug smuggling, has served 13 years in Lurigancho. “In the past, you would go for treatment for one disease and come out with an even more serious illness, but now I am being given all the medicines and proper food,” he said.

This radical transformation is due to the hospital, built in 2006 by the National Penitentiary Institute (INPE) at a cost of one million dollars. It was financed by the Global Fund, a partnership of governments, the private sector, civil society and affected communities created in 2002.

Since then it has spent 21.7 billion dollars on programmes in 150 countries that have treated 3.2 million people living with HIV/AIDS and 8.2 million tuberculosis patients.

In Peru alone, the Global Fund gave seven million dollars between 2004 and 2008 to build the health centres at the prisons of Lurigancho and Tambopata, in the southern Madre de Dios jungle region, and to modernise tuberculosis wards, improve health care infrastructure in these and 10 other prisons, and provide medical equipment to reduce infections.

“In Lurigancho prison today there are at least 420 tuberculosis patients and another 450 people diagnosed with AIDS, a much lower figure than in previous years thanks to having adequate infrastructure and trained personnel,” said doctor José Best, INPE’s deputy director of health.

“If we didn’t have these resources, and still had a population of 10,000 inmates as in 2008, we would probably have twice the number of patients today,” said Best, speaking to IPS in the Lurigancho health facilities under the weary gaze of the tuberculosis patients.

“The situation has changed radically, although we still have some problems,” he said.

INPE’s greatest challenge is to secure its own budget to run the health centre.

“Now it’s up to us to carry on the health service. The budget is essential, because the probability of contracting tuberculosis in the Lurigancho prison is 27 times higher than out on the street,” said Henry Cotos, head of prisons for the Lima region.

Cotos told IPS that drastic measures are taken to prevent infection with tuberculosis and AIDS in the prison, but the inmates always find ways round the security measures. The worst problem is that visitors also become infected.

“We have managed to reduce the infection rates, but the figures are still worrying, mainly due to overcrowding,” he said.

On the second floor of the tuberculosis ward there are at least 20 cells with thick steel doors that isolate the inmates from anyone who is not medical or nursing staff. They are used for prisoners infected with multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB), which is particularly dangerous.

Curing MDR-TB takes at least 18 months and the treatment is expensive. “It’s a difficult and exhausting course of treatment, and very painful because of the numerous injections involved,” said Dr. María Elena Salas.

“The reason these patients are kept in strict quarantine is so that they don’t give up the treatment, and don’t infect other people,” she said.

This section, which people can only enter wearing face masks and protective gear, has 28 patients with MDR-TB, some of whom are also living with HIV/AIDS.

Inmate Eddy Ruiz, an activist fighting discrimination against homosexuals, met IPS at Lurigancho prison. Together with members of the Comunidad Virgen de la Puerta, a gay rights group, Ruiz works on preventing the spread of HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases, which are one of the greatest concerns in San Juan de Lurigancho.

“There are men who have sex with men, but who are not gay; another group is bisexual; there are transvestites and gays who prostitute themselves; and then there are openly declared homosexuals in the prison, who may have stable partners,” Ruiz said.

“The greatest danger is from those who hide their sexual identity, who are infected and infect others indiscriminately,” said Ruiz, who is serving a six-year sentence for sexual aggression.

Ruiz and the other activists encourage inmates to have rapid diagnostic tests for HIV/AIDS, now that they can be properly treated with appropriate medication.

Excerpt:

By Ángel Páez
LIMA, Aug 18 2011 (IPS)

For the first time, a representative of the indigenous communities in Peru’s Amazonas region is sitting in Congress: Eduardo Nayap, an Awajún leader who played a central role in the lengthy protests against laws that opened up native territories in the rainforest to oil, mining and logging companies.

Eduardo Nayap Credit: Congress of Peru

Months-long protests by indigenous people turned violent in a clash with the police on Jun. 5, 2009, at a roadblock near the town of Bagua in the north of Amazonas region, leaving 23 police and at least 10 civilians dead.

The bloody conflict was the catalyst for the election of 55-year-old Nayap, who has wasted no time. His first move upon being sworn in to Congress in late July was to present a bill to oblige national authorities to consult fully with indigenous communities before taking any action that would affect them.

Nayap was actually out of the country at the time of the “baguazo”, as the clash in Bagua has come to be known. Furthermore, politics was not the natural bent of this theologian, sociologist and mathematician. But after the tragic killings stained Awajún history with blood, he was persuaded to run for Congress by the “apus” (chiefs) of his people’s 281 villages.

He stood as a congressional candidate for Gana Perú, the party of President Ollanta Humala, for the region of Amazonas, home to 76 percent of the Awajún people.

Amazonas is one of the 14 regions with the highest poverty levels out of the country’s 25 regions. According to the National Institute of Statistics and Informatics (INEI), 50.1 percent of people in the region are below the poverty line.

While Nayap belongs to the Awajún people, he made it clear in this interview with IPS that he represents all of his “brothers and sisters living in the Amazon region.” As an indigenous lawmaker, he feels he represents the expectations and hopes for justice of all 51 of Peru’s native peoples, who live in 1,786 village communities in 11 of its regions.

Q: What is your people’s history? A: Goodness, I’ve never been asked that by a journalist before. During the “baguazo”, most of the media sided with the government of the day, calling us “savages” instead of bothering to find out who we were, why we were protesting or why we resorted to self-defence. They heaped lie upon lie and demonised us, because they knew nothing at all about us. They had a false notion of who we are.

Q: So, who are you? A: The Awajún, like all the other indigenous tribes, are a good-natured, happy, hospitable and friendly people. We enjoy sharing with people who come to visit us. We have never hurt anyone. We are not hostile.

Q: What are your dreams? A: Better living conditions, and development to enhance our life. More than 70 percent of the Awajún live in Amazonas region.

What is happening in the region is a disgrace. The Peruvian economy has experienced remarkable growth, but the exclusion, isolation and marginalisation of indigenous people has been exacerbated. This is progress with injustice. We have no paved roads, health clinics or schools, and although there are bilingual teachers, there are too few of them and they are poorly paid.

Q: How many Awajún have made it to the university, like yourself? A: I don’t know – perhaps no more than 100. Indigenous students who want to go to university have to travel about 500 km to Chachapoyas (the capital of Amazonas region), partly by road and partly by river, a journey of over two days.

Native people cannot afford this enormous expense. It’s like a curse weighing on us.

Q: Doesn’t the state grant scholarships? A: There are no university scholarships for indigenous people, which is a sign of contempt. I am like an island in the ocean, an exception, an anecdote, a chance occurrence. I was born in the native community of Numpatkaim in the Imaza district of Bagua province.

The evangelical church that my family belongs to paid for me to study in Trujillo, the largest city on Peru’s northwest coast, and to attend the Nazarene Seminary of the Americas (SENDA) in San José, Costa Rica, where I earned a degree in theology.

Q: What were you doing when the “baguazo” broke out? A: I was employed in three positions in the Costa Rican capital when I heard the call of my people. I am a researcher for Humanitas (a non-governmental organisation); I am in charge of campesino (small farmer) capacity building for the San José office of the European Union; and I was working for World Vision International, a Christian relief organisation.

I dropped everything and joined the struggle. I could not turn a deaf ear to the cry of my people.

Q: In Congress, however, you are only one among 130 lawmakers. A: Well, previously there was no one, so our presence is a victory. We achieved the goal of getting into parliament. Now the challenge is to pass laws that benefit indigenous people. It’s a huge responsibility, so I have to make sure that our voice is heard.

Q: Why are indigenous people opposed to foreign or domestic investment in their territories? A: We are not opposed to investment in the indigenous territories. What we demand is respect for our status as owners of the land.

Natural resources must be respected. We do not want foreign companies coming to our region just because of the oil and the gold. There are men and women there too, who own the land. The companies see the gold, but they don’t see the men and women who live there.

Q: Did the “baguazo” mark a before and after in the history of the Amazonian indigenous peoples? A: The “baguazo” means two things. On the one hand, it brings memories of grief, tears, pain and mistreatment by the government, which did not wish to sit down with us at a table for dialogue. It preferred to use its guns against us.

But on the other hand, it has a positive meaning, because thanks to the “baguazo” we are now on the national agenda.

Everyone pays attention to us now, because they know who we are. We are the people who made history with the “baguazo”.

Excerpt:

By Ángel Páez
LIMA, Jul 29 2011 (IPS)

The new president of Peru, retired lieutenant colonel Ollanta Humala, promised to make the fight against poverty and marginalisation the top priority of his administration. But his inaugural address was short on specifics, according to activists and analysts.

Ollanta Humala Credit: Secretaría de Prensa de la Presidencia de la República

“I will dedicate all my energies to laying the foundation for wiping out, once and for all, the painful face of exclusion and poverty, to build a Peru for everyone, and my constant focus will be on the most fragile of our brothers and sisters,” said Humala, who is described by analysts as centre-left or leftwing.

“Democracy in Peru will be complete…when equality is the patrimony of all and social exclusion has vanished, even in the most remote corners of the country. We want the phrase itself, ‘social exclusion’, to be wiped out forever from our language and our reality. I will assume that challenge with my words and my life,” he said in his inaugural speech.

Peru’s poverty rate was reduced from 48 to 34 percent between 2005 – Humala’s predecessor, Alan García, took office in 2006 – and 2009, and to 31 percent in 2010, according to the National Institute of Statistics (INEI).

But experts say the reduction of poverty by just three percentage points between 2009 and 2010 contrasts with the high rate of GDP growth, of 8.8 percent in 2010. They also note that poverty levels remain high in 14 of the 25 regions in this country of 28 million people.

The poverty rate is well above the national average in highlands areas like Huancavelica (66 percent), Apurimac (63 percent), Huánuco (58.5 percent) and Puno (56 percent). In other words, little to no progress was made in fighting poverty and extreme poverty in historically impoverished areas in the Andean and Amazon regions.

Humala, who staged a failed coup 11 years ago against imprisoned former president Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000), added that poverty is a form of discrimination, which explains the escalation of social protests around the country over the last few years.

“The disproportionate increase in social conflicts, many of which are absurdly violent, show us day after day that we must urgently address the injustices, correct our course and renew dialogue in our society,” he said.

According to the Ombudsperson’s Office, June was a particularly conflict-ridden month, with 217 protests and strikes, half of which ended in violence. Of that total, 118 involved social and environmental issues, and took place in Peru’s poorest regions.

Marco Arana, a Catholic priest who heads the GRUFIDES grassroots human rights and environmental movement, said that while Humala mentioned the problem of poverty, he failed to outline concrete measures to be taken to combat the phenomenon.

“The failure to say what policies would be followed with respect to the socio-environmental conflicts was a big lapse, since it is an extremely serious problem left by García,” he told IPS.

“Another gap in the president’s speech involves the question of prior consultation with indigenous communities with respect to the use of their territory,” added Arana, whose movement is an Oxfam partner.

“It is worrisome that he did not mention it, because a number of the conflicts were caused precisely by the fact that projects are carried out behind the backs of indigenous communities,” he said.

By law, native peoples must be consulted in advance on any development or industrial initiative that directly affects their territory, such as mining, logging and oil industry projects in Amazon jungle regions inhabited mainly by indigenous people.

The few concrete announcements made by Humala included an expansion of the anti-poverty programme “Juntos”, which is carried out in the country’s 800 poorest districts and includes a monthly cash transfer to extremely poor households, especially pregnant mothers and families with children under the age of five.

But Juntos, considered the “jewel” in the crown of the García administration’s social programmes, is facing serious problems of efficiency, according to a new report by the comptroller-general’s office.

The report, which IPS saw, says the Juntos programme, which had a total budget of 502 million dollars from 2006 to 2008, “did not establish a baseline that would make it possible to gauge its impact on the beneficiary population, which encompassed 420,000 families” in 2008.

According to critics of how Juntos has been implemented, that would explain why 21,818 extremely poor families did not receive the cash transfers to which they were entitled over the last four years. That money, which totals 5.7 million dollars, “may have been used for a purpose other than the one to which it was assigned in the Juntos programme,” the comptroller-general’s office said.

Although during his campaign, Humala said his government would adopt a windfall tax on mining companies, to help finance social programmes and put the economy on an even more solid footing, he did not mention the issue in his inaugural address.

“While he did say the prime minister would be in charge of developing each of the different proposals, he could have specifically mentioned the issue of the mining industry windfall tax, because expectations were high,” Julia Cuadros, the expert on mining questions at CooperAcción, a local social development organisation, told IPS.

“We suppose that when the prime minister (Salomón Lerner) addresses Congress, he will give specific details” on the issue, she said.

“It was a short, 40-minute address full of generalities,” said Cuadros. “We were also expecting a statement on the question of prior consultation of rural native communities on decisions that affect their lives and customs.”

Another important pending issue that many were hoping to hear concrete mention of in Thursday’s address was the question of reparations for the families of victims of the counterinsurgency fight during the 1980-2000 civil war. The issue was only briefly referred to by Humala.

As an army captain in 1992, Humala headed a counterinsurgency base in the jungle town of Madre Mía, as part of the government’s fight against the Maoist Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) guerrillas. He was even accused of human rights violations, although he was acquitted in court, after witnesses recanted.

Referring to the need for “individual and collective reparations” for the victims of the “terrorist violence,” he said the victims and their families must “rebuild their lives and be able to look towards their future with other eyes, because they live in a fatherland that includes them and recognises them as Peruvians.”

In June, the García administration approved the payment of reparations, ranging from 1,785 to 3,571 dollars, to rape victims, people left with disabilities, widows and elderly family members of victims.

By comparison, however, the families of police officers who were killed or disabled in the armed conflict received reparations of up to 20,000 dollars, and the members of the “rondas campesinas” or paramilitary peasant self-defence groups received up to 11,430 dollars.

“We were hoping for a speech with much greater content in terms of human rights,” Carlos Rivera, director of the Legal Defence Institute (IDL), a local human rights group, told IPS. “During the campaign, the ‘judicialisation’ of the human rights cases was discussed, but in practice the issue has not been addressed in a concrete and specific manner.”

“He didn’t say a single word about justice in relation to crimes against humanity,” he said.

“It is important, because the issue generates conflict and confrontations, which means it is indispensable for the new president to make sure that he will not meddle in judicial decisions. That is why I regret that he did not say anything about it, to mark a difference with the García administration,” Rivera said.

Excerpt:

By Ángel Páez
LIMA, Jun 10 2011 (IPS)

Peruvian President-elect Ollanta Humala will push the legal system to investigate and prosecute those responsible for a massive forced sterilisation campaign targeting poor indigenous women carried out by the government of Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000), said the spokeswoman for Humala’s party, Aída García Naranjo.

Family planning campaign sign offering free tubal ligations and vasectomies in Ayacucho in 1996. Credit: Courtesy of Aída García Naranjo

“Democracy is not possible in a country where an absence of justice and a sense of collective amnesia are promoted,” said the representative of the Gana Perú party.

Under a friendly settlement agreement reached in 2003 with the IACHR, the Peruvian state acknowledged its responsibility, recognised the abuses committed under the family planning programme, and undertook to investigate and bring to trial the government officials who devised and implemented the campaign that carried out tubal ligations and vasectomies among mainly impoverished native rural highlands populations.

In 2010, however, the representative of the Peruvian government announced to the Washington-based IACHR that the attorney general’s office had shelved the case.

