Posted on 01/26/2010 5:57:00 AM PST by IbJensen
Earlier this month, Peru's Supreme Court rejected the appeal of former President Alberto Fujimori of his 25-year sentence for murder and abduction, reaffirming the principle that no one is above the law. This is but the latest of several triumphs for human rights and accountability in the Andean nation. The United States would do well to study the Peruvian example.
In 1992, the most brutal communist guerrilla group in Latin American history brought dozens of car bombs and political assassinations to Lima. A nation of more than 22 million, with a sophisticated, cosmopolitan capital, seemed unable to counter the threat posed by Shining Path guerrillas, who unabashedly used terror to provoke a genocidal response from the government.
Facing this nightmare, Fujimori panicked, launching a coup against his own government. With the support of the military, he closed down the Congress and the courts. Human rights and counterterrorism were, in his mind, incompatible.
The ``self-coup'' brought an intensification of human-rights violations, from the abduction of a renowned Peruvian journalist to the massacres of university students and others suspected of sympathy with the guerrillas. Hundreds of innocent Peruvians were imprisoned following trials by ``faceless courts,'' so named because the identities of judges and prosecutors, as well as the procedures themselves, were state secrets.
While Fujimori's counterterrorism relied on brutality, a special branch of the national police opted for a different approach, immersing itself in intense study of the guerrillas' beliefs, habits and practices.
For more than three years the elite unit captured Shining Path militants, assiduously following them after their release and scrutinizing thousands of captured documents. Eventually, analysis of the garbage from one house on a quiet street in Lima confirmed that its occupants were high-level Shining Path members, leading to the Sept. 12, 1992, arrest of Shining Path's maximum leader, Abimael Guzmán. It was the beginning of the end of Peru's long nightmare and a stunning victory for dogged, smart and ethical police work.
Does Fujimori deserve credit for the work of the police? Not at all. His resort to death squads and secret courts only played into the hands of the Shining Path, which counted on government repression to win adherents to its cause. It was Peru's equivalent of our FBI, which recognized the futility of torturing prisoners and used more intelligent means of getting reliable information, that brought down the fearsome Shining Path.
In addition to demonstrating the power of determined and ethical police work, Peru has also provided an inspiring example of self-examination after its intense struggle with the Shining Path.
Peru's Museum of the Nation now houses an unusual exhibit -- the photographs and conclusions of its 2003 Truth and Reconciliation Commission report. Here, in plaintive black and white, visitors see 20 years of terror stretched over gray walls of poured concrete. One shows a woman holding for the camera a note she received from her son in prison before he was secretly murdered by the authorities.
An entire room is dedicated to Maria Elena Moyano, one of many community activists murdered by the Shining Path, who subsequently dynamited her body. The truth commission report and photo exhibit lay bare the terrible crimes committed by both sides in the conflict and evoke in observers an intense desire to prevent their repetition.
It's too bad the Bush administration did not study Peru's dismantling of the Shining Path before it embarked on its shameful programs of ``enhanced interrogations,'' waterboarding and ``ghost detainees;'' acts that gave a green light to human-rights abusers around the world, while providing ammunition for al Qaeda recruiters.
Obama has vowed that these abuses have stopped. But the debate over their utility continues. A non-partisan truth commission for the United States, as advocated by Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., would go a long way toward strengthening our newfound commitment to fight terror without betraying our core values.
It is always easy to be a Monday morning quarterback.
I have a Peruvian friend who hates with a passion all communists. It is fascinating to listen to him talk about events in the southern hemisphere, and his fear that America is making the same mistakes that caused so much communist dictated suffering in his and other latin American countries.
How they handled Sendero (intelligence work as cited, military tribunals, special prisons), yes. How they’ve handled Fujimori (read George Bush), no.
Sounds like John Malkovich’s film “The Dancer Upstairs.”
Only Chile was successful in the end in it’s wars against the left. The left believes in vengeance and after those regimes peacefully gave up power to civilians the left manipulated the political system to entrench themselves back in power. They repealed the amnesties and arrangements that brought the civilians back to power in their shortsighted hunger for revenge. The next time there are coups and the right takes over I hope they learn their lessons. Revenge is a two way street, a lesson not easily learned by the retards on the left.
Our constitution is STILL not a suicide pact!!!
This writer is STILL pist over the vote count in Y2K!!!
Fujimori was successful in winning the civil war against the Shining Path, but in the end leftists found another way to defeat him.
Anne Manuel is a demagogue and a fool. The only comparison between Peruvian torture and death squads and the Bush administration’s interrogation of Islamist terrorists exists in the fevered imagination of simpletons such as Manuel who simply fail to understand the kindergarten game of “which one of these is not like the others”.
The more history I read the more I am convinced that Obama plans to lead our great nation down a Sendero Luminoso to the gulags and death camps.
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