Archive for the ‘Law’ Category
Friday, February 8th, 2008
A lack of justice for human rights violators during Peru’s 20-year armed conflict is a leading human rights concern in the Andean country, according to New York-based Human Rights Watch. Despite the human rights trial of jailed ex-President Alberto Fujimori, HRW’s 2008 World Report says most perpetrators of human rights abuses continue to evade justice.
HRW attributes the impunity to a lack of military cooperation with investigations of massacres and disappearances by the state from 1980 to 2000, when government forces fought Maoist Shining Path and MRTA guerrillas. “The military has often failed to provide information needed to identify potentially key witnesses who served in rural counterinsurgency bases during the conflict,” says HRW. “It has also declined to identify military officials known to witnesses only by their aliases.” (more…)
Posted in Criminal Justice, Insurgency, Law | No Comments »
Thursday, January 24th, 2008
Peru’s Foreign Relations Ministry announced Wednesday that it has begun legal action to revoke a Peruvian woman’s trademark registration of a popular Peruvian dance in Chile. Cecilia Gurmendi, a former Marinera national champion in Peru, registered “Marinera” with Chile’s Trademark Registry in the Department of Industrial Property in November 2007.
The Foreign Relations Ministry says Marinera, was declared a National Cultural Heritage in 1986, which restricts individuals and institutions from registering it as a trademark.
Marinera is a popular couple’s dance on the Peruvian coast, which traditionally uses bugles, guitars and the cajón, an Afro-Peruvian box drum played by slapping the front face with the hands. Often called the National Dance of Peru, the Marinera origins is generally traced to 19th century Peru.
The registration of Marinera in Chile has received wide coverage by Peru’s media, amid fears that it may become identified as Chilean. Peru and Chile already have many longstanding arguments over nationalistic claims to their cultural heritage including ceviche, a popular seafood dish, and pisco, a regional brandy made in the countries wine-producing regions and the main ingredient for the pisco sour.
Posted in Law, Media, Tourism | No Comments »
Wednesday, December 19th, 2007
Jailed ex-President Alberto Fujimori told state prosecutor Jose Antonio Peláez today that two laws passed during his administration inadvertently benefited members of the Colina group death squad, which was responsible for killing 25 people suspected of collaborating with the Shining Path insurgency.
Fujimori said the 1994 Cantuta law and 1995 Amnesty law were intended to stabilize Peru after 15 years of internal conflict. “I considered it necessary to look for a peaceful solution after 14 or 15 years of internal war,” said Fujimori. “They were part of a general plan by the government to lead Peru to peace.”
The Cantuta law allowed members of the Colina group to be prosecuted for the La Cantuta murders in a military court, where the head of the death squad, Major Santiago Martin Rivas, received a 20-year prison sentence.
A year later, he and the rest of Colina group were pardoned under a sweeping Amnesty law, which provided immunity for police officers, military personnel and civilians convicted or accused of human rights violations during the internal war. (more…)
Posted in Criminal Justice, Law, Politics | No Comments »
Saturday, December 15th, 2007
A bill passed by Peruvian lawmakers regulating the military’s use-of-force opens the door for human rights violations, says the Lima-based Legal Defense Institute, IDL.
According to IDL, the legislation would grant the military with unconditional authority in order to quell internal conflicts.
IDL’s military specialist, Ana María Tamayo, told Radio San Borja the legislation ¨doesn’t specify anti-subversive areas where the enemy takes up arms and the State has the right to repel an attack. The law seems to be more intended for social conflicts and internal disturbances.¨
Tamayo added that maintaining social peace is the responsibility of the police, not the military. (more…)
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Saturday, December 15th, 2007
Peru will loom slightly larger than usual in the headlines in U.S. newspapers this weekend after President George W. Bush signed into law a free trade agreement between the two nations.
The bill passed following a contentious feud in Congress that ended only after Republicans agreed to Democratic demands to include labor union protection and environmental standards, both in the Peru deal and in future trade pacts.
Bush said before signing Friday that he is hopeful the Peru deal will pave the way for approval of deals with Panama, Colombia and South Korea before he leaves office in 2009. And President Alan Garcia assured Bush that his government will make good on its pledge that the trade deal will favor Peru’s poor, particularly “the population in the Andes and their small enterprises.”
“You should be sure, as well as the members of the Congress and the American people, that in Peru this treaty would not exclude the poorest of the Peruvian workers,” Garcia said moments before Bush signed the pact. “On the contrary; using the words of the great Abraham Lincoln, it will be a free trade agreement of the people, by the people, and for the people.”
But not everyone in Peru is comforted by that assurance.