The only condition of the friendly settlement met by the Peruvian state was the indemnification of the family of María Mestanza, who died in 1998 as a result of a poorly performed surgical sterilisation procedure done without her consent.

But when the case was shelved, the possibility of obtaining justice for Mestanza and her family was effectively closed off.

According to Health Ministry statistics, 346,219 women and 24,535 men were sterilised between 1993 and 2000. A full 55 percent of the surgical procedures were carried out in 1996 and 1997 alone, a period during which the armed forces and police were allowed to take part in the operations.

That means an average of 262 tubal ligations a day were performed in that two year period, as part of the National Programme for Reproductive Health and Family Planning, carried out by coercion and deceit under the guise of an anti-poverty plan.

The programme was designed and implemented by the government of Fujimori, who is currently in prison for human rights crimes and corruption.

A 2001-2003 investigation by the Peruvian Congress documented cases in which women died as a result of operations that were poorly done or carried out in unhygienic conditions, and determined that the authorities had set quotas for the number of women to be sterilised, in exchange for benefits for the participating health personnel.

The pending question of the victims of forced sterilisation was one of the touchiest issues discussed in the televised debate between Humala and his right-wing rival, Keiko Fujimori, daughter of the former president, ahead of the Jun. 5 runoff.

The nationalist former military officer, who won a second-round victory campaigning on a leftist platform, urged Keiko Fujimori to take a public stance on the question of the sterilisations that affected so many poor native women during her father’s administration.

In the debate, Humala stressed that one of the members of his opponent’s campaign team was Alejandro Aguinaga who, as a health minister in 1999 and 2000, was one of the officials who implemented the controversial family planning programme.

But Humala forgot to mention another former official implicated in the case, Marino Costa – health minister from 1996 to 1999 – who also formed part of Keiko Fujimori’s team.

The third former official accused of leading the sterilisation campaign is Eduardo Yong Motta, who was health minister from 1994 to 1996.

Fujimori defended herself stating that the case was closed, and that Aguinaga had been investigated and had not been found responsible.

But despite Peru’s commitment under the IACHR agreement to bring those responsible to justice, no one has been brought to court.

“Humala’s announcement represents a hope for justice for all of those women who, like me, were deceived by the government of Fujimori which told us that sterilisation would lead to better quality of life, when in fact the exact opposite happened,” Ligia Ríos Lizárraga, a 44-year-old mother of three, told IPS.

“When they sterilised me they killed my last child,” said the rural woman. She added that “since they tied my tubes in 1997 by means of deception, without telling me that I was pregnant at the time, my life has been sheer hell.

“I have periodic haemorrhaging. I just now came out of the hospital, where I had to go for emergency treatment,” she said.

Ríos Lizárraga said she tried to bring legal action against those who performed the tubal ligation, but got nowhere.

“That’s why, after 14 years of suffering, hearing that my case and those of other women are going to be investigated gives me some relief. I hope I’m still alive when those responsible are punished,” she said.

Women from the southern highlands region of Cuzco were especially affected by the programme. At the peak of the sterilisations, in 1996 and 1997, the number of tubal ligations in that region climbed from 1,808 a year to 4,535 a year – in other words, from an average of nearly five operations a day to 12.5 operations a day.

Sabina Huilca, 41, from the village of Huayllaccocha in Cuzco, was one of the victims. She still to make regular visits to Lima for specialised treatment.

Huilca suffers from neoplasia – an abnormal growth of tissue – that doctors say may have been caused by the poorly performed tubal ligation procedure.

“I’m going to put myself at the disposition of the authorities to show the problems caused by the sterilisation done without my consent,” Huilca told IPS.

“I can document my injuries, my pains, everything that is necessary for the judges to understand that I have lifelong problems from an operation I never asked for,” she said.

In the final stretch of the election campaign, when the issue of forced sterilisation was dealing a heavy blow to her credibility as a candidate, Keiko Fujimori tried to extend an apology to the victims.

But Huilca said she didn’t accept the apology because it was “self-seeking.”

“I don’t believe her, because she never said anything before,” she added.

Jeannette Llaja, director of DEMUS, a women’s rights organisation that has taken part in local and international legal action in the case, expressed hopefulness regarding Humala’s announcement, but added that her group not only expects an investigation and for those responsible to be punished, but also individual as well as collective damages to the victims.

“Especially in the Andean regions, the sterilisations affected entire (indigenous) rural communities, which is why we take the stance that what was done was a crime against humanity, and thus subject to no statute of limitations,” Llaja explained to IPS.

“Investigations by Congress and others have concluded that the family planning programme was especially designed to affect the poorest women in the country, the inhabitants of the Quechua-speaking Andean areas,” she said.

She added that “not only the doctors were responsible, but the public policy-makers as well, which is the same as pointing to former president Fujimori himself.

“Humala’s declaration indicates that the Peruvian state will finally truly assume its commitment to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, and we will keep close watch to help make sure that he lives up to his word,” Llaja said.

Excerpt:

By Ángel Páez
LIMA, Jun 3 2011 (IPS)

After the most polarised election race in decades, Peruvians will go to the polls Sunday to choose not only a new president but also to decide whether to stick with the current neoliberal economic policies or to opt for reforms to reduce inequality and marginalisation.

According to analysts of different stripes, it became clear that what voters will decide on is the country’s development model, on May 29, during the only debate between the two rivals in Sunday’s runoff: leftwing nationalist Ollanta Humala and rightwing lawmaker Keiko Fujimori, the daughter of the former president who ushered in the current model, Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000).

Tension is at an uprecedented level in Peru ahead of the vote, while opinion polls show the two candidates neck and neck in the closest race since the 1960s.

The latest survey by the Ipsos Apoyo polling firm shows Fujimori in the lead, with 50.5 percent support, but just one point ahead of Humala, who has 49.5 percent. According to another leading pollster, Imasen, Humala is the front-runner, with 43.8 percent support, but barely ahead of Fujimori, with 42.5 percent.

The director of the University of the Pacific Research Centre, Eduardo Morón, says voters are fully aware of the significance of these elections, but are unsure of what a victory by either candidate would mean in practical terms – which explains that around 15 percent of poll respondents are still undecided.

Morón told IPS that “People aren’t clear about the consequences of following one alternative or the other,” in a contest in which the polls show that the supporters of one of the candidates are often rabidly opposed to the rival candidate.

“Some believe that greater state intervention would bring economic improvements and reduce extreme poverty in the countryside, but these are goals that cannot be achieved overnight, regardless of the political will or resources made available,” the researcher said.

Even those that are critical of Humala, like the private Peruvian Institute of Economics (IPE), recognise the need for in-depth reforms of the country’s economic and social model.

“In the campaign, Fujimori has been portrayed as the candidate of continuity and Humala as the candidate of change, but it’s not clear to voters what that really implies,” Pablo Secada at the IPE told IPS.

“Of course major changes in economic and public policies are necessary, in order to build a more inclusive model,” he added.

As an example of the changes needed, he said the state-run “Banco de la Nación should set up branches in those regions which have not been reached by any other bank, instead of granting loans indiscriminately to public employees.”

The votes of the poor will play a crucial role on Sunday. In the first round of voting, on Apr. 10, Humala won in the regions with the highest poverty rates, like the rural highland regions of Apurimac, Huancavelica and Ayacucho.

According to analysts the reason for this is that while poverty has been reduced sharply in the last five years, the improvements were felt much more in urban than in rural areas, which accentuated the country’s deep social inequalities.

The National Institute of Statistics and Informatics reported that from 2004 to 2009, poverty fell 43.1 percent in urban areas but only 13.6 percent in rural areas. The official poverty rate in this South American country of 30 million people currently stands at 31.4 percent.

The difference explains why the polls show that the urban poor will not vote the same as the rural poor, although it is clear that in both segments there is a large proportion of people who are still undecided, partly due to the lack of clarity in the candidates’ proposals.

“There is still a great deal we don’t know about what is happening in the categories ‘D’ and ‘E’, where there are big pockets of poverty,” political scientist Eduardo Dargent, author of the study “Precarious Democrats”, told IPS.

Peru’s socioeconomic categories are A through E, with E being the poorest.

The analyst pointed out that in 2006, these segments of the population mainly voted for Humala who, like this time, won the first round of elections. However, he was defeated in the runoff by conservative President Alán García.

“But this time, both Humala and Fujimori made it to the second round thanks to support from the D and E categories,” so “it would appear that socioeconomic level will not be the defining factor” on this occasion, Dargent said.

“Some analysts say the different positions among voters might have more to do with different ways of relating to the state: whether they are interested in patronage-style benefits, offered by Keiko, or more systematic social changes offered by Humala,” the political scientist said.

But he added that there are many open questions: “The urban poor back Keiko and the rural poor back Ollanta? What proposals are attractive to the people who are still undecided, in those segments of society?”

Fujimori’s party, Fuerza 2011, has handed out t-shirts, cooking utensils and even food, in an open show of patronage, since unlike in other countries these practices are not banned by the election laws in Peru.

Socorro Arce, Fuerza 2011 spokeswoman in the southern highlands region of Ayacucho, said “The campaign presents were welcomed, especially by mothers in categories D and E.

“We simply want to reach the disadvantaged so they will remember the considerations that Alberto Fujimori had towards the neediest segments of society,” Arce said, explaining the distribution of gifts bearing the candidate’s logo and image.

Keiko Fujimori repeatedly appeals to the memory of her father’s regime, and says her government will build on, and improve, his legacy. Alberto Fujimori is in prison for 25 years for human rights crimes and corruption.

Dargent said that during the campaign for the second round vote, Humala has made an effort to be self-critical, and has reached out to voters in the centre – efforts that his rival has not made.

But he added that “I don’t know if this will be important in terms of winning votes. Apparently Fujimori’s voters, especially the groups supporting her campaign, are not demanding clarifications of this kind.

“For them, the most important thing is that Humala is not elected,” because they don’t want changes in the economy, a concern that outweighs issues like corruption or inequality, he said.

Morón, a member of the Economic and Social Research Consortium (CIES) which promoted the debate between the two candidates, said welfare-oriented policies will not resolve pressing problems like the process of decentralisation.

“The candidates haven’t even mentioned how they will move towards smooth coordination between the three levels of government: central, regional and local,” the analyst said.

“The next government will have to make a huge effort to find a common direction for all three levels, because it could find itself overwhelmed by social conflicts. Whichever candidate wins will have half of the country against him or her,” Morón said.

In the last week of May, the Aymara indigenous population in the highlands region of Puno held a series of demonstrations against mining activity in the area, protesting the damages caused by the industry to agriculture and livestock. A temporary halt to the protests, which are backed by regional and local authorities, was declared only until after the elections.

According to the latest report by the ombudsperson’s office, there were 233 protest demonstrations in the country in the month of April alone, most of which were held in the poorest regions, and half of which involved socio-environmental complaints and demands.

Excerpt:

By Ángel Páez
LIMA, Apr 11 2011 (IPS)

If retired military officer Ollanta Humala wins the Jun. 5 presidential runoff in Peru, he will have to govern with a highly fragmented Congress. And if lawmaker Keiko Fujimori triumphs, her most notable move may be the release of her father, former president Alberto Fujimori, who is serving 25 years in prison.

Ollanta Humala and his wife Nadine Heredia wave to the candidate's followers Sunday night. Credit: Courtesy of La República newspaper

Humala, a 48-year-old former army officer who heads the Gana Perú party, took 29.3 percent of the vote, followed by Fujimori of Fuerza 2011, with 23 percent, and Pedro Pablo Kuczynski of Alianza por el Gran Cambio, with 21 percent.

The leading candidate had to win at least 50 percent of the vote to avoid a runoff.

This is the second time that Humala – who led an uprising against former president Fujimori (1990-2000) in 2000 – has won a first-round victory. In 2006 he garnered 25.6 percent of the vote, but was defeated by current President Alan García in the second round, by 52.6 percent to 47.3 percent.

Keiko Fujimori, whose father is in prison for human rights violations and corruption, is set to go on to the next round, because the gap between her and Kuczynski is small but consistent, the electoral authorities announced.

The strongest support for Humala was in the southern highlands, where the highest poverty levels are found. Many parts of that region have failed to share in the benefits of the economic boom driven by high prices for minerals and other commodities enjoyed by Peru over the last decade, and social unrest has been frequent.

Last week, four protesters were shot and killed by the police in demonstrations in the southern province of Arequipa against the vast Tía María copper mine project, planned by the Southern Copper Corporation, a subsidiary of Mexican mining conglomerate Grupo México. On Friday, the García administration decided to cancel the project.

The winner of the presidential runoff will have to govern with a highly-divided 130-seat Congress, which will make it necessary to negotiate.

Projections indicate that Humala’s party Gana Perú will have 46 seats in the legislature; Fuerza 2011 will have 38; Perú Posible, of former president Alejandro Toledo – who came in fourth with 15 percent of the vote – will have 21; and Kuczynski’s Alianza por el Gran Cambio, 12.

Meanwhile, “Fujimorismo” – the movement represented by Fujimori – will go from the 13 seats it currently holds to nearly three times that number.

But what is most worrisome about a possible triumph by Fujimori is that she may use the office of president to free her father, the director of the local human rights organisation Legal Defence Institute, Carlos Rivera, told IPS.

“I have no doubt that this is what she will do, even though she tried to change her position on that in the campaign,” Rivera said. “The very first point on the Fujimorista agenda is to release Alberto Fujimori from jail and exonerate him of the crimes for which he was convicted.

“I don’t believe her when she says she will allow the courts to do their work, in the case of her father. That is a lie,” said Rivera, who represented the families of victims in the trial against Fujimori for his responsibility in the Nov. 3, 1991 killings of 15 people, including a little boy, at a barbecue in the Barrios Altos neighbourhood in Lima, and the Jul. 18, 1992 kidnapping and murder of nine students and a professor at La Cantuta University.

Both massacres were committed by an Army Intelligence Service death squad known as the Colina Group.

Jo-Marie Burt, a professor at the George Mason University in the U.S. state of Virginia who researched the legal process against Alberto Fujimori, agreed that his release is his daughter’s chief aim.

Keiko’s declaration that she will accept the ruling of the Constitutional Court, to which the former president has presented a write of habeas corpus, was politically calculated, she said.

“Keiko has maintained repeatedly that she would free her father,” Burt told IPS. “She has modified her discourse now because apparently she is confident that the Constitutional Court will accept a habeas corpus and overturn the sentence. It would be a terrible setback for Peruvian democracy and human rights if Fujimori were to be pardoned – regardless of who does it.”

Fujimori’s campaign is based on handouts to the poor, with constant mentions of what her father did for the neediest Peruvians, Burt said.

“Why is Keiko Fujimori’s logo painted on all the houses in slum neighbourhoods?” asked Rosa María Alfaro, director of the Calandria Association of Social Communicators, a non-governmental organisation that uses communications to promote political, social and economic development in Peru.

“Because Keiko paid the families 30 soles (11.5 dollars) to let the letter ‘K’ – the symbol of her candidacy – be painted on their houses. She also handed out t-shirts, caps, balls and calendars. It is the most blatant show of populism,” Alfaro commented to IPS.

Excerpt:

By Ángel Páez
LIMA, Apr 8 2011 (IPS)

The only certainty about Sunday’s general elections in Peru is that all the polls predict a victory for nationalist candidate Ollanta Humala, but say he will not have enough votes to secure the presidency in the first round.

