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PERUVIAN HOSTAGE CRISIS February 7, 1997 |
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Questions asked in this forum:
Click here for Jon Miller's answers to your questions on the hostage standoff in Peru.
NewsHour Backgrounders
February 3, 1997:
A Newsmaker interview with President Alberto Fujimori of Peru, discussing the hostage situation.
January 27, 1997:
Charlayne Hunter-Gault gets an update on the hostage situation from NPR reporter Jon Miller.
January 2, 1997:
Jim Lehrer speaks with journalist Jon Miller, reporting live from Peru.
December 23, 1996:
Marxist rebels released 225 hostages from the Japanese ambassador's residence in a "good will" Christmas gesture.
December 19, 1996:
In a stunning attack, a band of Peruvian rebels stormed the Japanese embassy in Lima holding 490 hostage.
Browse the Online NewsHour's Latin America index.
On December 17th, heavily armed members of the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement, or MRTA, seized more than 400 people attending a diplomatic reception at the residence of the Japanese ambassador in Lima.
The rebels made a series of demands, most importantly the release of about 400 of their comrades from prisons around Peru. They say prison conditions are intolerable. In the weeks since the takeover all but 72 of the hostages have been released, but those remaining include high officials of Peru's security forces and the younger brother of President Alberto Fujimori.
Last week, a new group of Peruvian troops with heavier equipment took over the embassy vigil. They played loud military music and made provocative gestures to the rebels who unleashed a burst of gunfire. That prompted Japan's prime minister, Ryutaro Hashimoto, to publicly urge Peru not to take any unnecessary risks which could endanger the hostages' lives.
Peru has had a long history of terrorist activity in it's borders. Both the MRTA and the Shining Path have been waging a guerilla war against the government for decades. But under President Fujimori, who enacted a state of martial law over the country in 1992, the government had seemed to have defeated the insurgents.
Late last week President Fujimori went to Canada to meet with Hashimoto. The two leaders said they were in agreement on how to handle the hostage situation but provided few details.
Our forum asks: What is the goal of the MRTA? Who are they? What has Peru's track record been in fighting terrorism? What is the human rights record of Peru under Fujimori? Is their prison system in need of reform?
Jon Miller is a radio and print journalist based in Lima, Peru. His work has been carried on National Public Radio, N.B.C. radio and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. He has covered international affairs in Asia and Latin America.
Click here for Jon Miller's answers to your questions.
- What are the prospects for a successful conclusion to the stand-off?
- Who are the Tupac Amaru? What are their goals?
- Are the Peruvian prisons as bad as the rebels say?
- One of the hostages is the Bolivian ambassador. What is Bolivia's role in negotiations?
- Is the rebel problem in Peru race based?
- Additional Comments.
A question from Evelyn Cutler of Elkins Park, PA:Can you state any realistic options for the government of Peru and the terrorists to end this siege where there will be no loss of life and both sides saving face or possibly accomplishing some good? [Editor's Note: There were reports that talks between the rebels and the Peruvian Archbishop and Canadian Ambassador produced "progress." Is there any indication what this means with regards to some sort of resolution?]
Jon Miller responds:
One needs to be clairvoyant to predict what will happen, and my guesses so far have been as often wrong as right. But it looks like the most likely scenario is that the rebels will finally decide that they have accomplished their mission and agree to leave in exchange for some "goodwill" gestures on the part of the government. The main thing the government can offer them is a commitment to improve prison conditions -- this is of immediate concern to the MRTA, as most of their leaders (and friends, and in some cases family members) are in jail. Their main objective is of course to get their comrades out, but that is very unlikely to happen -- the government simply won't do it. I've been saying since the beginning that both sides have to declare victory at some point, even if it requires a huge feat of imagination; it's unlikely there will be a peaceful resolution if one side is the clear victor.
President Fujimori has addressed this point -- he says he is seeking face-saving ways for the rebels to disengage themselves. He may have some ideas that we don't know about. A bloody end is still very much a possibility, although it could be triggered by a misunderstanding, by rogue elements on either side, by something totally unforeseen... The progress reported in the pre-pre-pre-preliminary talks on Thursday has indeed allowed people to breathe easier; Fujimori is even going to London for an economic meeting this weekend. But there is NO sign that the rebels are inclined to drop their demand for prisoner releases, which is and has been the main sticking point. So while things don't feel particularly volatile at the moment, they don't feel on the verge of resolution either.
