Live from Death Row,
Mumia Abu-Jamal
on the Revolution in Peru
Essays written byMumia Abu-Jamal
from Death Row:
The "Law" of One
October 1994
Retroactive Death Penalty in Peru
November 1993
Fujimori Bans the Bar
January 1993
Fujimori Bans the Bar
January 1993
In the latest assault against Peruvian civil society, President Fujimori has outlawed the country's "Colegio de Abogados" (the Peruvian equivalent of the Bar Association) in early Dec., 1992, a slap at the Colegio's adoption of an 11-point declaration condemning the Fujimori dictatorship's numerous violations of human rights.
The Colegio, like most bar associations, is the main lawyers' organization to which most lawyers are required to join in order to practice law.
The banning of Colegio was sparked by the group's condemnation of the "torture and humiliation" of Peruvian political prisoner Marta Huatay, and their opposition to state plans to re-introduce the death penalty (officially).
Marta Huatay, founding member of the Association of Democratic Lawyers of Lima, was charged with "terrorism" and summarily convicted by a military tribunal to life imprisonment. At the "trial," Huatay was unable to speak and seemed unaware of her surroundings. An examination by the International Red Cross revealed the presence of brain lesions and a fractured skull—telltale signs of government torture.
Peru's "courts" are administered by military officers who are "judges" in name only. There are 3 hooded soldiers, who are neither lawyers nor trained in the law, and just a tribunal "tried" and sentenced Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso) founder, Dr. Abimael Guzmán, to life imprisonment in San Lorenzo Island military prison.
Most recently, security police in Chiclayo, Northern Peru, arrested and detained 5 defense lawyers for political prisoners, and charged them with being "apologists for terrorism," a "crime" which can cost 12 years in prison. The 5; Miguel Olazabal Ancanino; Victor Siguenas Campos; Ruben Bustamente Banda; Ernesto Cuba Montes; and Gilver Alarcon Requejo – are also members of the Association of Democratic Lawyers of Peru, a special state target as it is headed by Dr. Alfredo Crespo, Dr. Guzmán's lawyer.
The rampant government torture, intimidation of lawyers, banning of the Bar Association, and clandestine "trials" by hooded non-judges is happening today in Peru, but you wouldn't know it from the silence of the U.S. news reporters and journalists.
After portraying the election of President Alberto Fujimori as the best thing since sushi, the world's media capital has been remarkably silent on the remarkable events happening in Peru, many at the express direction of the U.S. military and intelligence services.
In London, an International Emergency Committee has been formed, to defend the life of Abimael Guzmán, and also to break the media blockade of the West on the torture, repression and state terrorism of the Fujimori dictatorship.
The Committee, which issues periodic bulletins on the situation in Peru, can be reached at: International Emergency Committee to Defend the Life of Abimael Guzmán, BCM-IEC, 27 old Gloucester St., London, WC1N 3XX, England. Fax/phone: (44) (71) 482-0853.
The latest bulletin includes a chilling quote from Peruvian Dictator Fujimori made on Dec. 8, 1992 during a speech to the military on an Armed Forces Day celebration on the worsening health of Dr. Guzmán; "I will not assume under my government any 'personal' guarantees for the security of Mr. Abimael Guzmán in the treatment of his illness."
The implicit threat to Guzmán should be obvious.
Letters of protest are urged.
The "Law" of One
November 1992
For almost a thousand years, the South American land known as Peru was the seat of the massive Inca empire, until the coming of the Spanish Conquistadors, led by Francisco Pizarro, who in 1532 kidnapped the Inca Atahualpa, and demanded, literally, a king's ransom for him. The Incas met Pizarro's ransom by filling a room with gold, to which the Spaniards responded by executing the Atahualpa and enslaving the Inca natives to dig more gold.
Now, over four and a half centuries later, the Indians and Mestizos (mixed people) who constitute the vast majority of Peruvians (45 percent and 37 percent respectively) still find themselves at the bottom of a social, political and economic heap, with whites in positions of power and the brown majority in 'legal' servitude; with a white and foreign intelligentsia and a brown reservoir of workers and servants.
Since 1980, when the Maoist guerrillas, Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) launched its war against the state, the West, through its agents and agencies in Peru, has been angling for the liquidation of the largely Indian peasant's army, for fear its fire of anti-Western, anti-capitalist revolution would spread to other South American countries with majority or substantial Indian populations. Unlike many other guerrilla focos that arose in South America since the 1960s, Sendero had its deepest roots in the Quechua-speaking peasantry, not in notoriously fickle students with petit-bourgeois aspirations, and in the outlying areas like Ayacucho, not in the big cities, like Peru's capital, Lima. Classic Maoist theory taught organizing in the countryside, before cities, and there Sendero has been true to form.