The real electoral battle is therefore between those who appear to have a chance to compete with Humala in the Jun. 5 run-off – namely Keiko Fujimori of Fuerza 2011, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski of Alianza por el Gran Cambio, and former president Alejandro Toledo (2001-2006) of Alianza Perú Posible.

Humala, a 48-year-old former army officer backed by the Gana Perú (Peru Wins) political party, is preferred by between 28 and 29.5 percent of respondents, according to sources with access to the results of the latest polls by the firms Ipsos, Apoyo and CPI, which cannot be reported in the local media because of Peru’s electoral rules.

Fujimori is placed second in the polls, with 21 to 24 percent of voter intentions; Kuczynski comes third, with 18.4 to 19 percent, and in fourth place is Toledo, with only 15 to 18.2 percent of voter support, although for most of the campaign which formally started in January, he was the front-runner.

Rankings of candidates to take over Jul. 28 from President Alan García, whose Partido Aprista Peruano (PAP), surprisingly, is not fielding a candidate, have changed dramatically nearly every week of the campaign leading up to Sunday’s elections, when 130 members of Congress and five delegates to the Andean Parliament will also be elected.

At first, polls predicted a win for Toledo, followed by former mayor of Lima Luis Castañeda; but now Castañeda has been left behind, and Toledo is struggling to stay in the race.

In contrast to Humala, who is regarded as centre-left, the policies proposed by Toledo, Kuczynski and the eldest daughter of imprisoned former president Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000) range from centre-right to rightwing.

“There are two considerations here,” Fernando Tuesta, head of the Catholic University’s Institute of Public Opinion, told IPS. “One is that many Peruvians are discontented with the present situation, or want to see greater improvements, and Humala has addressed himself to them ever since he first ran for the presidency in 2006.”

The nationalist candidate has set forth the most proposals about redistribution of wealth and fighting poverty, and he also talks about change, while his rivals stress the idea of continuity from the García administration. “That’s the big difference between them,” Tuesta said.

“The second consideration is that Humala’s electoral campaign has been coherent, with a definite strategy and very clear goals for positioning the candidate and attracting support. He did not waste time arguing with other candidates, but devoted his efforts to proposing solutions,” he said.

According to Tuesta, Humala’s position has changed since he ran in 2006, when he won the first round but lost the run-off to García. “His discourse has become much more moderate, even though his actual programme of government is at least as radical as it was then.”

In a hard-fought campaign marked by widely scattered voter opinion, writer Mario Vargas Llosa., winner of the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature and a former presidential candidate in 1990, when he lost to the almost-unknown Alberto Fujimori, has spoken up.

He repeated his 2009 remark that a run-off between Humala and Keiko Fujimori would be like “choosing between AIDS and cancer.” “It will not happen, I refuse to believe it. I don’t think my fellow Peruvians could be so foolish as to place us in such a dilemma,” the conservative writer said.

“Rather than two forms of authoritarianism, Humala and (Keiko) Fujimori represent two ways of disrespecting the political institutions,” political scientist Carlos Meléndez told IPS. “It’s not that she is authoritarian because of her father, or that Humala is authoritarian because of his military background. They are both authoritarian because their proposals would weaken democratic institutions.”

Keiko Fujimori has benefited, not from a spectacular campaign and a great popular following, but from the loyalty of a hard core of her father’s supporters. The pro-Fujimori legislators have consistently won around 20 percent of the vote, a large share in the context of a widely split electorate, he said.

“She is the only candidate with a following of active supporters that has grown more than any other party in recent years. She leads them personally, and communicates directly to her followers,” said Meléndez, who compiled “Anticandidatos, guía analítica para unas elecciones sin partidos” (Anti-Candidates: An Analytical Guide for Elections without Parties), published this year.

Keiko Fujimori told a crowd in April 2009, “We will not rest until we achieve freedom for Alberto Fujimori,” who is serving 25 years in prison for corruption and human rights violations.

But now, in a bid to woo disapproving voters, she has toned down her suggestions that she would pardon her father if she were elected president. “The family has decided to abide by the decision of the courts,” she said.

Keiko Fujimori and her family have legal problems of their own. State prosecutor Gladys Echaíz is investigating her for allegedly using funds embezzled by her father to pay for her studies in the United States. The candidate twice failed to respond to judicial summonses during her campaign.

Echaíz has also charged Rosa Fujimori, the ex-president’s sister, for illicit enrichment, and she is now regarded as a fugitive from justice after failing to appear at a trial for misappropriation of donations from Japan for poor children in Peru. The funds were allegedly deposited in her bank accounts.

Excerpt:

By Ángel Páez
LIMA, Mar 21 2011 (IPS)

Congressional candidates nominated by the party of presidential hopeful Keiko Fujimori to stand in the Apr. 10 elections in Peru failed to inform the electoral authorities that they are under investigation for drug trafficking and money laundering.

Keiko Fujimori (second from right) with singer Pepe Vásquez at a campaign rally. Credit: Ángel Páez/IPS

Thirteen parties are presenting candidates for Congress. But the three candidates with alleged drug ties all belong to Fuerza 2011, the political party backing presidential candidate Keiko Fujimori, whose father, former president Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000), is serving lengthy sentences for corruption and crimes against humanity in a prison close to Lima.

U.S. State Department documents leaked by the whistleblower website WikiLeaks have pointed to other connections between members of Fuerza 2011 and suspected drug traffickers.

Although the polls put Keiko Fujimori in second place in the presidential race, her share of voter support has been declining since January, making it less likely that she will be in the projected run-off ballot Jun. 5 against the favourite, former president Alejandro Toledo (2001-2006).

DEVIDA, the national anti-drugs commission, promoted an Ethical Commitment against Drug Trafficking to be adopted by political parties taking part in the elections. But Fujimori and her party did not sign it.

In the document, political organisations putting up presidential and congressional candidates commit themselves to “establish rigorous candidate selection procedures.”

The procedures should, in particular, promote “accurate and transparent information on the backgrounds of aspirants to elected office, in order to prevent drug trafficking activities within the parties,” it says.

The case of José “Pepe” Vásquez, a well-known singer of Afro-Peruvian folk music, was the first to come to light, only a few days after Fujimori presented her list of congressional candidates.

“The candidates went through a rigorous selection process,” she said at the time.

However, the television programme Día D revealed that the anti-narcotics police were investigating Vásquez for alleged ties to Peruvian drug lord Augusto Arriaga.

Arriaga is wanted by the police for allegedly heading a cocaine smuggling gang involving Colombian and Mexican citizens.

Fujimori said it was a conspiracy against her, and hired a lawyer for Vásquez from the firm that provided her father’s defence counsel.

But further evidence about the connection between Vásquez and Arriaga eventually forced Fujimori to remove the singer from her list of congressional candidates.

Then La República, a Lima newspaper, exposed two other Fujimorista congressional aspirants suspected of having contacts with drug trafficking cartels.

Karina Beteta and Juan Almonacid are both from the central province of Huanuco where coca leaf and cocaine is produced in the Upper Huallaga valley.

Peru has taken over from Colombia as the world’s leading producer of coca leaf, the plant used to make cocaine, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

Beteta was elected to Congress in 2006 as a candidate for the alliance between the Partido Nacionalista (PNP) and Unión por el Perú (UPP), and is now on the Fuerza 2011 candidate list. She is under investigation by the Lima prosecution service for allegedly laundering drug trafficking assets.

Prosecutors suspect that Beteta, a lawyer, helped cover up the illicit origin of assets owned by her brother-in-law, Luis Egoavil, who has a criminal record for drug trafficking.

Beteta claims she did not know Egoavil was involved in drug smuggling, but the prosecution is unconvinced.

Almonacid, the owner of the Turismo Armonía transport company, is being investigated by the prosecution services in Bolognesi, in the northern province of Áncash, for alleged drug trafficking and money laundering.

A series of drug seizures from the buses’ baggage compartments and passengers’ belongings sparked the Turismo Armonía investigation.

Keiko Fujimori has not made any public statement about the two new cases, nor have the electoral authorities made any official pronouncement about the candidates under investigation for drug links on the Fuerza 2011 list.

“As things stand, it would seem that drug trafficking is not an issue of real concern and interest to some authorities,” the head of the National Council for Public Ethics (Proética), Cecilia Blondet, told IPS.

“It would appear that transparency and oversight are a nuisance, and that actually, corruption is necessary to continue operating in complete impunity,” she added.

“Drug traffickers need protection for their smuggling and money laundering, and what could be better than linking up with politicians?” Blondet said.

“The way they meet this goal nowadays is by financing corrupt candidates, who, once they are elected to Congress, will protect them and guarantee they can continue to operate with impunity. This also makes it harder to identify the traffickers,” she said.

Proética launched a campaign advocating that citizens should study the résumés submitted by presidential and congressional candidates to the National Elections Board (JNE), which makes them public, and report false information and omissions.

The CVs submitted by Beteta and Almonacid did not mention that they are under investigation for drug trafficking and money laundering.

Another Lima newspaper, El Comercio, published a diplomatic cable from the U.S. embassy in Peru dated Nov. 28, 2006, alleging that Rofilio Neyra, a businessman, had links to the drug trade.

The cable, one of the U.S. State Department documents published by WikiLeaks, expresses concern about the influence of “narco-politics” in Peru.

Neyra is a congressional candidate for Fuerza 2011, and when the cable was published Keiko Fujimori defended him and kept his name on the list.

Inés Arias, coordinator of the non-governmental Working Group Against Corruption (GTCC), said, “There should be a debate about the need to restrict participation in elections by those investigated and prosecuted for drug trafficking and money laundering.

“But this would require a full discussion about whether the right of every person to be presumed innocent until proven guilty should continue to prevail,” she acknowledged.

Arias said it was not enough to combat the penetration of politics and the branches of government by drug trafficking, by means of more laws against the various crimes involved.

“Care must also be taken to prevent the financing of political parties by groups linked to the drug trade,” she stressed.

Arias said that drug trafficking organisations frequently “evade any attempt at restraining them,” using “money laundering and front companies.”

Fujimori has herself been linked to persons investigated for drug trafficking.

She admitted on a television programme that she received campaign contributions in 2006 from the family of fisheries businessman Eudocio “Olluquito” Martínez, who was investigated for drug trafficking charges, and she has not denied they are financing her present campaign.

Virgilio Hurtado, spokesman for the National Elections Board (JNE), told IPS that only candidates who have failed to disclose previous convictions in their résumés can be banned from running for office.

Those prosecuted for serious charges, like drug trafficking and laundering assets arising from criminal actions, are not compelled to disclose that information, he said.

Excerpt:

By Ángel Páez
LIMA, Mar 7 2011 (IPS)

United Nations High Representative for Disarmament Sergio Duarte said heads of state who call for a reduction in military spending should practice what they preach.

UN High Representative for Disarmament Sergio Duarte. Credit: Courtesy of UNODA.

Since the 2006 start of García’s term, which ends in July, Peru’s armed forces have spent 807 million dollars on weapons and other war materiel — an average of 161.4 million dollars a year and 13.4 million dollars a month — the highest spending on upgrading the country’s military since the regime of Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000), according to different sources.

Duarte was in Lima as the key-note speaker in a Feb. 28-Mar. 1 seminar on peace, security and development in Latin America organised by the Foreign Ministry as part of the Initiative for Peace and Disarmament in Latin America, launched by García in 2009.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon publicly expressed his support for the initiative to reduce defence spending in order to benefit social and economic development, after a Feb. 15 meeting with the Peruvian president during a visit to Lima.

“Of course the U.N. backs the proposal, because it is better to spend on health or education,” Duarte said. “That depends, however, on each nation.”

According to Defence Ministry sources, the biggest amounts went towards the upgrade of 12 French-made Mirage 2000 fighter jets (120 million dollars) and of eight Russian MiG-29 fighter aircraft (108 million), and the purchase of six Russian-made Mi-17 helicopters and two Mi-35P combat helicopters (107.8 million), Spike Israeli anti-tank missiles (87.7 million), French-built Exocet anti-ship missiles (70 million), and 12 Canadian DH6-400 Twin Otter transport aircraft (67 million dollars).

Transparency remains a serious problem for the control of the global arms race, Duarte said.

In 2010, only eight countries submitted data on the arms they exported or imported in the previous calendar year to the U.N. Office of Disarmament Affairs (UNODA), for its annual Transparency in Armaments report. In 2001, 23 countries sent in data.

During García’s first three years in office, Peru failed to submit information to UNODA — which Duarte heads — unlike neighbouring Chile and Ecuador.

Although it is not mandatory for countries to report to UNODA on their military purchases or sales, “it would be ideal for all countries to report on their military spending with greater frequency and in greater detail, to foment trust,” Duarte said.

“I believe that the more nations seek understandings and agreement on policies, the more transparent arms purchases will be,” he added.

According to the 2010 Yearbook by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), in Latin America, military spending increased the most in Brazil, Chile, Venezuela and Peru.

But Duarte said the figures cited by SIPRI did not indicate an “arms race” in this region. “What I would say we are seeing is a tendency to upgrade existing equipment,” he stated.

But that upgrade in turn triggers weapons purchases in neighbouring countries, especially in cases of long-standing border disputes or military tension.

A case in point is that of Peru and Chile. Santiago’s purchase of 132 Leopard 2 tanks from the German army for 124 million dollars prompted the Peruvian army to acquire 113.7 million dollars worth of Israeli and Russian anti-tank missiles.

And Chilean air force purchases bringing its total fleet of F-16 fighter jets to 46 led Peru’s air force to refurbish its fleet of 12 Mirage 2000s and 19 MiG-29s, while it is also preparing to upgrade 18 Russian Sukhoi-25 fighter bombers.

“Even as countries find new forms of understanding, the arms race will always remain a remote possibility,” Duarte said.

“Transparency in spending on weapons is a very important step in building mutual trust,” he added.

The United States is concerned about Peru’s tendency to respond to military purchases in Chile by increasing its own budget for weapons expenditure, cables from the U.S. Embassy in Peru leaked by the Wikileaks whistleblower web site showed.

On Nov. 25, 2009, U.S. Ambassador Michael McKinley sent a confidential memorandum to the commander of the U.S. Southern Command, General Douglas Fraser, stating that “We have also sought to support Peru’s plan to reorient its security posture away from its perceived conventional threats from its neighbours (mainly Chile) and to modernise its military’s doctrines and retool its operational capabilities to confront its internal threats.”

In another cable, dated Dec. 15, 2009, McKinley was even more direct, expressing surprise over an announcement by García that Peru would buy Chinese MBT-2000 tanks to replace its T-55 tanks purchased from the former Soviet Union during the 1960s and 1970s, at the same time that he urged the region to curtail military spending.

“These defence acquisitions come as something of a surprise, in light of President Garcia’s intensively pursued regional ‘Peace and Security Cooperation’ initiative,” the U.S. ambassador wrote.

“That the flurry of Peru’s high-profile peace-initiative diplomacy was punctuated by a domestic defence acquisitions announcement of this size has caught the government in a kind of double bind. But government officials have sought to deflect the apparent contradiction,” he added.

That same year, García said the (now cancelled) purchase of tanks from China was going ahead, five weeks after the Peruvian government accused air force Sergeant Víctor Ariza of spying for Chile since 2004.

