Embattled Peruvian President Alan Garcia asked Congress on Monday to repeal a decree he issued two weeks ago that gave virtual amnesty to hundreds of people accused of atrocities during a civil war that killed 69,000.
Garcia backtracked only hours after acclaimed Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa harshly criticized him in a letter in which he resigned as head of a commission appointed to build a museum to honor victims of the 1980-2000 conflict, which was one of the bloodiest ever in Latin America.
Garcia’s decree said that defendants in trials for human rights crimes committed before 2003 must be sentenced within 36 months of the start of their trial.
As most of the hundreds of pending cases have been bogged down for years, Vargas Llosa called the measure an “amnesty in disguise.”
Other critics have said the measure could violate the UN agreements on human rights signed by Peru.
Peru’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission found that widespread rights abuses occurred during the 1990-2000 presidency of Alberto Fujimori and, to a lesser extent, during Garcia’s first term in the 1980s.
Fujimori has been convicted for rights crimes and activists say they want to put Garcia on trial, too.
“This is truly a disgrace that will revive political divisions in the country, precisely at a time of exceptional [economic] progress and during an election that should be used to reinforce our legal institutions and democracy,” Vargas Llosa wrote in his letter, made public by the human rights group Instituto de Defensa Legal.
Peru will elect a new president next year and Garcia is constitutionally barred from running for a second straight term. One of the frontrunners in the race is Keiko Fujimori, a popular lawmaker and the daughter of the former president.
In his letter, Vargas Llosa accused Garcia of capitulating to pressure from the military, which was accused of rights abuses in repressing a leftist guerrilla insurgency.
He also suggested Garcia may have issued the decree to shield himself from allegations of crimes that rights groups have said they want to charge him with in future.
In his first term in 1986, Garcia, frustrated that the leftist Shining Path insurgency had taken over the El Fronton prison and two other jails, ordered the armed forces to attack. More than 200 prisoners were killed, many summarily executed.
Rights groups have said there is a precedent for bringing Garcia to trial — especially after Peru’s top court sentenced former President Fujimori to 25 years in prison last year for ordering two massacres in the 1990s, just as he was turning the tide in the war against leftist insurgents.
Vargas Llosa said the country still fails to recognize there were atrocities committed by both sides.
“There is an essential incompatibility between sponsoring the construction of a museum to remember the victims of violence unleashed by the Shining Path terrorists and giving liberty to those who, in the course of repressing fanatics, also committed horrendous crimes,” Vargas Llosa said.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
‘POLITICAL EARTHQUAKE’: Leo Varadkar said he was ‘no longer the best person’ to lead the nation and was stepping down for political, as well as personal, reasons Leo Varadkar on Wednesday announced that he was stepping down as Ireland’s prime minister and leader of the Fine Gael party in the governing coalition, citing “personal and political” reasons. Pundits called the surprise move, just 10 weeks before Ireland holds European Parliament and local elections, a “political earthquake.” A general election has to be held within a year. Irish Deputy Prime Minister Micheal Martin, leader of Fianna Fail, the main coalition partner, said Varadkar’s announcement was “unexpected,” but added that he expected the government to run its full term. An emotional Varadkar, who is in his second stint as prime minister and at
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia