Alberto Fujimori - Terrorism

Terrorism

When Fujimori came to power, much of Peru was dominated by the Maoist insurgent group Sendero Luminoso ("Shining Path"), and the Marxist-Leninist group Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA). In 1989, 25% of Peru's district and provincial councils opted not to hold elections, owing to a persistent campaign of assassination, over the course of which over 100 officials had been killed by Shining Path in that year alone. That same year, over one-third of Peru's positions for justices of the peace stood vacant, owing to Shining Path intimidation. Union leaders and military officials had also been assassinated throughout the 1980s.

By the early 1990s, some parts of the country were under the control of the insurgents, in territories known as "zonas liberadas" ("liberated zones"), where inhabitants lived under the rule of these groups and paid them taxes. When Shining Path arrived in Lima, it organized "paros armados" ("work stoppages"), which were enforced by killings and other forms of violence. The leadership of Shining Path was largely university students and teachers. Two previous governments, those of Fernando Belaúnde Terry and Alan García, at first neglected the threat posed by Shining Path, then launched an unsuccessful military campaign to eradicate it, undermining public faith in the state and precipitating an exodus of elites.

By 1992, Shining Path guerrilla attacks had claimed an estimated 20,000 lives over the course of 12 years. The 16 July 1992 Tarata Bombing, in which several car bombs exploded in Lima's wealthiest district, killed over 40 people; the bombings were characterized by one commentator as an "offensive to challenge President Alberto Fujimori." The bombing at Tarata was followed up with a "weeklong wave of car bombings ... Bombs hit banks, hotels, schools, restaurants, police stations and shops ... uerrillas bombed two rail bridges from the Andes, cutting off some of Peru's largest copper mines from coastal ports."

Fujimori has been credited by many Peruvians with ending the fifteen-year reign of terror of Shining Path. As part of his anti-insurgency efforts, Fujimori granted the military broad powers to arrest suspected insurgents and try them in secret military courts with few legal rights. This measure has often been criticized for having compromised the fundamental democratic and human right of an open trial wherein the accused faces the accuser. Fujimori contended that these measures were justified, that this compromise of open trials was necessary because the judiciary was too afraid to charge alleged insurgents, and that judges and prosecutors had legitimate fears of insurgent reprisals against them or their families. At the same time, Fujimori's government armed rural Peruvians, organizing them into groups known as "rondas campesinas" ("peasant patrols").

Insurgent activity was in decline by the end of 1992, and Fujimori took credit for this development, claiming that his campaign had largely eliminated the insurgent threat. After the 1992 auto-coup, the intelligence work of the DINCOTE (National Counter-Terrorism Directorate) led to the capture of the leaders from Shining Path and MRTA, including notorious Shining Path leader Abimael Guzmán. Guzmán's capture was a political coup for Fujimori, who used it to great effect in the press; in an interview with documentarian Ellen Perry, Fujimori even notes that he specially ordered Guzmán's prison jumpsuit to be white with black stripes, to enhance the image of his capture in the media.

Critics charge that to achieve the defeat of Shining Path, the Peruvian military engaged in widespread human rights abuses, and that the majority of the victims were poor highland countryside inhabitants caught in the crossfire between the military and insurgents. The final report of the Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission, published on 28 August 2003, revealed that while the majority of the atrocities committed between 1980 and 1995 were the work of Shining Path, the Peruvian armed forces were also guilty of having destroyed villages and murdered countryside inhabitants whom they suspected of supporting insurgents.

The Japanese embassy hostage crisis began on 17 December 1996, when fourteen MRTA militants seized the residence of the Japanese ambassador in Lima during a party, taking hostage some four hundred diplomats, government officials, and other dignitaries. The action was partly in protest of prison conditions in Peru. During the four-month standoff, the Emerretistas gradually freed all but 72 of their hostages. The government rejected the militants' demand to release imprisoned MRTA members and secretly prepared an elaborate plan to storm the residence, while stalling by negotiating with the hostage-takers.

On 22 April 1997, a team of military commandos, codenamed "Chavín de Huantar", raided the building. One hostage, two military commandos, and all 14 MRTA insurgents were killed in the operation. Images of President Fujimori at the ambassador's residence during and after the military operation, surrounded by soldiers and liberated dignitaries, and walking among the corpses of the insurgents, were widely televised. The conclusion of the four-month long standoff was used by Fujimori and his supporters to bolster his image as tough on terrorism.