Critics of the government’s excessive spending on weapons stress that in his five years in power, García spent 807 million dollars on military purchases, equivalent to six years’ spending on the “Glass of Milk” Programme aimed at providing nutritional supplements to 2.7 million children and adults in extreme poverty.

Excerpt:

By Ángel Páez
LIMA, Feb 24 2011 (IPS)

Peru’s Glass of Milk Programme (PVL) is failing in its aim of providing nutritional supplements to all poor children in Peru. But it has been a big business opportunity for the handful of companies that supply the programme, according to a special audit report seen by IPS.

Children in Peru receiving the nutritional supplement. Credit: Ángel Páez/IPS

The regulations stipulate that each nutritional supplement — consisting of milk and cereals or flours — must contain at least 207 kilocalories. But the study by the Comptroller General’s Office found that a mere four percent of the rations met that requisite in 2009, the year under review.

The government spends some 135 million dollars a year on the PVL. The funds are distributed to the country’s 1,834 municipalities, which are in charge of distributing the nutritional supplement among the needy. The municipal governments are also responsible for ensuring that each ration contains the required kilocalories.

The PVL has fallen short in covering the nutritional needs of the target population: poor children up to the age of six, pregnant and nursing mothers, the disabled, children aged seven to 13, and tuberculosis patients.

But for the suppliers, it is a lucrative deal.

According to the Comptroller General’s Office, five companies in Lima provide 38 percent of the supplies purchased for the PVL by municipal governments nationwide. And most of these corporations are not food producers, but intermediaries.

For instance, the Lima-based Niisa Corporation, which controls 20 percent of sales to the PVL, does not produce canned evaporated milk, the main product it supplies to the government programme.

Purchasing supplies from intermediaries drives up the costs for the municipal governments.

“There is no law requiring or prohibiting that the municipal governments purchase milk of one kind or another, only an indication that each ration must contain 207 kilocalories,” Comptroller General Fuad Khoury told IPS.

“For that reason, we have found 8,490 different combinations of milk,” he said. “What is distributed in Lima is not the same as what is distributed in the (department) of Cuzco, and so on. But the biggest problem is that the tendency to use evaporated milk means higher costs.”

When centre-right President Alan García’s five-year term began in 2006, the municipal governments were paying the equivalent of 1.46 dollars per can of evaporated milk — a price that had gone up to 2.11 dollars by 2009.

By comparison, the price of fresh milk, which is used much less widely than evaporated milk in the PVL, only rose from 0.34 to 0.48 cents of a dollar.

“The main suppliers of the PVL do not offer the best prices, despite the enormous volume of products purchased by the municipal governments,” Jesús Arias, performance manager in the Comptroller General’s Office, told IPS.

“The municipal governments do not look for the lowest price on the market, as the law stipulates, and this doesn’t only happen in the provinces, but in the capital as well,” he said. “Lima and (the port city of) Callao are adjoining, but they pay different prices for the same product.”

In 2009, a total of 6.6 million dollars worth of canned evaporated milk was purchased for the PVL, 73 percent of which was Gloria, a local brand. However, the company that produces the milk did not sell it directly to the municipalities, but to intermediaries, with the subsequent rise in cost.

“A ration made with evaporated milk costs twice as much as one using fresh milk,” Khoury said. Using cans of evaporated milk “is a habit acquired by the mothers who the municipalities have put in charge of distributing the nutritional supplements.”

The supervisor of the PVL in the Comptroller General’s Office, Juan Carlos Cuadras, said a national oversight body should be created for the programme, which would standardise the content of the nutritional supplements according to the characteristics of each region.

The oversight body should also be in charge of the collective purchasing of the supplies at better prices, and of monitoring the programme, to ensure that the supplements meet the minimum kilocalorie requirement, he added.

Cuadras also said, “We depend on what the municipal governments report” — 25 percent of which failed to submit reports on the results of the PVL in 2009. “If there were a central body, there would be better follow-up, and of course more accurate results,” he told IPS.

Khoury said it was “inexplicable” that there was no central body running the PVL, even though the programme, created in 1985, is national in scope, is aimed at fighting malnutrition among the poor, and has one of the biggest budgets among the government’s social programmes in this South American country of 29 million people.

“The state makes a huge investment in social spending, but the returns on that effort are not satisfactory,” he said. “The results of the Glass of Milk Programme show that children up to the age of six, who are the top priority of the programme, are not receiving supplements with the established nutritional value.

“The answer is to set up a central body that will hold (the governments) accountable,” he argued.

The total number of beneficiaries of the PVL has gone down from 2.9 million in 2004 to 2.7 million in 2009.

“We have even found that sugar is widely used to increase the calories, in an attempt to meet the requirements,” Luis Felipe Vega, the Comptroller General’s Office adviser on social programmes, told IPS.

“The rations are supposed to be made up of two or more food products, to reach the established nutritional values, but instead of that, they increase the sugar. As a result, we’ll have children who are fat but undernourished. And worst of all, they’ll have learning problems,” he said.

Excerpt:

By Ángel Páez
LIMA, Feb 21 2011 (IPS)

The Peruvian government has offered to put Israeli citizen Dan Cohen on trial in Peru, after refusing to extradite him to Israel on the grounds that there is no extradition treaty between the two countries. Cohen is alleged to have taken bribes of 4.1 million dollars while serving on the board of directors of the Israel Electric Corporation (IEC).

Cohen fled to Peru in 2005 to avoid the corruption charges against him in his country. He was arrested by Interpol agents in Peru Aug. 24, 2009, on an international warrant for those charges.

After Peruvian President Alan García refused to accede to the extradition request, Israel’s Justice Ministry continued to plead its case, based on the principle of reciprocity and the United Nations Convention against Corruption, but has so far not met with success.

“The reciprocity that Israel is invoking is limited, because Israel does not allow the extradition of its own citizens, but only foreign nationals living in its territory,” a source at Peru’s Justice Ministry told IPS.

The report by the Justice Ministry’s official extradition commission, sent to García before he reached his decision against extraditing Cohen, has not been publicly released, but IPS had access to it. The report concludes that “accepting reciprocity as proposed would imply accepting the restrictions imposed by Israel on the Peruvian state.”

Peruvian justice authorities will attempt to get Moshe Rothschild extradited from Israel to face charges, dating from 2001, of bribing Vladimiro Montesinos, President Alberto Fujimori’s (1990-2000) intelligence adviser, to secure an order for 36 secondhand MiG-29 and Sukhoi-25 fighters from Belarus.

Rothschild, a former Israeli war pilot, sold arms on the black market from the now-dissolved Soviet Union to Peru in the 1990s. He went back to Israel as soon as an investigation was opened against him and Fujimori and Montesinos were under investigation for corruption and human rights violations, for which they are both now serving prison terms.

“If Peru accepts the reciprocity conditions Israel is imposing, it won’t be possible to extradite Rothschild,” a request that could be made based on the various charges he faces in Peru, the Justice Ministry sources said.

The head of Israel’s state prosecution’s international department, Gal Levertov, informed Lima that the Israeli authorities are willing to cooperate with the Peruvian judges who wish to prosecute Rothschild, according to a copy of the report that was seen by IPS.

Peru’s Supreme Court approved Cohen’s extradition in October 2009, and upheld the same ruling a month later on appeal.

But as Israel prepared for the wanted man’s return, the news was received that President García had refused the request, on the grounds that there was no extradition treaty between the two countries.

Cohen is suspected of taking one million euros (1.3 million dollars) from Siemens, as a backhander in return for an IEC contract for the company to supply three gas-powered turbines.

He is also accused of accepting two million dollars in exchange for persuading the IEC to purchase land at inflated prices, as well as fraudulently charging some 800,000 dollars for supposedly advising on the installation of a textile factory in the United States.

Lima’s refusal of his extradition “was like a bucket of cold water to the Israeli authorities, who have no idea what happened,” counsel for the state of Israel in Lima told IPS.

While Peru’s main criticism of the concept of reciprocity is that Israel will not extradite its own citizens to other countries, the technical report indicates that the Israeli authorities can pursue the legal option of asking that Cohen be tried and sentenced on their behalf in Lima for the crimes for which they are prosecuting him.

“This opens the door to bringing Cohen to trial anyway,” the Justice Ministry source told IPS. “Rejection of the extradition request was by no means motivated by support for impunity.”

They also denied allegations by counsel for the state of Israel that “political influence” in Cohen’s favour had been behind the government’s decision.

While Israel persisted with its extradition request, prosecutor for organised crime Jorge Chávez accused the former IEC director and his wife Nitza Cohen of money laundering, and ordered their assets of 3.9 million dollars in Lima’s BBVA Banco Continental to be frozen.

Chávez said that funds transferred into their accounts from abroad might presumably be linked to the bribes Cohen took while in public office in Israel. By court order, neither Cohen nor his wife can leave Peru until the trial is over.

“One way or another, whether in Peru or in Israel, Cohen is likely to be convicted and receive a severe sentence,” the Justice Ministry source said.

Excerpt:

By Ángel Páez
LIMA, Feb 7 2011 (IPS)

Women candidates nominated for the presidential and legislative elections in Peru in April tend to be big names in the worlds of sports, television or show business, or are following family tradition. But political parties are failing to promote meaningful participation by women in politics.

Cenaida Uribe (in red) with members of congressional women's caucus. Credit: Courtesy Congress of Peru

A third woman, Mercedes Araoz of the governing Partido Aprista Peruano (PAP), resigned her candidacy because her party would not honour her demand that persons under investigation for corruption be excluded from the party slates.

Keiko Fujimori, at present running third in the polls, is the daughter of former president Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000), who is running her election campaign from prison where he is serving 25 years for crimes against humanity and corruption.

Juliana Reymer, a former street vendor who now runs her own small business, became the candidate of the small centrist Fuerza Nacional party when its previous nominee left the party to support former president Alejandro Toledo (2001-2006), who is the front-runner in the polls.

“These presidential and congressional elections are a disgrace,” Rosa María Alfaro, head of Calandria, an organisation promoting women’s political participation, told IPS. “Male arrogance is the basis of even Keiko Fujimori’s campaign, because she depends on her father. There is a kind of gender dependence.”

Alfaro also criticised the way political parties have drawn up their lists of candidates for the next Congress, to be elected for a five-year term in April. By law, at least 30 percent of the candidates must be women.

But to meet the quotas, parties have recruited prominent women from other walks of life, rather than training and promoting their own women members. Since the 1990s, “outsiders” and flash-in-the-pan candidates have held an attraction for Peruvian voters.

Former showgirl and television presenter July Pinedo, a 1990s sex symbol, is on the congressional candidate list for the centre-right PAP.

According to local media, Alberto Fujimori personally drew up the congressional list for the right-wing Fuerza 2011, formally headed by his daughter. The list of candidates includes Gina Pacheco, his personal nurse and a frequent visitor to his prison cell, and Leyla Chihuán, the captain of the national women’s team for volleyball, a popular sport in Peru.

And at the top of the list for Toledo’s centre-right Perú Posible party is 1980s volleyball star Cecilia Tait, while soap opera actress Ebelin Ortiz is also a candidate.

The right-wing alliance Cambio Radical, meanwhile, has nominated former starlet Daysi Ontaneda, frequently featured in the gossip columns.

The head of Asociación Civil Transparencia, Percy Medina, told IPS that in a study on female political participation carried out by his organisation, women political leaders and activists complained of “arbitrary decisions” by male leaders who impose “media personalities with no political experience instead of active members of organisations” as party candidates.

In the survey of women leaders and activists from five different political parties, all of the respondents emphasised the lack of a level playing field between men and women in terms of access to leadership posts and candidate nominations, Medina said.

In his opinion, “a culture of machismo which hinders women from achieving a more decisive role” is behind this inequality and explains the profusion of actresses and sportswomen on candidate lists, instead of experienced women politicians.

“The perception is that women’s participation in Peruvian politics has slid backwards,” even though women presidential or congressional candidates are now quite common, said Medina.

Alfaro predicted that the April elections will not resemble the November 2010 regional and municipal polls, when two women battled it out for the post of mayor of Lima. The winner was Susana Villarán, a moderate left-winger, and her rival was Lourdes Flores, a conservative.

Both women had been presidential candidates in earlier elections and had recognised track records as politicians when they stood for the key position of mayor of the capital. “Their proposals were well developed and were debated in the media and among the general public,” said Alfaro. “It was a campaign and a democratic contest truly led by women.”

Alfaro, an expert on communications and gender, said the presidential candidates and Alberto Fujimori are using popular women as vote-catchers, at a time when ideology is weak and personal conflicts are rampant in political parties, and male politicians are desperate to win at any cost.

For instance, Luis Castañeda, the presidential candidate for the populist Solidaridad Nacional, placed second in the polls, chose as his vice presidential running mate Carmen Núñez, the estranged wife of a millionaire businessman and provincial mayor who supports a different presidential candidate.

Lisbeth Guillén of the Manuela Ramos women’s movement agreed that Peru’s political parties “do not truly encourage women’s participation,” in spite of the fact that in opinion polls voters say they want to see more women active in politics and are sympathetic to the potential prospect of a woman president.

Guillén pointed out that electoral quotas for women are enshrined in the Peruvian constitution, and that thanks to this, the number of women in Congress has increased steadily. The outgoing parliament (2006-2011) has 35 women lawmakers, equivalent to 29 percent of the seats, compared to 26 women in the 2000-2006 legislature, and 14 in 1995-2000.

The activist said political parties nominate crowd-pleasing personalities who can attract a large number of votes because they must secure at least five percent of the national vote in elections in order to maintain their official registration.

However, she said voters have another way to make their voices heard: the so-called “preferential vote,” which allows voters to select candidates on congressional lists according to their own preference, thus changing the order of the candidates pre-established by the parties.

Cenaida Uribe, president of the congressional women’s caucus, offered another viewpoint on women’s presence in parliament. A former volleyball player for Peru, she belongs to the nationalist Gana Perú party led by former presidential candidate Ollanta Humala, in fourth place in the polls.

“Every one deserves an opportunity to make a contribution,” she told IPS. Artists, for example, can promote laws on cultural affairs, and she as a sportswoman has been able to push for laws that favour sports. “Newcomers to Congress who have no political experience should not be under-estimated,” she said.

In her view, the legislative term that ends in July “has been exceptional,” because for the first year Congress was presided over by a woman speaker, all the commissions have included women, and “indigenous women, coca-growing peasant women, Afro-Peruvian women and low-income women are represented in parliament.”

But Uribe, who is black, stressed that in spite of these positive aspects, “there is still too much machismo in Congress, which cuts women off from access to the democratic decision-making process.”

Excerpt:

By Ángel Páez
LIMA, Jan 18 2011 (IPS)

Indigenous children under five in Peru’s highlands regions still bear the brunt of chronic malnutrition, even though local authorities in those areas received millions of dollars worth of taxes between 2006 and 2010 from the mining companies operating there.

Indigenous children at a community-run school in Peru's jungle region. Credit: Milza Hinostroza/IPS

But when the statistics are broken down, it becomes clear that malnutrition was reduced to a much lesser extent among indigenous children, even though that population group is a stated priority of the policies of the government of Alan García, in office since 2006.

The national chronic malnutrition rate for children under five is 18 percent.

But in the Andean region of Huancavelica in southern Peru, 56 percent of all children under five are indigenous, and 43 percent of the native children suffer from chronic malnutrition. And in the neighbouring region of Apurímac, 61 percent of children are Indians, and 29 percent of them are chronically malnourished, a problem that leads to stunted physical and intellectual growth.

