Hundreds of guests, including prominent international and local diplomats, businessmen, and government officials, had gathered at the residence of Japan's ambassador, Morihisa Aoki, to celebrate the Japanese emperor's birthday. According to several reports, a handful of MRTA commandos captured the residence, located in the wealthy neighborhood of San Isidro, a suburb of the capital city Lima. The reports said MRTA members rushed over the concrete walls, while others gained access disguised as waiters. The guerrilla fighters called for the release of several hundred of their imprisoned comrades and other demands.
The day after the takeover, the government declared a state of emergency in the capital and the neighboring port of Callao. The measure restricts public meetings and gives the police broader powers to search homes and detain suspects.
Among the 83 people still held hostage, as of December 30, are the ambassadors of Japan, Bolivia, and Honduras. Along with them remain many high-ranking Peruvian officials, including anti-terrorist chief of police Gen. Máximo Rivera and Gen. Guillermo Bobio of the national security police. Five congressmen from Fujimori's party remain hostages, along with the foreign minister, minister of agriculture, a supreme court justice, and others.
During the first hours, the MRTA released women, children and some elderly men, among them the mother and sister of President Fujimori. In subsequent days, scores of ambassadors, business executives, journalists, a Peruvian legislator, and various businessmen were released. One of the last released hostages, Juan Enrique Pendavis, president of the Peruvian Exporters Association, stated, "We were not tortured, either physically or psychologically."
After days of refusing to deal directly with the MRTA, Fujimori's representative, Domingo Palermo, who is the minister of education; the Catholic bishop of Ayacucho, Juan Luis Cipriani, a close friend of Fujimori; and Red Cross representative Michael Minnig met December 28 with the MRTA leader Néstor Cerpa Cartolini, known as Comandante Evaristo, in the occupied residence. After that meeting 20 hostages were released and in a new communiqué MRTA guerrillas reportedly rejected being called terrorists and expressed their willingness to negotiate. They also demanded improvement of the political prisoners' conditions.
Initially the MRTA had demanded, through telephone calls to radio stations, the release of 300 to 500 imprisoned comrades, including the group's top two lieutenants; safe passage for the guerrillas holding the hostages; a "war tax" payment; and an economic program to help Peru's working class.
In a public speech December 21, Fujimori flatly refused to negotiate with the guerrillas and instead demanded that the MRTA rebels put down their arms. "My proposal is concrete: that the captors put down their weapons before a commission of guarantors and that they let the hostages go, without exception. This way, the possibility of the use of force by the Peruvian state will be ruled out."
Washington backs hard stance
U.S. secretary of state Warren Christopher emphasized
Washington's support for Fujimori's position. "The United
States has a strong policy against making any concessions,
and we advise all those involved to follow that policy,"
Christopher said in a news conference. At that time
officials from the U.S. embassy and the Agency for
International Development were among the hostages. The U.S.
government also sent a military contingent, trained in
storming buildings and hostage situations, to Peru.
On the other hand, Japan's foreign minister, Yukihiko Ikeda, met with president Fujimori at the presidential palace December 19 urging the Peruvian President to respect Japan's sovereignty over the residence. No other commentary was given by the Japanese delegation. Under international law, the Peruvian government has jurisdiction over diplomatic facilities, but needs permission from the foreign government to exercise any action on the property.
Since 1990, when Fujimori first took office, Tokyo has provided millions of dollars in loans to the Peruvian government. During a visit to Peru in August by Japanese prime minister Ryutaro Hashimoto, Fujimori, who won reelection in 1995, received a pledge of $600 million in loans. In addition, 24 Japanese corporations have set up operations in Peru. Executives of many of these companies, including Matsushita Electric Industrial, Toyota Motor Corp., and Nissan Motor Corp., were among the hostages in the Japanese ambassador's residence.
History of Túpac Amaru group
The guerrilla group MRTA took its name after Peruvian
rebel José Gabriel Condorcanqui Noguera, Túpac Amaru II,
who led an indigenous insurrection against the Spanish
conquerors in 1780. The group was founded in 1982 by forces
from the Socialist Revolutionary Party - Marxist- Leninist
(PSR-ML) and the Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR).
Its central leader, Victor Polay Campos, is serving a life
prison sentence.
In 1984 the MRTA, launched itself as an armed organization. The group has targeted military and police installations, banks, and U.S. interests, such as attempting to firebomb the U.S. embassy and setting fire to several Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurants. The MRTA has also used "expropriated" goods to distribute among the residents of slums. Accounts in the big-business press estimate the MRTA, which operates in the central Huallaga valley jungle in eastern Peru, at around 300 to 600 members.
The MRTA has distanced itself from the Stalinist Peruvian Communist Party (PCP-SL), known as Shining Path or Sendero Luminoso, which uses terrorist methods to try to impose its policies on working people. Shining Path considers all organizations and parties, to be revisionist enemies.
The MRTA has suffered blows under the counterinsurgency measures of the Fujimori regime. Last year, police raided a safe house of the guerrilla group arresting 23 people, among them a U.S. citizen, Lori Helene Berenson, whose case drew international publicity. Members of MRTA were arrested on charges of planning to capture the Peruvian Congress. Berenson, who sympathizes with the MRTA and insists in her innocence, has been sentenced for life in the maximum security prison of Yanamayo, in Puno, convicted of treason.
