Petition from Prisoners at Canto Grande,
September 1998

The following statements were made available by the families of political prisoners to international organizations and lawyers concerned with the unjust criminal justice system in Peru and with the rights of prisoners and their conditions.

Most of the prisoners referred to in these statements were detained under draconian laws designed to imprison anyone suspected of even sympathizing with the insurgency being led by the Communist Party of Peru (often called Shining Path). They are among the more than 5,000 political prisoners in Peru today. Almost all political prisoners in Peru were tried in secret by military and civilian tribunals that used "hooded judges" and gave them absolutely no opportunity to defend themselves against government accusations.

The brutal prison conditions described are intended to break these prisoners down physically and spiritually. In response, they have continued to demonstrate defiance and resistance.

Translated by the CSRP

Attention international human rights authorities:

We send our denunciation and just rejection to D.S. 005-97-JUS because it is an attack against the physical, psychic and moral integrity of the prisoner. Prisoners' rights are being reduced, impeded and obstructed: DIRECT VISITATIONS, WORK, ADEQUATE NUTRITION, EDUCATION, HEALTH, RECREATION, ETC. Rights in all international treaties and agreements and bourgeois laws of our country.

As can be seen:

The closed regimen and other categories or stages are a complete negation of our rights, utilizing:

ISOLATION: Visits through phone booths, not permitting the direct contact with our relatives; repressive transfers to different prisons within the country, like the concentration camps (Yanamayo, Challapalca), this is an attack against the "family unity" (prisoner-family) which they claim to "respect." They deny us access to the means of communication: radio, TV, newspapers, restriction of books, etc. This is an attack against the Education and culture that they expound as the basis for "re-education and rehabilitation" and is a fundamental right of a person in Article 2 of the Constitution.

ANNIHILATION: the locking-up for 23 hours which we are subjected to allows for the proliferation of diseases from psychic to physical (arthritis, lumbago, gastritis, ulcers, neurosis, etc.); insufficient nourishment, lacking in calories and proteins, producing chronic malnutrition and the problem is impacted with by poor administration, according to INPE, 2.90 soles are allowed per prisoner per day, but what in reality, is put into the "pan" doesn't cover even 50% of what they claim to provide, product of the corruption of the administration: and if the mediocre medical attention is added to this, the lack of medicines and obstacles that come into play in order to be repressive and genocidal and is an assault against their own bourgeois laws of the Peruvian State. For example: Article 1 in the Code of Execution states that the prisoner has ALL the individual rights except liberty, and in its New Penal Code, "Crime Against Humanity" on Genocide Article 319 paragraph 2 states: serious injury to the physical or mental integrity to the members of the group, and including 3 Submission of the group to conditions of existence that accelerates partially or totally their physical destruction.

Finally, if we add to this what the penal administration is doing with relatives on visitation day: Restriction of foodstuffs, debasing and humiliating searches, restriction on materials of work, obstacles to visits from the children, etc. All this as a result of a policy of harassment and threats against relatives.

We therefore see that they want to impose this D.S. at all cost, since judicially it walks all over their own laws and is illegal, is an assault against the Peruvian Constitution, the Penal Code, the Code of Penal Execution. It is appropriate then to restore our rights with the exception of liberty, and the annulment of DS 005 that no matter how much demagoguery they use in this and its regulation saying that they provide "humanitarian treatment," that "the prisoners have the right to the respect of their human dignity", "a loosening of the regimen", etc., the reality that we prisoners live is another: of harassment, persecution, threats, repression and GENOCIDE.

WE DEMAND:

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