Finally, as for whether some good may come of all this, some people here in Lima say that the international focus on Peru's human rights and prison conditions may have some lasting positive effect. But I think most people (in Peru) would rather that this had simply never happened.
A question from Orde W. Lawrence of Victoria, BC, Canada:
Until this crisis started, the only guerillas I'd heard of from Peru were the Shining Path. My understanding was that they were largely defeated when their leader Guzman was captured a couple of years ago. Are the Tupac Amaru related to the Shining Path? What is their background and is their ultimate goal really a Marxist state? Sounds like a bit of an anachronism to me.
Jon Miller responds:
The Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (known in Peru by its Spanish acronym, MRTA) is distinct from the Shining Path. It was formally founded in the early 1980s, and has actually fought with the Shining Path in some areas of the country. The MRTA are said to be "Cuban-inspired", while the Shining Path call themselves Maoists, but their biggest difference as far as most Peruvians are concerned has been their methods. The Shining Path has a well-deserved reputation for brutality and violence; they use car bombs, they take passengers off buses and kill them indiscriminately, they blow up power stations and bridges, they bomb restaurants and public places. (Most of these activities have stopped since the 1992 arrest of Abimael Guzman and other leaders, but there have been incidents in Lima since then, as well as military clashes in the countryside.) The MRTA has used bombs, but they have generally been more targeted. They like to kidnap people, and to pull off dramatic stunts (they rescued leaders from jail in 1990 by digging a tunnel several hundred meters long; the project took months, and when they were done they sent a video to local TV stations).
During the hostage standoff the MRTA has tried hard to distinguish itself from the Shining Path, sending e-mails to the press saying they are "social fighters," not terrorists, and that they respect international human rights conventions (a bit of a hard point to swallow in the context of a hostage standoff).
Of the 30,000 deaths in political violence in the 80s and 90s in Peru, Amnesty International attributes more than 50 percent to the armed forces, 40-odd percent to the Shining Path, and something less than 5 percent to the MRTA.
The MRTA is a bit of an orphan, though; it has never had much popular support, it controls no territory, and it doesn't really have a coherent political or economic policy. (From what we hear from released hostages who talked with the rebels, the group is not hard-line Marxist.) The Peruvian authorities estimate that at its height in 1989 the MRTA had less than 1,000 members; now the number is supposed to be in the hundreds. They have never really challenged the government the way the Shining Path did (some analysts believed the country was on the verge of falling to the guerrillas in 1990), so it's hard to say if establishing a Marxist state is their real goal. They talk often of becoming involved in "civil society" and taking part in the political life of the country. But the goal of the hostage-taking is clearly to release their comrades from jail -- other objectives, like improving prison conditions or opening the debate over economic policies -- are secondary. They say they are at war with the government; the government calls them criminals and terrorists. (They have a "solidarity page" on the Internet if you are interested in learning more -- it's called "Arm the Spirit.")
A question from Phil Wright of Woburn, MA:
On Monday on The NewsHour, President Fujimori argued against the idea that Peru's prisons were in poor shape. He said that they were the best in Latin America and that the terrorists were only upset because they no longer controlled life in the prisons as they had up until recently. How much truth was there to this remark?
Jon Miller responds:
I haven't been inside the prisons, but the U.S. State Department (its Human Rights Report for 1996 is available on the Internet) agrees with the major human rights organizations (Human Rights Watch, America's Watch, Amnesty International) that conditions in the jails are generally awful. There has been some effort on the part of the government to improve conditions, but by all accounts (except perhaps President Fujimori's) they are far from good even in those places where improvements have been made.
This is particularly true for political prisoners. Authorities are quick to put prisoners in solitary confinement; people often spend a year or more in isolation. The cells are tiny, often windowless, with a concrete slab for a bed and hole in the floor for a toilet. The facilities aren't heated, even in the mountains (Yanamayo prison, in Puno, is at about 15,000 feet above sea level). Exercise periods are one-half hour per day. For other prisoners, crowding is a major problem; with crowding comes disease (tuberculosis, AIDS). Mothers in some prisons are allowed to see their children only every three months. The problem of prison conditions for political prisoners is often paired in people's minds with the issue of the fairness of the judicial system; this is because hundreds (human rights groups say maybe 1,000) of political detainees are thought to have been unjustly convicted, often by the famous "faceless judges". (The faceless judge system was instituted to protect judges from assassination by avenging terrorists or drug traffickers, as well as to ensure that judges aren't too scared to convict; the downside has been extremely fast trials and conviction rates of nearly 100%.) In late 1996 a government commission began reviewing disputed cases and in a very short time found and pardoned 225 people who they felt were erroneously convicted; that effort stopped when the hostage crisis began, but President Fujimori says several hundred more may be released upon review. He may well be right that the authorities have cracked down on gangs or guerrilla control of the prisons. But from what I hear, he is not right about conditions in general.