Huancavelica and Apurímac obtained relatively limited revenues from the “canon minero” tax paid by the mining companies between 2006 and 2010 — 29.5 and 17 million dollars, respectively, according to the Ministry of Economy and Finance — which could help explain the limited progress made.

But it is much more surprising that chronic malnutrition levels remain so high in the region of Cuzco, which took in 212.5 million dollars in mining taxes in that period:. In that region, 45 percent of children under five are indigenous, and 32 percent of them are chronically malnourished, according to UNICEF.

And Cuzco is not the only case.

The Andean region of Ancash in northwestern Peru and the altiplano region of Puno in the southeast took in 1.28 billion and 238.6 million dollars, respectively, the Ministry of Economy and Finance figures show. But the funds have had little impact on indigenous children.

In Ancash, where 29 percent of children are indigenous, 23 percent of them suffer from chronic malnutrition (showing below normal weight and height for age). And in Puno, where 49 percent of children are indigenous, 20 percent are malnourished.

“Chronic malnutrition in rural areas has declined considerably in the Andean regions, from 39 percent in 2000 to 30 percent in 2009, and from 30 to 22 percent in Amazon jungle areas,” Lena Arias, one of the UNICEF researchers who produced the 2010 “Estado de la Niñez Indígena en el Perú” report, told IPS.

“But if we look at the six regions where 25 percent of the country’s indigenous children are concentrated, the chronic malnutrition rate among children under five is higher than the national average of 18 percent,” she said.

In this South American country, Amerindians account for an estimated 45 percent of the population of nearly 30 million. “Mestizos” or people of mixed ethnic heritage (mainly indigenous and Spanish ancestry) represent roughly 37 percent of the population; an estimated 15 percent of the population is of European descent; and there are small black and Asian minorities.

“Although malnutrition has clearly been reduced, the gap between rural and urban, between the poor and the not-so-poor, between indigenous and non-indigenous people, is still wide,” said Arias. “Rural indigenous children are still the hardest-hit.”

In a few weeks, UNICEF will publish “Estado de la Niñez en el Perú”, a new report on the situation of children in Peru, which will highlight the most significant advances in health, particularly with respect to the sharp reduction in infant and maternal mortality.

But there are pending challenges.

“The gaps are large and have widened, especially in relation to the situation in indigenous populations,” Mario Tavera, a UNICEF health officer in Lima and one of the authors of the report, told IPS.

“There has been progress in prevention of chronic malnutrition, but it has been limited,” he said. “Overall, one out of seven children under five is chronically malnourished. But in the indigenous communities, one out of two children has chronic malnutrition.”

When asked why mineral-rich regions that have benefited from millions of dollars in mining royalties have failed to considerably bring down malnutrition levels among indigenous children, Tavera said the question is not as simple as whether or not funds are available, but is based on a deeper underlying issue: what specific public policies have been put in place.

“Economic funds are a good foundation for improving social conditions of the population, especially among children, but the availability of funds or an increase in revenue does not guarantee an impact on social indicators,” he said.

Epifanio Baca, a researcher with the Grupo Propuesta Ciudadana, a coalition of 11 local NGOs, said the problem must not only be blamed on the central government, but on regional and local governments as well.

“They are not fulfilling their duties, even though in many cases they have the necessary funds to do so,” Baca told IPS.

“Regional and municipal authorities emphasise spending on infrastructure, which does help reduce chronic malnutrition,” he said. “But it is also important to dedicate funds to programmes that, for example, are working to get the indigenous population to change some dietary and hygiene habits that have an influence on chronic malnutrition.”

Baca underscored that in the regions with enormous inflows of mining taxes, 33 large mining companies promised in 2007 to pay a “voluntary contribution” of 178.5 million dollars a year for five years into a fund for fighting poverty. The contributions were in place of royalties and a tax on windfall profits generated by high metal prices during García’s five-year term.

“It’s a complex problem that not only involves the state,” Baca said.” For example, mining companies like Xstrata Tintaya, Barrick Gold and Cerro Verde, which provide significant voluntary contributions, do not even report on the impact of that money in the local communities. Apparently they’re not interested.”

Excerpt:

By Ángel Páez
LIMA, Jan 7 2011 (IPS)

During his nearly five years in office, Peruvian President Alan García has earmarked 620.5 million dollars to the “Glass of Milk” Programme (PVL), the backbone of the policies aimed at reducing malnutrition levels in the country. But the results of the nutritional supplement programme are poor.

A Ministry of Economy and Finance report seen by IPS found that five of every 10 (51 percent) of the PVL’s beneficiaries do not form part of the programme’s target group: children under six and pregnant and nursing mothers from low-income strata.

Those who do not need the extra nutrition but receive the dairy supplement anyway have been dubbed “infiltrators.”

The most serious situation is found in Lima. In the capital, which receives 30 percent of the national PVL budget, seven of every 10 beneficiaries of the programme (73 percent) are “infiltrators.”

The ineffectiveness of the PVL in reducing malnutrition is reflected in the rise in “food poverty” in Peru from 2005 to 2010, according to the National Institute of Statistics and Informatics (INEI).

The García administration, which took office in July 2006, has allotted an average of 124 million dollars a year to the PVL, distributed among the 1,838 municipalities in charge of implementing the programme.

Between 2005 and 2009, Peru’s poverty rate was reduced from 49 to 35 percent, a figure the government presents as a resounding success. But poverty statistics broken down by region, which IPS requested from the INEI, show that in 11 of the country’s 25 regions, the proportion of people living below the poverty line actually increased.

“The Peruvian government has stated that nutrition, health and education are priorities in its social spending, which means 50 percent of the funds should go towards those areas, but that hasn’t happened,” Germán Chávez Contreras, director of research at the San Pablo Catholic University in Peru, based in the southern highlands region of Arequipa, told IPS.

The proportion “does not even reach five percent, because the executive branch finances other kinds of programmes that aren’t in line with the stated priorities,” he said.

In a recent seminar held by the Economic and Social Research Consortium (CIES), which brings together universities and private consulting firms and research centres, Chávez Contreras presented the study “Criterios para la asignación del Gasto Social en programas de salud y nutrición en el Perú” (criteria for assigning social spending to health and nutrition programmes in Peru).

“That explains why we are so far from reducing malnutrition among children under five and infant mortality in children under one. The population that should be covered by the social programmes isn’t receiving the assistance,” he said.

“It’s a worrisome situation because the problem isn’t the money but poor management, which is reflected in the erroneous allotment of funds and a lack of control and monitoring of the spending,” he said. “The serious problems with the Glass of Milk are a reflection of what is going on with the rest of the government’s social programmes.”

Deputy Minister of Economy Eduardo Morón presented a report in 2009 which showed that social programmes like the PVL were losing an estimated 128.5 million dollars a year due to the problems in identifying and reaching the targeted populations.

“The most serious problems in the Glass of Milk Programme are that it is very poorly targeted; the lists of beneficiaries are out-of-date, incomplete, and contain data other than names; and worst of all, the programme does not have an impact on nutritional levels, because the people who need the glass of milk aren’t receiving it,” economist Juan Pichihua told IPS.

Pichihua is coordinator of the household targeting system, known as SISFOH, created in the Ministry of Economy and Finance to identify the population in need of social assistance from programmes like the PVL.

“It is a herculean task, but we have managed to make some headway,” said Pichihua.

“A timetable of goals has been set to improve targeting in the PVL, including drawing up a complete registry of beneficiaries,” he said. “In 2011 we should complete the evaluation of the people registered on the lists, to determine whether or not they qualify for the programme.”

And in 2012, the lists should be purged of people who should not be receiving the aid, he added.

Updating the lists of beneficiaries will imply a restructuring of the PVL budget, which has remained unchanged since the start of the García administration.

However, that task will fall to the government of García’s successor, who will be sworn in on Jul. 28, 2011.

“The municipalities are under the obligation to report how many beneficiaries there are, and identify them by name. But in 2010, of the 1,838 municipalities, only 712 fulfilled that provision,” Pichihua said.

Álvaro Monge, with the Macroconsult consulting firm, which forms part of CIES, said that of the households included in the Glass of Milk Programme, 40 percent are no longer under the poverty line and do not qualify for the nutritional supplements.

“This is something that is also seen in other programmes, like the Seguro Integral de Salud (SIS – Comprehensive Health Insurance),” Monge told IPS. “Forty percent of the households covered by the SIS, whose aim is to assist the neediest families, are no longer poor. This is happening in Lima and urban areas along the coast where poverty has been reduced the most.

“Without a doubt, social programmes like the Glass of Milk are urgently in need of an overhaul, because not only are people who do not need it receiving the assistance, but those who do need it are being left out.”

Pichihua said approximately 1.75 million of the 3.5 million beneficiaries of the PVL — out of a total population of 29 million — are “infiltrators”.

“It’s a huge loss of resources,” he lamented.

Excerpt:

By Ángel Páez
LIMA, Dec 28 2010 (IPS)

A decade after the end of Peru’s 20-year counterinsurgency war was officially declared, the army broke its silence, to give its own version of events.

The report, “In Honour of the Truth”, based on dispatches by officers involved in combat missions, contradicts the findings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (CVR), which issued a lengthy report on the 1980-2000 armed conflict in 2003, based principally on the testimony of survivors and relatives of victims.

According to the CVR, nearly 70,000 people, mainly indigenous peasants, were killed or forcibly disappeared, as victims of the Maoist Shining Path guerrillas or the state security forces.

“We are only giving our account of the events and facts, which are described in the war dispatches,” said General Otto Guibovich, who was army chief until the first week of December, and who ordered the drafting of the report in 2009.

“To write the history of a conflict, anyone knows it is necessary to consult the war dispatches, because that’s where the history is recorded,” he told IPS.

“This is a very professional report that reflects both the version of the officers who took part in the war and of the rank-and-file troops who talk about their experiences in unknown episodes of the armed conflict,” Guibovich said.

“We haven’t invented or changed anything. Everything that is in the report has been documented. This is a contribution to getting the truth out.”

According to the army report, which was officially presented in late November, the massacres of civilians committed by members of the military were the actions of individuals that did not form part of military doctrine, since counterinsurgency manuals do not recommend wiping out entire populations, but winning over hearts and minds instead.

“The human rights violations that regrettably occurred during the war were not a systematic practice, and were neither ordered nor orchestrated by the Peruvian army command, but were the result of absolutely individual decisions and actions,” the report says.

Human rights lawyer Karim Ninaquispe of the Runamasinchiqpaq human rights association (ADEHR), who represents the families of victims of the massacre in the highlands village of Accomarca, one of the worst mass killings committed in the war, said that claim is half-true, because no one in a war issues an order for a massacre of civilians in writing.

“The report collects information in a biased manner that does not necessarily reflect the truth,” she said. “In investigations into these crimes, like the one in Accomarca, the likelihood of finding written orders for killing or disappearing people is small.

“The army does not set down the statements of Telmo Hurtado, who personally led the massacre (of 69 villagers, mainly women and children) in Accomarca, which implicate the military high command and prove that (Hurtado’s) actions were not an ‘excess’ of war, as they are trying to depict,” Ninaquispe said.

Another controversial assertion by “In Honour of the Truth” is that the Army Intelligence Service (SIE) “death squad” known as the Colina Group was never officially part of the army.

The Colina Group carried out the notorious Barrios Altos and La Cantuta massacres in 1991 and 1992, in which a total of 25 civilians were killed. Former president Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000) is serving a 25-year sentence in connection with the killings.

“No detachment, group, unit, department or division under that name exists or existed in the army’s records,” says the report in one of only three paragraphs dedicated to the criminal organisation that acted with the authorisation of the military brass.

In cryptic terms, and without specifically mentioning Fujimori or his security chief, Vladimiro Montesinos — who is also in prison on multiple human rights and corruption charges — the report blames them for the death squad’s actions.

“During the government that was in power between the 1990s and 2000…certain individuals used the authority invested in them to begin a succession of illegal actions that altered the order within and outside of the army…That is how, with a view to achieving objectives designed and planned by themselves, they created irregular bodies,” the report says.

But during the trials in which Fujimori and Montesinos were tried for the activities of the death squad, which killed an estimated 50 people between November 1991 and July 1992, official documents and confessions by members of the military clearly demonstrated that the Colina Group was part of the army.

“The Colina Group formed part of the structure of the army, and was created through the Army Intelligence Directorate (DINTE), in August 1991,” Avelino Guillén, one of the prosecutors in Fujimori’s human rights trial, told IPS.

“There are documents signed by former DINTE chief General Juan Rivero Lazo, ordering that Army Intelligence Service agents and army weapons and installations be put at the disposal of Colonel Fernando Rodríguez, who was in charge of organising the group. This shows that the army’s claim is false,” he added.

“What’s more, former army commander Nicolás Hermoza himself admitted that he held a private meeting with the members of the Colina Group in the main army base, and that he urged them to fulfil their duty. These events cannot be obviated by the army,” Guillén said.

According to the army’s report, 1,067 members of the military died in the armed conflict: 101 officers, 90 noncommissioned officers and technicians, and 876 rank-and-file members.

“During the conflict, 1,022,000 military patrols were carried out, and purported excesses that are now the focus of court cases were reported in only 47 of them,” General Guibovich told IPS. “That is something like 0.004 percent of the total. This is a historical statistic, not an invention. So, we can’t talk about systematic massacres.

“In the report we acknowledge our mistakes and the lessons learned in order to avoid a repeat of regrettable events. As actors and victors in the conflict, we have a right to offer our version,” he said.

Peruvian Judge Diego García Sayán, the president of the Costa Rica-based Inter-American Court of Human Rights, commended the army for deciding to provide its account, from its own perspective.

“I highlight the army’s effort to investigate and reflect on a period in which it played a fundamental role,” he told IPS, speaking in a personal capacity. “The report is a contribution to knowing, from the point of view of those who fought in defence of democracy, what happened during the armed conflict whose impact is still being felt.

“One might not necessarily agree with what is said, but the army’s intention of getting its own version out must be underscored,” García Sayán said.

In his view, “keeping silent over dire events does not contribute to the search for the truth. In that sense, the army’s decision to publicly discuss its central role during the conflict poses a challenge to those who believe that the best thing is for nothing to be said, for fear of how history will judge them.”

Excerpt:

By Ángel Páez
LIMA, Dec 16 2010 (IPS)

“It’s not surprising for the United States to cooperate with military or government officials in Peru about which it has information linking them to serious crimes,” said activist Ricardo Soberón, referring to contradictions revealed in cables released by the whistle-blowing website Wikileaks.

Soberón, with the non-governmental Centre for Research on Drugs and Human Rights (CIDDH), says “since 1987, the U.S. Department of State has been concerned about the risk of corruption among the Peruvian military in drug trafficking zones, but that concern has not been shared by the Pentagon (Department of Defence), which was more interested in expanding its missions in the Andes region, without regard to the costs.”

“The leaked cables reflect a deep political contradiction between Washington’s institutional diplomacy, and the military diplomacy characterised by the promotion of strategies like (the U.S.-financed counterinsurgency and anti-drug strategy) Plan Colombia, the Merida Initiative (a multi-billion dollar U.S. counter-drug assistance programme for Mexico and Central America), hot pursuit across borders, or the ‘hammer and anvil’ tactic in the Colombian armed conflict,” he told IPS.