Repression, horrendous jail conditions
In an interview with Peter Novak of Junge Welt, Norma
Velazco, a representative of the MRTA, emphasized the
demand to release the political prisoners from the
government notorious jails. "According to antiterrorist
laws, only close relatives are allowed to visit the
political prisoners," she said. Referring to the Yanamayo
prison, located at 12,700 feet of altitude in the Andes,
Velazco explained, "The weather makes life very hard for
the prisoners, the wind gets through the bars and it is
always cold. Many of the prisoners suffer respiratory and
stomach diseases."
This description has been echoed by Rhoda and Mark Berenson, the parents of Lori Berenson. They had visited her in early December and described the physical weakness of their daughter. "There is no heat, or water, very little food, and of course her hands have developed arthritis and she suffers chronic laryngitis," Berenson's father told the New York paper El Diario/La Prensa in an interview published December 30.
To try those accused of terrorism, Fujimori has set up a system of "faceless" military courts, and the suspects are sentenced in less than 24 hours, with no possibility of defense. Velazco also points out that the prisoners are allowed but "a half-hour monthly visit.... They can only be out of their tiny cells for half an hour per day. They have no access to radio, or television sets, and are denied medical attention. The food is poor, usually rotten, and the prison authorities put shattered glass, rats or roaches in it. These conditions are the same for men as women. But the women have also to put up with abuse and sexual harassment. There is no water in the prisons, and the prisoners only receive one gallon of water a day to drink, bathe and wash."
When Fujimori took office hyperinflation had soared to 7,650 percent. The gross domestic product (GDP) had fallen 11.9 percent in 1989, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) had declared Peru "ineligible" to receive further international loans. Two weeks after his inauguration, Fujimori began to decree brutal austerity measures to satisfy the demands of the country's international creditors. With 22 million inhabitants, the number of people living below the official poverty line jumped from 9 to 14 million.
His measures passed laws making it easier for employers to lay off workers. Workers younger than 24 years old are considered "apprentices," can be paid below the minimum wage, and are not covered by the social security system. To comply with the IMF demands for "tax reform," an agency was created to squeeze as much tax income as possible into the government coffers. By 1994, the GDP was growing at a rate of 12.9 percent. But according to the Wall Street Journal of December 13 the GDP growth figure may only be 2 percent for 1996.
Fujimori, a Bonapartist figure, won the 1990 elections against Alan García and right-wing novelist Mario Vargas Llosa on a theme of "honest government." With the help of Vladimiro Montesinos, today head of the secret police, Fujimori built an array of allies within key military circles. Montesinos, a former army captain and a lawyer, helped Fujimori get through tax-evasion charges during the 1990 electoral campaign.
In the name of crushing the Shining Path guerrillas, Fujimori gave broader powers to the military in the late 1991. After Congress overturned such laws, Fujimori closed down the legislature and suspended the Constitution in April 1992. In a "self-coup," Fujimori justified the dissolution of Congress, saying its members had failed to deal with drug traffickers and the guerrillas. He called new congressional elections in late 1992, but continued to trample on democratic rights.
The military enjoys total impunity from prosecutions. In June 1995, Congress passed an amnesty law that freed all military and police officers arrested on charges of violation of human rights crimes, including those serving prison sentences. According to a North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA) report of July/August, 1996, The military retains control over a third of the country's territory.
Step-up in privatizations
Since Fujimori took office in 1990, 173 out of 183 state-
run enterprises have been privatized. The Chinese
government bought the iron enterprise Hierro Perú,
Telefónica de España bought the national telephone
company. The banks have also been privatized, or have
established partnerships like Banco de Crédito del Peru
with Morgan Guaranty Trust of New York. The state oil
company, PetroPeru, and the ports have been tough nuts to
crack, however. A referendum proposed by the Civic
Committee for Democracy - set up to oppose the
privatization of the oil company - involved workers,
students and other activists in collecting 1.2 million
signatures. Congress then passed, a law giving parliament
the power to decide whether or not to proceed with a
referendum - which nipped the action in the bud.
As part of making Peru more attractive for investment, the Fujimori regime lowered tariffs on foreign goods from 66 percent to 15.7 percent. Many companies have laid off workers to curb operating costs. By 1995 unemployment in Peru rose to 25 percent. Today out of 10 people, one has full-time job, seven are underemployed, and two are unemployed. Since 1990 the number of public employees has been slashed from 470,000 to 210,000.
Fujimori also began to take more aggressive steps to promote privatization in the agricultural sector. In July 1995, Congress adopted a "law of private investment." This measure aims to reverse large portions of a 1969 land reform. Peasant organizations have protested against the new law as it does not offer any guarantees of legal ownership in communal lands.
There have been a number of cases of resistance among workers against privatization and austerity measures. In May construction workers on strike were attacked by police in Lima. They were on a 24-hour national strike over salaries and labor conditions. The next day municipal workers and others participated in the labor action. Voicing their opposition to privatization plans of the government, some 2,000 oil workers struck in northern Peru in February. The Talara refinery there will be the first to be privatized and 1,500 workers dismissed.