A question from Joanna Tousley-Escalante of Vienna, Austria:
Several of us with close ties to Bolivia are wondering what pressure the Fujimori government is putting on Bolivia to agree with his tactics for dealing with the hostage situation. More to the point, how is Bolivia responding, since its Ambassador continues to be held captive? We also understand that he is not well [who would be after this long] and wonder if there is word on him personally.
Jon Miller responds:
President Fujimori made a quick trip to Bolivia a couple of weeks ago to make sure La Paz was "on board" with Peruvian policy regarding the crisis, and got a fairly strong commitment from the government there. Fujimori was trying to avoid a repeat of what happened with Uruguay, where the release of two suspected Tupac Amaru prisoners was followed (in a matter of hours) by the release of the Uruguayan ambassador from captivity in Lima.
Fujimori was extremely upset at Uruguay for setting what he felt was a dangerous precedent of making deals with the rebels. Relations with Bolivia are (to my understanding) better than relations with any of Peru's other neighbors, so the support from La Paz is in some ways expected. The great majority of countries with close ties to Peru have backed Fujimori in his refusal to bargain for the release of hostages.
As for the health of the ambassador, yes, there have been concerns. But the International Red Cross (working with Peru's ministry of health) has been doing a tremendous job of seeing to the health needs of the hostages, with daily medical visits, provision of prescription medicines, and close coordination with each of the hostages' personal physicians. The rebels have allowed several sick hostages to leave; it's hard to know if they would do the same for the Bolivian ambassador, as he is "valuable" to them (Bolivia has four MRTA members in its jails). But it seems safe to assume that if his condition becomes critical, he would be freed. Not terribly reassuring words, I realize, but reports are that the health situation in the residence is stable.
A question from Pele' Bhembe Tuskegee, AL:
Is this rebel crisis in Peru race based? What is the racial composition of Peru?
Jon Miller responds:
The crisis isn't directly race-based, but many people think that the social and economic inequality that has created the conditions for political violence has something to do with race.
The population is composed of "Indians" (47%), whites (12%, mostly Spanish), and mixed white-Indians (32%). There are also minorities of blacks (less than 2%) and Amazonian groups (2%). The rest are Asians and other immigrants.
The whites are concentrated in Lima and the other major cities, while the Indians are mostly in the mountains (although recent migration, much of it caused by guerrilla violence in rural areas, has blurred the geographical boundaries of the race issue). The whites are by far the wealthiest and most powerful segment; the Indians (who prefer to be called campesinos, or peasants) are mainly poor. There is a long history of resentment and conflict between the groups (Tupac Amaru himself was an Indian who led an anti-white revolt), although in recent years the pretext has been more economic than explicitly racial. The MRTA does not claim to represent any particular racial group.
Additional Comments...Evan Cundiff of Homer, Alaska
Seems the Rebels are remaining adament in their demands. I believe they may accept an offer of a trade off: Deliver to the mansion one of the rebels that are in prision in exchange for each additional hostage they are willing to release. It is my understanding that one of the prisoners is the leaders wife or girlfriend. Getting them together may help to lessen his convictions. When he refuses any additional exchanges, offer them amnesty and a lawful political recourse to their problems. If the rebels are trully representing some oppressed peasents in rural areas then some kind of affirmative action policy could fulfill their needs. At least remove the threat of bloodshed. Isn't this how we alleviated a similar problem in the United States?
If we can believe the news commentators and the Peruvian president when they say that there are too few rebels to try to overthrow the government and that is not the rebels intentions then I believe the only recourse is an attempt at rehabilatition.
It appears that the leader is politically inclined and a patient and skilled negotiator. It is also clear that the Peruvian president is unable to make a resonable offer. He is right. They are a band of outlaws and maybe even thieves and cut-throats but didn't we undergo the same thing after the Civil War in the USA. Amnesty is always a difficult choice, whether it be in Bosnia, Africa or Peru. The alternative is even worse. Their are a lot of lives at stake; 72 good citizens and 15 dedicated rebels. If President Fujimori is unwilling to yield then I would suggest that he offer himself to the rebels in exchange for the hostages. That is what any honorable gentleman would do.
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