“The revelations by the cables represent a continuity of these dichotomies in the discourse and practices of U.S. agencies with different objectives and interests in the region,” he said.

A Mar. 12, 2009 cable sent by then-U.S. Ambassador in Lima Michael McKinley, which was released by WikiLeaks and published by the El Pais newspaper in Spain, says army commanders fighting remnants of the Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) Maoist rebels received “lucrative payoffs from drug traffickers.”

The sources cited by the document referred to drug traffickers operating in league with Sendero insurgents in the Apurimac and Ene River Valley (VRAE) region, and contended that “the army — for fear of disrupting these drug trafficking networks and losing access to payoffs — is unwilling to commit the large force needed to pacify the VRAE.”

But at the same time, the U.S. embassy has pressed for Washington to respond to requests by Peru’s army brass for increased military aid to squelch Sendero, according to seven confidential cables dated 2009, which were among the thousands of documents released by Wikileaks.

Despite McKinley’s serious allegations of drug corruption against Peruvian army officers fighting in the VRAE, Peru’s main cocaine-producing region, just eight months later, on Nov. 25, 2009, the ambassador himself asked the chief of the U.S. Southern Command for greater aid to the Peruvian army in its fight against Sendero.

The cable, addressed to Commander Douglas M. Fraser, who was preparing to visit Lima in the first week of December 2009, stated that “Your visit affords an opportunity to underscore USG (U.S. government) interest in supporting the GOP’s (government of Peru) efforts to combat these threats in the several discrete areas where we are best positioned to help.

“The key word, however, is ‘supporting’,” the ambassador stressed. “In this context, the GOP needs to develop a more effective political/military strategy for turning the tide against a reemerging SL (Sendero Luminoso) increasingly intertwined with drug trafficking.”

According to other cables from McKinley, the equipment sought by the Peruvian armed forces included helicopters with electronic surveillance system capabilities, technology to detect and destroy the insurgents’ home-made explosive devices, and infrared cameras and night vision equipment.

Peru received 56.4 million dollars in military and police aid in 2006, making it the second biggest recipient in Latin America after Colombia, which received nearly 582 million dollars, according to Just the Facts, a joint project of the Centre for International Policy, the Latin America Working Group Education Fund, and the Washington Office on Latin America that offers “a civilian’s guide to U.S. defence and security assistance to Latin America and the Caribbean”.

For the 2011 budget, Washington has set the aid for Peru at 44.7 million dollars, a substantial reduction. This South American country is now in third place for such funds in the region, after Colombia (351 million dollars) and Mexico (147.9 million dollars).

“We don’t tell the United States how it should fight in Afghanistan,” said retired admiral Jorge Montoya, a former commander of Peru’s joint chiefs of staff. “In any case, if the United States wants to intervene in the war against Sendero Luminoso, it should make that clear. They only cooperate in the fight against drug trafficking.

“The military combat Sendero Luminoso with all the available resources, which often fall short, and in terrible, adverse conditions, and we are going to defeat them with our own means. We don’t need intervention by the U.S. military,” he told IPS.

Montoya, who is now an adviser to Defence Minister Jaime Thorne, said he shared the U.S. concern for the results of the conflict.

“It is a very complicated war against a fanatical ideological organisation that operates in a remote geographical area with which it is highly familiar because it has been there for years. But as far as I know, the United States has not set a deadline, and shouldn’t, because we are a sovereign country.”

In the Mar. 12, 2009 cable, McKinley also notes that under the government of Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000), government officials cooperating with the United States in the fight against drugs at the same time received payoffs to cooperate with drug traffickers.

“Former President Alberto Fujimori’s (1990-2000) intelligence chief Vladimiro Montesinos, for example, collaborated with top army and other security officials to develop a web of protection for favoured drug traffickers while cooperating with U.S. officials to combat others,” McKinley wrote.

He did not mention that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) financed an anti-narcotics unit organised by Montesinos in the notorious National Intelligence Service (SIN), despite reports of the involvement by Fujimori’s eminence grise in corruption, drug trafficking and human rights violations

One of the most powerful Peruvian druglords of the 1990s, Demetrio Chávez, testified in court that he paid 50,000 dollars a month in bribes to Montesinos and several army officers.

Nevertheless, the Peruvian courts have not yet managed to specifically find Montesinos — who is in prison on numerous human rights and corruption charges — guilty of drug trafficking. Nor has any member of the military high command from the years when Montesinos was the power behind the throne been sentenced.

“It is pitiable that Peruvian democracy has not yet been able to convict Montesinos for his ties with drug trafficking,” José Robles, a former army officer who is an analyst of military affairs at the non-governmental Freedom and Democracy Institute (IDL), told IPS.

“However, we cannot generalise about cases of corruption that may exist,” he added. “The majority of military personnel have returned to their roots, to the training they received. Those who believe that just because someone wears a uniform, he will behave in a ‘Montesinista’ fashion, are mistaken.”

Excerpt:

By Ángel Páez
LIMA, Nov 18 2010 (IPS)

A prosecutor in Peru clarified that Wong Ho Wing, a Chinese businessman in prison in this country since 2008 on charges of customs tax fraud, will not be released despite an Inter-American Commission on Human Rights decision to accept his case, which was filed to prevent his extradition to China, where he could face the death penalty.

“The fact that the IACHR has declared the Chinese citizen’s case admissible does not mean it has ruled in his favour,” said prosecutor Delia Muñoz, a Justice Ministry official who specialises in supranational law.

But Luis Lamas, Wong’s defence lawyer, argues that the IACHR decision indicates that Peruvian authorities, under pressure from Beijing to extradite the Chinese national, infringed on his rights.

According to the recently approved IACHR report No. 151/10, if the Peruvian state extradites Wong, it would be jeopardising his right to life, integrity and personal liberty, which are protected by the American Convention on Human Rights.

The document also states that Wong has exhausted all available legal remedies in Peru to avoid extradition, and that when the Peruvian courts approved China’s extradition request, numerous procedural irregularities were committed.

Lamas told IPS that “We filed a habeas corpus petition against extradition, which is prohibited by the constitution when the life of the person in question is in danger, because for the Peruvian government a mere promise by the Chinese authorities that my client would not be executed was deemed sufficient.

“They tried to overcome the obstacle to the extradition of a person who faces charges that carry the death penalty by means of a simple document in which the Chinese justice system promised not to sentence Wong Ho Wing to death,” he said.

“But how can credence be given to the word of authorities from a country where the norm is precisely to execute those guilty of serious crimes, such as the one my client is accused of?” Lamas wondered.

According to London-based rights watchdog Amnesty International, China is a world leader in executions.

“The Chinese authorities…while stating that their overall goal is to reduce the use of the death penalty, continue to use executions to demonstrate that activities deemed to be harmful to social stability will be treated harshly,” Amnesty states in its report “Death Sentences and Executions 2009”.

In report 151/10 approved in a Nov. 1 session in Washington, D.C., where the IACHR is based, the Commission urged the Peruvian state and Wong to reach a friendly settlement.

If they fail to do so, the path will be open for the IACHR to refer the case to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, based in San José, Costa Rica.

The IACHR and the Court are the human rights bodies of the Organisation of American States (OAS).

Lamas said his client is willing to reach a friendly settlement with the Peruvian government, to avoid going to trial.

“The only thing the Chinese citizen wants is not to be extradited, that’s all,” he said. “If the state does not accept, it will have to face a trial in the Court in San José and a possible reparations payment of millions of dollars.”

Muñoz, the prosecutor, did not say whether the Peruvian government would accept a friendly settlement because, she said, the IACHR resolution would first be evaluated, before a pronouncement is made. In the meantime, Wong will stay in jail.

“The case won’t go to the Inter-American Court yet,” Muñoz said. “What the Commission indicates is that the measures adopted with respect to the Chinese citizen should be complied with, and that he should remain in prison.”

Wong, a businessman who was living in Lima with his wife and two young daughters, was arrested at the airport in the Peruvian capital on Oct. 27, 2008 as he was about to leave the country.

He faces charges in China of money laundering and bribery as well as customs tax fraud, a capital crime under Chinese law. The crimes were allegedly committed in Hong Kong between 1996 and 1998.

The Peruvian authorities were acting on an international arrest warrant issued by Interpol at the request of China’s Public Security Ministry.

Wong, who is being held at the Sarita Colonia maximum security prison, near the airport, has filed two habeas corpus petitions.

An appeal of habeas corpus safeguards a person’s fundamental rights to life and liberty against acts or omissions of the judicial system that could cause the person harm.

But only this week is the Constitutional Court getting ready to pronounce itself on the first petition, brought a year and a half ago.

China’s ambassador in Lima, Zhao Wuyi, met with Justice Ministry and Supreme Court authorities to discuss the state of the extradition process.

Wong’s defence attorney turned to the IACHR when it appeared that extradition was imminent. On Mar. 31, 2009, the Commission issued precautionary measures and asked the Peruvian government to refrain from extraditing him until a decision in the case was reached by the Inter-American human rights bodies.

The authorities in Peru agreed to the request, which triggered angry protests from the Chinese ambassador.

The incident has chilled relations between Lima and Beijing, which were excellent, largely as a result of a free trade agreement signed in April 2009.

In late May, the Inter-American Court issued provisional measures to protect Wong, and ordered the Peruvian state not to hand him over to China until Dec. 17, to give the IACHR time to issue its decision.

Provisional measures are used by the Inter-American Court to prevent irreparable harm to the rights and freedoms of persons who are in a situation of extreme gravity and urgency, including aliens under orders of deportation or extradition and those sentenced to capital punishment.

The recent IACHR decision to accept Wong’s case could further cool bilateral relations because the government of Alan García will have to wait for the case to make its way through the OAS human rights bodies.

Excerpt:

By Ángel Páez
LIMA, Nov 11 2010 (IPS)

The triumph of a left-wing candidate, Gregorio Santos, as governor of the region of Cajamarca, one of Peru’s richest mining areas, has raised concern among mining companies operating there in a climate of tension and conflicts with local communities.

“This is devastating news. Santos is known for his anti-mining stance,” Hans Flury, president of the National Mining, Oil and Energy Society (SNMPE), the industry’s powerful private business association, told IPS.

Flury says that with Santos, one of the leaders of social movements against mining projects that lacked the approval of local communities, as governor, mining investment in the northern region of Cajamarca could come to a halt.

Under Peruvian law, mining companies must consult local communities and obtain prior approval before conducting any mining operations. But the absence of efficient oversight and controls on the part of the central government, which is concerned about driving away investors, often results in companies ignoring that requirement, thus sparking conflicts with local residents.

“If they comply with the law, they have nothing to be afraid of,” Santos told IPS, in response to Flury’s remarks. “The people voted for me because they trust me and know I will defend their interests. If they didn’t believe that, they would have voted for candidates who support the mining companies.”

Santos, the candidate for the Movimiento de Afirmación Social (MAS), was elected governor of Cajamaraca in the Oct. 3 elections with nearly 31 percent of the vote, well ahead of runner-up Beltina González of the Fuerza Social Cajamarca party, who garnered just 12.8 percent. The winner needed 30 percent to avoid a runoff. Santos’ victory was declared in early November.

Mining corporations had publicly forecast an easy win for another candidate, Absalón Vásquez, a former agriculture minister during the Alberto Fujimori administration (1990-2000). But Vásquez was officially disqualified four weeks prior to the election when it was revealed that he had not served a four-year sentence for corruption handed down by a court in 2007.

Cajamarca is home to South America’s largest gold mine, Yanacocha, operated by a joint venture led by the U.S.-based Newmont Mining Corporation, which has clashed on numerous occasions with local communities.

In 2004, an announcement that gold mining operations would begin on Quilish mountain, which holds an estimated 3.7 million ounces of gold, unleashed a major conflict between the company and the local residents, who feared that mining activities would pollute their water. Santos was one of the more prominent leaders who led the movement against the project, which was eventually suspended.

Originally from a peasant community in the province of San Ignacio and a schoolteacher by profession, Santos began his activism leading peasant groups known as “rondas campesinas,” which are formed by local communities as a way to defend and protect themselves in the absence of proper policing. These groups have also taken on the defence of natural resources, opposing their commercial use without prior consultation of the communities involved.

Of Peru’s 25 regions, Cajamarca receives the most mining tax revenue. In 2006, it ranked first, with 98.7 million dollars in taxes, and from 2008 to 2009 it obtained a total of 116 million dollars. But despite this influx of tax money, the National Statistics Institute (INEI) reports that in that same period, poverty grew by more than two percentage points, from 53.4 to 56 percent.

In 2010, this Andean region, where approximately 33 mining companies operate, took in 115 million dollars in mining tax revenue.

“But it’s not just a question of money,” Santos said. “These funds are distributed poorly, and do not benefit the people. There’s also no capacity to implement projects with the funds. The real problem is that in Cajamarca everything revolves around what mining companies do or fail to do. But very soon this is going to stop.”

For Flury, “the problem with the election of Santos is his ideology…He’s a staunch communist,” he alleged.

The movement represented by Santos in the elections is a coalition of the popular and peasant organisations that participated in the mass mobilisations staged against mining companies accused of committing abuses or polluting the environment.

One of the groups is the National Leftist Movement (MNI), whose backbone is the Maoist Peruvian Communist Party – Patria Roja, formed in 1969.

“Patria Roja, the party Santos belongs to, is an ardent opponent of the mining industry, and that negative attitude is more harmful to the population it represents than it is to anyone else,” Flury said.

“If they insist on opposing mining activities, what they’re going to achieve is that the mining companies operating in the area will be pitted against the regional government in a political standoff, while corporations planning to invest here will decide to take their business elsewhere. And that will be detrimental to the population, because it’ll mean no wealth will be generated for development.”

The major foreign mining companies that operate in Cajamarca, besides Newmont, include the South Africa-based Gold Fields and British mining giant Anglo American.

“The mining industry in Cajamarca has a well-known track record of human rights violations and environmental abuse, of keeping local peasant communities in extreme poverty, and of using the state as their repressive arm; in sum, these companies have a long history of getting their way by force and wrongful means,” Santos said.

Santos was referring, among other things, to the government’s 2004 approval of an environmental assessment study for gold mining operations on Quilish mountain, which was carried out without consulting the local community. Another example is the case of a Brazilian company that employed common criminals to stifle protests by local villagers.

“Of course we’re in favour of investment by the mining industry, but the companies can’t ride roughshod over local people, we can’t allow them to pollute the environment, they must respect the peasant communities. If they comply with the law, the corporations have nothing to worry about,” the governor-elect said.

According to the latest report by the ombudsman’s office, as of September the Cajamarca region had the highest level of conflicts over social and environmental issues in Peru.

According to José de Echave, head of CooperAcción, a local social development organisation, Santos’ election is a manifestation of the will of the people, who through their vote have chosen a representative they can trust as a valid intermediary with mining companies.

“I’ve heard mining business representatives complaining about his election. But I think that, contrary to what they believe, Santos will improve relations between the communities he represents and the firms that operate in Cajamarca,” he said.

“Santos won’t make things worse; he’ll act as a guarantee to agreements between the local population and the companies,” he told IPS.

“Besides, the campaign in Cajamarca was not based on ideology, as some members of the business community say. There would still be environmental problems if one of the other candidates had been elected. Even if the candidate backed by the mining industry association had won, it would not have put an end to differences between local communities and mining companies,” de Echave said.