In the 1990 elections, a so-called outsider, Alberto Fujimori, won the Peruvian presidential race, and succeeded in turning the nation's political life upside down. In April, Fujimori staged an autogolpe, or a self-coup, closed the congress, shuttered the courts, censored newpapers, and arrested his principal critics, all in the name of the state's security (perhaps, its "insecurity"), saying such measures were necessary to battle Sendero.
Immediately the Constitution was "suspended," and secret tribunals, with hooded cronies hand-picked by Fujimori, sat as judges and prosecutors with the public bared.
The recent arrest of Abimael Guzmán (nom de guerre, Presidente Gonzalo), Chairman of Sendero Luminoso (officially named Partido Comunista del Peru, Communist Party of Peru) occurred against this backdrop of dictatorial rule. His "trial" was by a judge and prosecutor in hoods, while he stood in a glass-covered cage, and where the only questions to the defendant had to do with party ideology and Sendero structure.
So "outre" is Sendero, and so demonized its Chairman, that many of the West's alleged human rights groups have been conspicuous by their silence. Presumably, Guzmán is not a human, and thus has no rights.
A small group of German and French lawyers, and at least one American, trekked to Lima's crumbling city to observe, and afterwards criticized the process as repugnant to International law and violative of UN protocals requiring public trials protective of the dignity of the person. One lawyer, New York's Leonard Weinglass, described their ejection from the "Hall of Justice," and later, the threats of arrests of International observers as "apologists for terrorism."
It is perhaps ironic that Fujimori, of Japanese ancestry, would be the politician who scrapped Peru's Constitution and International treaties, to enforce state power.
Over 50 years ago, the U.S. government, by Presidential Decree, similarly crumbled its own Constitution to imprison over 120,000 Japanese residents and citizens in concentration camps. Former U.S. Assistant Secretary of War John J. McClay was quoted as saying, when told the Japanese internments were unconstitutional, "…If it is a question of safety for the country, [or] the Constitution of the United States, why the Constitution is just a scrap of paper to me." (N.Y. Rev.; Oct. 1992)
Fujimori would surely concur.
Retroactive Death Penalty in Peru
Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori, in his relentless campaign to reinstate the death penalty in the South American nation, is trying to re-make the most basic principles of law.
The Fujimori regime isn't seeking merely to bring back the death penalty but to apply it retroactively, to cases that occurred before the law became the law.
On Tuesday, August 3, 1993, Peru's constituent assembly approved the draft of a new constitution that included a clause legalizing the death penalty for "terrorist" offenses.
The amendments, one long-sought by the U.S. backed Fujimori regime, is Phase One in the plan to eliminate Shining Path chief, Dr. Abimeal Guzmán, even if they have to apply it retroactively, to events that occurred before the constitutional amendment.
Renowned former U.S. Attorney General, Ramsey Clark wrote, of the government's plans;
"The American Convention on Human Rights, ratified by Peru and most Latin American countries, prohibits the extension of the death penalty in any country 'to crimes to which it does not presently apply' and prohibits all countries from inflicting capital punishment 'for political offenses or related common crimes.'
"No idea is more basic to the rule of law than ex post facto punishments are prohibited. The American Convention provides: 'A heavier penalty shall not be imposed than the one that was applicable at the time the criminal offense was committed.' Efforts to enact laws intended to punish an individual, or a class, for discriminatory purposes are equally condemned."
The former Attorney General's concerns, made in a July 26, 1993 letter to the International Emergency Committee to Defend the Life of Dr. Abimael Guzmán (BCM-IEC, 27 Old Gloucester St. London, WC1N, 3XX, England – tele/fax: 44-71-482-0853) was answered less than two weeks later by passage of the draft amendment bringing back the Peruvian death penalty, in essence damning the American Convention.
The Rev. S. Michael Yasutake, Dir., the Interfaith Prisoners of Conscience Project in Chicago, issued a similar letter, obviously to no avail.
The U.S.-backed Fujimori regime, upon orders of the U.S. empire, has spit on International law, regional treaties and sworn conventions, to attempt to extinguish a man perceived as more threatening to U.S. interests than Peruvian ones.
Why else would conservative columnist William Buckly Jr., write in the Washington Times, just days after Guzmán's capture, "It is anomalous…to suggest an international request for the execution of a prisoner, but…herewith a call for the execution of Abimael Guzmán."?(14 Oct. 1992).
What they really fear is not Guzmán, but the growing power and reach of Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) a largely indigenous, Indian, Maoist army that will not bow to the imperial masters in Washington.
They fear its spread and emergence in other areas called the U.S. "sphere of influence" (empire).
That is what they really want to kill.
Mumia also signed the "IEC Call" and the IEC's "End the Isolation" (of Abimael Guzmán) statement"
which was distributed in October 1994. This statement appeared
as an ad in many newspapers and was carried with the 6th IEC delegation
to Peru in 1995.
November 1995
International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal
"The Fight to Save the Life of Mumia Abu-Jamal" page of the Revolutionary Worker Online site.
Solidariteitsgroep Politieke Gevangenen Mumia Info (English)
