By Alejandra Garcia on March 31, 2022
Alberto Fujimori
Over the past two weeks, Peru has been reliving a fear from the past with the distinct possibility of seeing Dictator Alberto Fujimori free again. Thirteen days ago, the country’s Constitutional Court reactivated a 2017 humanitarian pardon granted to him because he was now old and ill. But the victims of his time in office(1990-2000) could not allow it. The pain in them remains.
When the Court announced its decision after a quick and non-transparent session, thousands of people took to the streets still in shock and still not believing the news. Fujimori, who was accused of committing 25 murders during his administration and convicted to 25 years in prison, could be released any moment from the Barbadillo prison in Ate, Peru.
During the protests, the Peruvian people held signs reading, “Corrupt Court,” “Fujimori is a murderer and a dictator,” “No to the pardon.” Peru does not forget nor forgive the crimes he committed during his government, the corruption scandals, the electoral frauds, and the thousands of forced sterilizations against women, especially against poor, peasant, and indigenous women.
The demonstrations began in the capital, Lima, but spread throughout several cities of the country and crossed borders. The relatives of the victims of the massacres in Barrios Altos and La Cantuta asked the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (ICHR) to revoke the Court’s sentence.
“Before the victims’ right to justice is irreparably violated, we urge the Court to take action to prevent a new crime from being committed: that Fujimori goes unpunished,” they urged. Fortunately, the ICHR listened to the Peruvian people’s claims.
Today, the judicial system will comply with the Court’s request to suspend the former president’s release, at least temporarily. For now, Peruvians can breathe a sigh of relief but the struggle continues.
Fujimori Never Again
The night of November 3, 1991, changed Peru’s history forever. A group of armed hooded men burst into the community of Barrios Altos, a popular area of Lima, and fired indiscriminately at the residents who had gathered there to raise funds to repair the building’s sewage system.
The assailants, in charge of carrying out extrajudicial executions under Fujimori’s orders, supposedly mistook the neighbors for members of the Maoist guerrilla group Sendero Luminoso. That night, 15 people were killed and four citizens were wounded.
In July 1992, another action by Fujimori’s hired assassins left 10 dead in the La Cantuta massacre.
Both crimes were human rights violations that years later led to his imprisonment. “Still today some people go around saying we were terrorists when we had nothing to do with Sendero Luminoso,” Rosa Rojas, who lost her husband and 8-year-old son in the massacre, explained to the press.
“Hatred is not going to bring back my husband and my son, so I forgave the assassins years ago,” she added, although neither Fujimori nor anyone else has asked her for forgiveness.
The dictator of Japanese descent has blood on his hands that the passage of time will not be able to erase. He was also responsible for thousands of forced sterilizations of farmers, poor, and Indigenous women as part of a birth reduction plan he implemented, especially in the most vulnerable areas of the country. The stories are heartbreaking.
In 1997, Serafina Ylla Quispe awoke in a hospital morgue in Cuzco, southern Peru, after being declared dead during a sterilization procedure she never agreed to undergo. She was 34 years old at the time.
That same year and in that same hospital, Victoria Huaman, 29 years old, woke up several hours after being forcedly anesthetized without realizing that she had undergone a sterilization procedure. Quispe and Huaman’s stories are as painful as those of thousands of others affected.
Peru has a memory. Before this new situation, the victims of the dictators’ crimes hope that support for their cause will remain strong and that society and the international community will continue to fight for the truth and justice. Fujimori Never Again.
Source: Resumen Latinoamericano – English