Excerpt:

By Ángel Páez
LIMA, Nov 3 2010 (IPS)

A U.S. appeals court has given the green light to the extradition to Peru of retired Peruvian army officer Telmo Hurtado, who fled to Miami in 2002 to escape trial for the Aug. 14, 1985 massacre of 69 people in the southern Andean village of Accomarca.

Telmo Hurtado as a young man, and in a current snapshot. Credit: Courtesy of La República newspaper

When his first habeas corpus application was denied, Hurtado appealed the decision. But his appeal has now been rejected by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, which has jurisdiction in the southeastern state of Florida where he is living.

A three-judge panel handed down the verdict Oct. 27, a copy of which was seen by IPS Tuesday. The court ruled that Peru’s request for the arrest and extradition of Hurtado is valid under the extradition treaty between Peru and the United States, signed Jul. 25, 2001.

Confirmation of Hurtado’s extradition came just a few days before the start of a trial in Peru, this Thursday, of 29 former members of the armed forces for one of the worst massacres perpetrated in the 1980-2000 counterinsurgency war against the Maoist Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) guerrillas.

Hurtado was arrested in Miami in April 2007 by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents for lying on his visa application, claiming that he had no criminal record.

His luck ran out in March 2008, when a federal judge in Miami ordered him to pay 37 million dollars in reparations to two survivors of the attack on Accomarca, and recommended his extradition to face criminal charges in Lima.

“I want to look him in the eye and hear him tell the whole truth,” Emiliano Quispe, head of the Association of Relatives of the Victims of Political Violence in Accomarca, told IPS.

“He says murdering those people was his own initiative,” said Quispe, whose mother María Baldeón and 30 of his other relatives died at the hands of the military patrol unit commanded by Hurtado. “That’s a lie. Nobody did anything off their own bat in those days. Everyone was acting under orders from above. Hurtado is protecting his superior officers.

“At last, the time has come for justice. I am grateful to the U.S. court for sending Telmo Hurtado back so that he can be punished as he deserves,” Quispe said.

Karim Ninaquispe, the lawyer representing relatives of the Accomarca victims, said the last step is for U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to sign the extradition order.

“As I understand it, no further appeals are possible, and Hurtado should be surrendered immediately to the Peruvian authorities to face trial,” she said.

“The prosecution has asked for a mandatory 25-year prison sentence, without parole, for Hurtado and a score of other defendants,” she said.

According to the U.S. appeals court ruling, Hurtado argued that he should not be extradited because the Peruvian state has already tried him for his part in the Accomarca massacre.

In 1992, a military court in Peru sentenced him to six years in prison for abuse of authority, in connection with the massacre, which he described in detail at the time. But he was acquitted of murder charges.

However, Hurtado, who has been dubbed “the Butcher of the Andes”, was never jailed. And in 1995 he was pardoned under an amnesty issued by the government of Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000) for members of the military who had been sentenced or were facing prosecution for human rights violations.

In November 2000, when human rights trials were reopened, Hurtado fled to Miami, where he had relatives.

“The verdict is important, because one of the few reasons the court might have had for blocking Hurtado’s extradition was if it believed he really could be in danger in Peru, but it did not take this view,” Jo-Marie Burt, a political science professor at George Mason University who has researched trials for crimes against humanity in Peru, told IPS.

“Now Hurtado has 30 days to file an appeal, but my sources say he probably will not do so. After this period, the Department of Justice will apply for a certificate of extradition from Secretary of State Clinton. If she signs it, Hurtado can then be put on a plane to Lima straight away to stand trial,” Burt said.

Hurtado argued that the extradition treaty between Peru and the United States should not apply to him, because his case is not specifically defined as extraditable.

However, the court ruled: “There is no need to look beyond the written words of the text (of the extradition treaty), as Hurtado suggests, because the language is not ambiguous. As a result, we conclude that the extradition treaty does not bar Hurtado’s extradition to Peru.”

Ten of the 29 members of the armed forces facing charges for the Accomarca massacre are still at large.

A former soldier, Francisco Marcañaupa, testified in 2008 that the Accomarca villagers were all rounded up in one small house. “They didn’t shoot or do anything to us, and all of a sudden I saw Lieutenant Telmo Hurtado opening fire on them, then he threw in a grenade, and smoke starting coming out of the house.”

Another former soldier, José Contreras, said the order was to leave no survivors or witnesses. “After Hurtado put all the people in one house, he tossed in a grenade. But since they didn’t all die, he started to finish them off with his gun, and ordered that the house be burnt down.”

“We will attend all the trial hearings to see that the law is strictly enforced,” said Quispe, of the Association of Relatives of the Victims. “Our people have been suffering since the massacre perpetrated by the ‘Butcher of the Andes’. Twenty-five years have gone by, and the trial is just beginning.

“Many of the people of Accomarca have had to move to Lima, because they cannot bear to live in the place where their parents, brothers, sisters, and cousins were killed. The victims were unarmed elderly men, women and children,” he said.

“Hurtado’s hour is at hand. Now it is time for justice. And the day he is finally sentenced, we will have peace in our hearts,” he concluded.

Excerpt:

By Ángel Páez
LIMA, Oct 28 2010 (IPS)

When Susana Villarán is sworn in as mayor of the Peruvian capital on Jan. 1, she will face tough challenges, such as a meagre budget for public works, 1.5 million city residents without clean water and a mismanaged nutritional supplement programme.

Susana Villarán waves to supporters after rival concedes defeat. Credit: Courtesy of La República

The electoral authorities have carried out a recount of nearly one million votes in response to challenges brought mainly by Flores’s National Unity alliance.

Villarán ended up winning by an extremely narrow margin of less than one percentage point, after emerging as the big surprise in the Oct. 3 regional and municipal elections, which pulled the country’s democratic left out of the electoral cellar to which it had been consigned for the last 23 years.

The 61-year-old candidate identifies herself as part of the modern, liberal left, with deep roots in social concerns, while the alliance she represents, Social Force (FS), is working to present an image of a centrist political force removed from radical ideologies.

The delay caused by the recount, which has not yet been completed, has hindered the transition from the Lima government of centre-right Mayor Luis Castañeda (2003-2010), who resigned on Oct. 11 to run in the April 2011 presidential elections.

Gustavo Guerra, political coordinator for the FS, complained that the delay in declaring Villarán the winner kept her from accessing information on the Lima city budget, which totalled 56 million dollars this year.

“We know the city’s financial resources are limited and absolutely insufficient,” Guerra told IPS.

Villarán meant to “take part in planning the budget for 2011,” but the delay blocked her from “having a voice” in the process.

The candidate, who was Peru’s minister of social development in 2000-2001, will be the first elected woman mayor of Lima and the second leftist to govern the capital, after socialist Mayor Alfonso Barrantes (1984-1987).

Guerra announced that Castañeda’s two terms as mayor of Lima will be closely scrutinised by the new administration. “On our agenda, we have six cases to investigate, which are of concern to us because they considerably compromise the city’s funds,” he said.

Of these “matters that have not been clarified,” he mentioned, for instance, “the construction of the public transit system known as ‘El Metropolitano’, the garbage collection contract granted to the Relima company, and the payment of an enormous debt to a dummy company.”

Abel Cruz, the president of the organisation Peruanos Sin Agua (Peruvians Without Water), said Villarán’s big challenge will be to get the water and sewage company that serves the capital transferred from the central government to the Lima city government.

“There are one and a half million people in the Peruvian capital who are not connected to the water network,” he told IPS. “The great majority of them are poor and live in districts on the outskirts of the city.”

The Water for All programme launched by the centre-right government of Alan García “has been more effective in political, than social, terms,” Cruz said.

The García administration has invested 5.1 million dollars in the programme, to bring clean water to just 35,000 people. “Villarán should depoliticise the programme and make it a municipal strategy, in order to address the most urgent needs.”

Villarán’s campaign focused on social programmes to meet the serious needs of the sprawling squatter settlements surrounding Lima, which is home to roughly 30 percent of Peru’s 29 million people.

Among her plans is an additional 37-dollar monthly cash grant for food to each beneficiary of the “Glass of Milk” Programme (PVL), a nutritional scheme that targets children under six, pregnant and nursing women, the elderly and the ill, and reaches 4.8 million people around the country.

Flores, Villarán’s rival, was opposed to the plan on the grounds that it was impossible to carry out due to a lack of funds.

But the head of the PVL in Lima, Ivonne Tapia, backs the initiative, although she said that in order to implement it, the new mayor will have to overhaul the programme and put it under scrutiny, in order to root out corruption in the system of purchases and solve the distribution problems it suffers.

Under the law that created the PVL, municipal governments are in charge of administering the programme. The Lima city government is actually only responsible for 19,000 of the 2.84 million beneficiaries in the 43 districts into which the capital is divided.

But the government of the Lima metropolitan area “can spearhead a series of changes that would be very important for the programme,” Tapia said. She cited, for example, improving the quality of the products distributed, meeting the requirement of 207 kilocalories per person, verifying the beneficiaries, and taking action against officials and companies involved in shady dealings.

She also called for an increase in PVL funds, which were cut in 2010 to 30.9 million dollars, 6.2 million dollars less than last year, despite the fact that it is Peru’s largest social programme.

The PVL was an initiative, in fact, of former mayor Barrantes, and was initially organised by Villarán in the 1980s before it was expanded to the rest of the country.

Another challenge lies in the fact that while Flores’s National Unity alliance won the office of mayor in 15 of Lima’s 43 districts, Villarán’s FS only won in the metropolitan area. As a result, as soon as Flores conceded defeat, Villarán invited opposition mayors to engage in cooperation and consensus-building to run the capital.

The National Unity city councillors and district mayors “will have a decisive influence on Villarán’s administration,” analyst Carlos Reyna said.

The veteran social activist will also have to govern alongside district mayors from other opposition parties. For that reason, she has called on the rest of the mayors to work together, and cooperate. “It will not be easy for her to govern Lima,” Reyna said.

But Guerra is upbeat. “I doubt the National Unity mayors will oppose Villarán. They will try to get along with her, to resolve the problems in their districts,” he predicted.

The Lima metropolitan city government and the municipal governments of the rest of the districts in the capital “need each other, to negotiate with the central government. There is no other way to do things,” he said.

Excerpt:

By Ángel Páez
LIMA, Oct 15 2010 (IPS)

Poor, rural, Quechua-speaking women in the Peruvian province of Anta who were victims of a forced sterilisation programme between 1996 and 2000 have filed a new lawsuit in their continuing struggle for justice.

Members of Anta Women's Association heading to a meeting. Credit: Courtesy of Pierre Yves Gimet

But the plaintiffs in the case had brought accusations of genocide and torture, which as crimes against humanity have no statute of limitation. The attorney-general’s office upheld Schwartz’s decision, overruling the complaint lodged against it by the victims and the human rights organisations providing them with legal advice.

Now the Women’s Association of Forced Sterilisation Victims of Anta, a mountainous province in the southern department of Cuzco, has decided to combat impunity with a new strategy: it is presenting a new lawsuit against those responsible for family planning policy in the last four years of the Fujimori regime.

The Association’s approximately 100 members are rural women whose testimonies have revealed the hidden side of the National Programme for Reproductive Health and Family Planning, imposed by coercion and deceit under the guise of an anti-poverty plan.

Sabina Huillca, 41, told IPS: “I remember perfectly the day they sterilised me against my will, because what they did to me made me suffer ever since. It was August 24, 1996,” she said, trying to keep her voice calm.

She is one of the witnesses who will testify before the justice authorities against those who devised and implemented the programme.

“After giving birth to my fourth daughter, I went to the Izcuchaca health centre to see the doctor. He told me not to have any more children and to have voluntary surgical contraception (VSC),” she said.

“I told him ‘No’. ‘You’re silly’, he said, ‘you will have more children and you won’t be able to raise them’.” While she lay resting on a bed, a nurse gave her an injection. “I didn’t know, and no one told me, that it was an anaesthetic,” she said.

“When I woke up, my hands and feet were tied to the bed with bandages. I was immobilised. I could see them finishing off some stitches. ‘What have you done to me!'” I shouted.

“‘We’re nearly done,’ the doctor said, and I started to cry. ‘I don’t want this, I don’t want this!’ I shouted in despair. But the damage was already done,” said Huillca, who was 28 years old at the time.

“Nada personal” (Nothing Personal), a 1998 report by human rights lawyer and activist Giulia Tamayo, commissioned by the Peruvian section of the Latin American and Caribbean Committee for the Defence of Women’s Rights (CLADEM), describes the coercive nature of the VSC programme.

The study documented for the first time the systematic use of sterilisation practices that particularly targeted poor, indigenous, rural women.

As a result of the publication, Tamayo received threats from the government. She had to leave the country and went to live in Spain, but has now returned to Peru to advise the Anta Women’s Association on the new lawsuit.

The Peruvian state has admitted that 300,000 sterilisations were performed under the VSC programme. The ombudsman’s office has collected direct testimony from 2,074 women who were sterilised without their consent between 1996 and 2000.

“The power structures that protected the authors of criminal acts are still in place, guaranteeing their impunity up to the present day. This means that the rights of women who suffered from mass forced sterilisation continue to be violated,” Tamayo told IPS.

In 2003, the Peruvian state signed a friendly settlement agreement before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) in the case of Mamérita Mestanza, who died in 1998 as a result of a poorly performed tubal ligation procedure done without her consent.

The state acknowledged its responsibility, recognised the abuses committed under the family planning programme, undertook to investigate and bring to trial the government officials who devised and implemented the campaign, and promised to pay reparations to Mestanza’s family.

But the attorney-general’s office dragged its feet on the promised investigation, which made little progress before it was shelved by the public prosecutor in 2009. Meanwhile Alejandro Aguinaga, one of the accused, a former health minister and personal physician to Fujimori, was elected to Congress in 2006 and is now vice president of the legislature.

Fujimori is in prison for 25 years, convicted of several charges of corruption and human rights violations.

The state’s failure to carry out this part of the friendly agreement “is prolonging the pain of thousands of victims, because the accused are carrying on as respectable members of society when they really should be called to account in the courts,” said Tamayo, who is also a researcher for the Spanish chapter of the global rights watchdog Amnesty International.

“This time, those responsible for the forced sterilisation plan will be sued individually for crimes against humanity and torture,” she said.

Each of the accused will also be charged “for war crimes, because the coerced sterilisation was carried out in the context of the 1980-2000 armed conflict (between the military and leftwing guerrillas), when the armed forces were used to threaten and terrorise” the civilian population, Tamayo said.

Specifying international crimes (which include crimes against humanity, genocide, torture and war crimes) will allow “other countries to prosecute the accused, if the Peruvian state continues to protect them,” she said.

“The IACHR has already indicated that forced sterilisation is a matter of international law,” the rights activist said.

Tamayo said the lawsuit will be brought by the victims in Anta, because in that province “sterilisation was implemented door to door, the health authorities were given ‘quotas’ of sterilised women that they were required to meet, and all the victims belonged to the same indigenous ethnic group.”

This shows that “those who designed the programme defined its targets with abominable precision,” Tamayo said.

One of the first to take up the fight for justice in the case of coerced sterilisations was the now famous Quechua-speaking lawmaker Hilaria Supa, a native of Anta, one of whose daughters is a victim of the VSC programme.

“Since the operation, to this day, I have suffered because of what was done to me by force,” said Huillca, who lives in the rural village of Huayllaccocha, where several other cases of forced sterilisation have been documented.

“They damaged me as a woman. After that I was not able to pick up my small children, or work in the fields, which our livelihood depends on. I can’t even cook, because I get terrible pains,” she said, describing little-known consequences borne by the victims.

“I have difficulty walking; my life is full of suffering. Furthermore, in the community I am treated as second-rate, because in the village a woman who does not work is very much looked down on,” she continued, no longer able to hide her sadness.

“The worst of it all is that one of the doctors who damaged me for life is still working in the Izcuchaca health centre,” she said. “Every time I see him I feel furious, because nothing has happened to him.”

Excerpt:

By Ángel Páez
LIMA, Oct 4 2010 (IPS)

“My son Javier received eight bullets, one for each year of his life. That pain can’t be erased by a sentence,” Rosa Rojas, who lost her husband and young son in the 1991 Barrios Altos massacre in Peru, told IPS.

Vladimiro Montesinos entering the courtroom. Credit: Courtesy of the La República newspaper.

Former President Alberto Fujimori’s (1990-2000) intelligence chief Vladimiro Montesinos and then army commander Nicolás Hermoza — the two most powerful men in the Fujimori regime, after the president — were sentenced to 25 years for authorising the creation of a secret commando that killed 25 people.

Retired generals Julio Salazar, former head of the National Intelligence Service (SIE), and Juan Rivero, former head of the Army Intelligence Directorate (DINTE), were also handed a 25-year sentence.

Santiago Martin Rivas, the army major who headed the death squad known as the “Colina Group”, and major Carlos Pichilingüe, his right-hand man, were sentenced to 25 years as well.

On Apr. 7, 2009, Fujimori himself received a 25-year sentence for ordering the killings by the death squad.

Montesinos pleaded innocent of all charges, but during the trial it was proven that he directly coordinated the murders with Rivas.

In 2006, Montesinos received a 20-year sentence for his participation in smuggling weapons to Colombia’s FARC guerrillas, in 1999. However, under Peruvian law sentences cannot be served consecutively.

Judge Inés Villa concluded that 19 former senior officers and agents planned and carried out the Nov. 3, 1991 massacre of 15 civilians at a barbecue in the Lima neighbourhood of Barrios Altos; the May 2, 1992 killings of nine peasant farmers in the village of El Santa, six hours north of Lima; and the Jun. 24, 1992 murder of opposition journalist Pedro Yauri.

According to the sentence read out in the Callao Naval Base, where the trial was held for security reasons, the government of Fujimori ordered the creation of an “elite commando” of Army Intelligence Service agents to carry out reprisals after attacks by the Shining Path Maoist guerrillas.

The court determined that none of the victims in the three incidents in question were members of the Shining Path — the argument used by the military officers’ defence attorneys to justify the killings.

In the case of the Barrios Altos massacre, it was later reported that the killers actually went to the wrong address, and slaughtered a group of people who were not suspects.

“We are satisfied with the sentences, but we aren’t happy. Nothing will relieve the pain we carry inside,” said Rojas, whose 31-year-old husband, Manuel Ríos, and eight-year-old son Jesús Ríos were among the Barrios Altos victims. “But finally justice has been done. It took years, but at last it has happened.

“Manuel and I made a living selling sweets. Javier was our oldest son. We also had two daughters. I was there the day the murderers came in and shot the victims. They were very cruel.”

For the killings of nine students and a professor from the university of La Cantuta, committed by the same death squad on Jul. 18, 1992, a group of agents were convicted two years ago, and others are still facing prosecution.

The actual members of the death squad were sentenced to between 15 and 20 years in prison for the Barrios Altos and El Santa massacres and the murder of Pedro Yauri.

The lawyer representing the families of the Barrios Altos victims, Gloria Cano of the APRODEH human rights association, said she was satisfied by the sentence in general terms, although she questioned some aspects.

“We do not agree with the acquittal of retired colonel Víctor Silva Mendoza, former head of the Army Intelligence Service,” she told IPS. “He was in charge of the logistics and weapons supplies for the group that committed the murders. We are going to request that the ruling with respect to Silva be annulled.”

Cano also said that some of the agents of the death squad invoked the legal benefits offered in exchange for a full confession, and their sentences were reduced from 25 to 15 years or less.

“We do not see their confessions as complete, because the former agents that took part in the murders of journalist Pedro Yauri and the nine campesinos from El Santa did not reveal the location of the graves where the bodies were buried,” Cano said.

“As long as the bodies are missing, the families will continue suffering. They did not deserve a reduction in their sentences because they have not told the whole truth,” she added.

The sentencing was scheduled for Friday morning, but the court suspended it because Montesinos and the members of the military on trial sang the army hymn, in open defiance of the justice system.

The hearing was rescheduled for Friday afternoon, and Montesinos took advantage of the presence of reporters to be photographed with his books “Sin Sendero, Alerta Temprana” (No Shining Path, Early Warning) and “Espionaje chileno” (Chilean Espionage).

In the court room, Jesús Sosa, a former member of the Colina death squad, held up his fist and gave cheers for the army.

During the trial, the accused justified the crimes under the argument that they were “at war against terrorism.”

Rojas said that since her husband and son were killed, she has not only suffered grief as well as rage over the lack of justice, but also harassment and threats from the military, who attempted to force her to keep silent.

“As a witness, I was inconvenient for them. They tried several times to hurt me and my daughters. There were many intolerable years, but we have managed to live to see justice done,” she said.

“But I can’t say I’m happy, because although those who are responsible are going to pay with 25 years in prison, they will receive the affection of their parents, wives and children, while I no longer have my husband or my son. I will never be able to feel their love. No sentence will bring them back to life for us,” she said.

Eleven former members of the military were acquitted on different grounds, and several of those who were sentenced after the long, tortuous trial announced that they would appeal. Now it is up to the Supreme Court to uphold, modify or overturn the sentence.

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By Ángel Páez
LIMA, Sep 30 2010 (IPS)

Centre-left candidate Susana Villarán has unexpectedly surged ahead of her centre-right rival Lourdes Flores in the polls to become the front-runner in the race for Sunday’s elections for mayor in the Peruvian capital.

In mid-July, Villarán had just four percent ratings in the polls, while Flores was breathing easy with 37 percent support, according to the Public Opinion Institute (IOP) of the private Pontifical Catholic University of Peru.

But in the latest IOP survey, published Sept. 25, Villarán had climbed to 46 percent, leaving behind Flores with just 21 support.

Two other polls also showed Villarán ahead: Ipsos-Apoyo reported that she had 40 percent backing compared to Flores’s 28 percent, and Datum reported 34.4 percent against 26.7 percent, respectively.

If the 61-year-old Villarán wins on Sunday, she will become the second leftist mayor ever to govern Lima, after Marxist labour lawyer Alfonso Barrantes won the municipal elections 27 years ago representing the now-defunct United Left (IU) coalition.

Villarán, who formed part of Barrantes’ team, is the Lima candidate for the Social Force Party, founded in 2007 by regional groups and movements that joined together with the Social Democracy Party (PDS), for which she ran as president in 2006, taking just 0.6 percent of the vote.

“The United Left was the result of 25 years of organisational effort to bring together the fragmented forces of the left,” said Michael Azcueta, who was IU mayor of Villa El Salvador, a low-income district of Lima, at the same time Barrantes was mayor of the capital.

In other words, the IU represented the coming together of most of the left-wing parties and movements that were forged during the 1968-1980 military regime.

“Social Force, on the other hand, represents a proposal by one sector of the left, the possibility of a party that has revived the hopes of one part of the left,” he told IPS. “They are different things. But it is clear that there is no unity among the left.”

The last debate between Villarán and Flores, of the conservative Christian Popular Party-National Unity, was on Monday. The two candidates had a similar take on the most pressing concerns, like public safety, transportation and basic services.

But in the debate, Flores launched a frontal attack on Villarán, alleging that she was a communist sympathiser of the Maoist Shining Path guerrillas.

Flores, in sharp contrast with Villarán, is backed by most of the media, which have given particularly heavy coverage to accusations against the centre-left candidate.

“The campaign against Villarán does not appear to have been effective in virtually any sector of society,” political science professor Eduardo Dargent told IPS. “Her popularity in the lowest-income sectors has clearly grown steadily, despite the barrage of criticism aimed at her.

“These fear-mongering messages have been addressed to the popular sectors, but it is in precisely those parts of society that Villarán’s support base has grown,” said Dargent, author of the 2009 book “Demócratas precarios. Élites y debilidad democrática en el Perú y América Latina” (roughly, “Precarious Democrats: Elites and Democratic Weakness in Peru and Latin America”).

Flores, a 50-year-old lawyer who has the support of the business community, has run for president twice without success. In 2001, she was defeated by Alejandro Toledo (2001-2005), and in 2006 she ended up in third place after nationalist candidate Ollanta Humala and social democrat Alan García (2006-2010), who won in the second round.

Villarán also benefited from the electoral authorities’ Aug. 23 decision to disqualify popular conservative candidate Alex Kouri because he lied about his address and is not actually a resident of Lima, but lives in the nearby port city of El Callao.

Kouri, who was the front-runner in the polls, is seen as close to former President Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000) and his former security chief Vladimiro Montesinos, both of whom are in prison on multiple charges of corruption and human rights abuses.

Because of the taint of Kouri’s association with them, Flores campaigned as the candidate “against corruption and the ‘fujimontesinista’ mafia.”

But things shifted when Kouri left the race.

“The municipal elections show that due to the weakness or absence of political parties, things can change very quickly,” said Steven Levitsky, a professor of government at Harvard and visiting professor at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru.

“People don’t have party loyalty — they just vote for the candidates,” he told IPS.

“Three months ago, a lot of people were going to vote for Lourdes Flores, not because they particularly agreed with her, but because she was the only one capable of beating Alex Kouri. When Kouri was disqualified, the equation changed completely. Without Kouri, the anti-Fujimori electorate had some freedom of choice.”

Some analysts see the race for mayor of Lima as a kind of rehearsal for the April 2011 presidential elections. But Levitsky said that what happens in the municipal elections will not influence next year’s polls.

“I don’t think the outcome of the municipal elections will have much of an impact on the presidential vote,” he said. “It will be the same, even if Villarán wins. The vote for her is not a leftist vote, it’s just a vote for Villarán, for a candidate who has struck a chord among voters because she seems honest and capable. It doesn’t mean a resurgence of the left, nor would it help Humala.”

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By Ángel Páez
LIMA, Sep 27 2010 (IPS)

The nations of Latin America must ally themselves — regardless of their roles as drug producers, consumers or transit routes — in a full-force fight against drug trafficking, says Peru, which plans to lead the way.

Preparing for the regional anti-drug summit. Credit: Courtesy of DEVIDA

Rómulo Pizarro, head of Peru’s National Commission for Drug-Free Development and Life (DEVIDA), told IPS that the meeting delegates would analyse all areas of the fight against organised crime groups dedicated to the illicit drug trade.

“While we sit down to discuss how to confront narco-trafficking, the criminal organisations continue to transform incredibly quickly, sometimes getting ahead of our new strategies,” said Peru’s anti-drug “czar,” in charge of organising the HONLEA event.

“At the meeting we will analyse narco-trafficking as a globalised phenomenon, one that requires a faster response of the same scope. We can no longer focus the fight in terms of drug producer and consumer countries because organised crime does not make those distinctions,” said Pizarro.

“We can’t just look to the United States with respect to defining anti-drug policies, more so because the trends indicate that most of the cocaine production is destined for Europe,” said the DEVIDA director.

“It is the Latin American countries that should shape the plan from our perspective and convene a meeting of combined efforts,” he said.

Experts from non-governmental organisations (NGOs) consulted by IPS go a step further, and argue that the failure of the anti-drugs fight is due precisely to the repressive policies imposed by Washington in Latin America.

Ricardo Soberón, director of the non-governmental Centre for Drugs and Human Rights Research, said that the latest manifestation of that failure is the militarisation of the anti-drug fight in Mexico, which has resulted in massive bloodshed.

“The militarist and interventionist trend” is convenient for the United States, but “is a strategy that has failed in Afghanistan and Colombia,” said Soberón, who is among the growing number of voices in the region which argue that the way towards resolving the problem is to legalise drug consumption.

HONLEA is a United Nations forum that brings together the heads of drug policies from 34 countries in the region, as well as delegates from Canada and United States, and other continents of the world.

The latest report from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) indicates that the number of cocaine users in the world increased from 13.3 million to 17.2 million between 2005 and 2010. The United States and Canada are the only ones to see a decline in cocaine, but other illicit drugs replaced it.

Pizarro explained that until the 1990s, three-quarters of the cocaine produced in Peru was destined for the United States, and most of the rest went to Europe. But the situation has inverted, and now Europe is the biggest market.

“However, most of the anti-narcotics cooperation continues to be from the United States. We need a more decisive contribution from Europe,” said the official.

According to Coletta Youngers, an expert on the issue from the non- governmental Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), the United States has exported its “war on drugs” to Latin America, with the economic assistance and benefits conditioned on the countries’ collaboration in the so- called war.

The U.S. government has provided technical, economic and intelligence assistance for the military and legislation to confront the narcotics trade, but Youngers stressed that it is increasingly clear that those programmes have been a complete failure.

Regional production of poppies for heroin has fallen in the last decade, but production of coca for cocaine remains stable — and high. Apart from its failure in practical terms, the policy imposed by Washington has resulted in “much collateral damage” in the region, which has led the region’s governments to question that approach and seek alternatives, said Youngers.

Pizarro gave assurances that the perspectives of the NGOs would be taken up at the HONLEA meeting. “All of the voices will be heard, because that is the purpose: evaluate, exchange opinions and reach agreements,” he said.

According to the UNOCD, of the 158,800 hectares of coca crops growing in the region, 43 percent are in Colombia, 38 percent in Peru and 19 percent in Bolivia.

Military and police aid from the United States is concentrated in Colombia, a fact that Peru’s President Alan García underscored in a recent interview in the U.S. media, in which he expressed willingness to receive similar assistance from Washington.

García said he was not getting into questions of sovereignty or patriotism, and that if the U.S. wanted to provide access to military training, helicopters and satellites, now is the time. “We are fighting against a universal scourge. It is like chasing a dictator, or a predator of public goods, or an assassin without borders,” he said.

In Soberón’s opinion, in contrast, the decline in U.S. and European cooperation in fighting narco-trafficking provides an opportunity “for an in- depth review of our obligations and our policies.”

The region’s policies “should reflect our priorities, not those of Washington or Brussels,” said the expert.

WOLA’s Youngers believes that García’s desire for Washington’s assistance contradicts a tendency in Latin America towards seeking solutions outside the U.S. shadow, and that this new reality should have an impact on the HONLEA agenda.

“There are countries that continue to rely on Washington to define and finance their drug control programmes, like Peru. However, the regional trend is to seek regional alliances and greater independence from Washington,” she said.

Youngers cited the strength of regional debate on alternative approaches and the fact that countries like Argentina and Ecuador are discussing changes to their drug laws. She stressed that Bolivia has a new coca policy that has been more successful in controlling this drug crop than forced eradication has been.

“In many ways, Latin America is much more advanced than the United States in finding drug policies that are less harmful, more humane and more effective,” she said.

Soberón added yet another element: “Our priority is the 60,000 farmers and their families dedicated to growing coca leaf, not the dictates of Washington.”

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