Weeks before the House approved the deal on Nov. 8 in a 285-132 vote, David Bayer, a former deputy executive officer for USAID in Lima until 2002, sent out the following appeal. He wrote it from his home in Ica, the coastal city devastated by the magnitude-8 earthquake last August (it is reprinted here with David’s permission):
What is wrong with the Peruvian-US Free Trade Agreement (FTA)?
Chapter X is the most insidious part of the US-Peru-FTA in terms of its damage to the vast majority of Peruvians. The GRADE analysis ( a conservative NGO) points out the the poor and extreme poor in Peru will get poorer with the implementation of the FTA:
Chapter X boils down to this: when the FTA is signed, everything favorable to the big private corporations and multinationals gets “frozen in time” or “shielded.” If the companies are exonerated from taxes (as is the case with the Peruvian agro-exporters) or have a special low-tax regime (as is the case with 80 percent of the major Peruvian mining companies) THEN NONE OF THESE PRIVILIGES CAN BE CHANGED by the national, regional or local government without violating Chapter X . (more…)
Posted in Business, Earthquakes, Environment, Law, Mining, Natural Disasters, Politics, Regional Politics | No Comments »
Friday, December 14th, 2007
Peru’s Congress has passed a law prohibiting the use of the country’s infamous ¨bus-trucks.¨
In a 77–10 vote, lawmakers also outlawed the future manufacture of the makeshift buses, which are grafted onto the chassis of flatbed trucks. Violators of the law could face up to 20 years in prison for crimes against public safety.
According to the Transportation and Communication Ministry, bus-truck passengers are almost three times more likely to be killed in an accident than passengers in unaltered buses. But according to lawmakers Yonhy Lescano and Lourdes Alcorta, who voted against the legislation, the accidents are caused by human negligence rather than defects in their structural design. (more…)
Posted in Law, Tourism | No Comments »
Wednesday, December 12th, 2007
The former commander of the Peruvian Army’s Special Forces Division, General Luis Pérez Document, will remain imprisoned as he awaits trial on first degree murder and forced disappearance charges. According to daily La República, the decision by the Third Anticorruption Court yesterday was based on the severity of the charges and the possibility Pérez would flee justice.
Pérez was arrested on Nov. 13 after the head of the Fifth Anticorruption Court, Judge Antonia Saquicuray, issued a warrant for his involvement in the 1992 murder of nine students and one professor at La Cantuta University. The victims were targeted by the Colina group for suspected collaboration with the Shining Path guerrilla movement.
Pérez is currently being held at the maximum security Miguel Castro Castro prison in Lima’s San Juan de Lurigancho district. If convicted, he would face a minimum sentence of 25 years in prison.
Perez’s last public appearance was on Monday at the Human Rights trial of ex-President Alberto Fujimori, who is accused of authorizing the Colina group’s killings. Pérez, along with other members of the paramilitary group, are scheduled to testify at the trial.
Posted in Criminal Justice, Law, Uncategorized | No Comments »
Tuesday, December 11th, 2007
Peru’s Supreme Court on Tuesday sentenced jailed ex-President Alberto Fujimori to six years in prison for abusing his authority when he ordered an illegal search of his spy chief’s apartments — allegedly to ensure that incriminating videotapes would never see the light of day. Fujimori had earlier pleaded guilty to the charge, offering a “sincere confession” in the hope it would earn him a lighter sentence.
Fujimori’s decade-old regime was crumbling under the weight of corruption scandals, spawned by his intelligence chief, Vladimiro Montesinos, when Fujimori sent military officers posing as judicial officials to Montesinos’ apartment building on Nov. 7, 2000. Using a fake search warrant, they seized more than 50 large suitcases and 50 boxes reportedly full of videotapes secretly recorded by Montesinos documenting the payoffs and dirty deals that had cemented the regime’s hold on power.
But two days later, while Montesinos remained in hiding, Fujimori called a news conference in which only two suitcases, and an impressive array of diamond-crusted watches, were on display.
(more…)
Posted in Criminal Justice, Law | No Comments »
Monday, December 10th, 2007
Jailed ex-President Alberto Fujimori flailed his arms and his voice cracked with indignation Monday as he declared his innocence during the first day of trial on charges he sanctioned a paramilitary death squad to gun down suspected guerrilla sympathizers. Presiding Tribunal Judge Cesar San Martin called Fujimori to order and instructed him to simply plead guilty or not guilty.
Fujimori, 69, is charged with authorizing the Colina group death squad to kill nine students and a professor in 1992 at La Cantuta University, and 15 people, including an eight-year-old boy, in a tenement in Lima’s Barrios Altos district in 1991.
If convicted, he faces up to 30 years in prison and a fine totaling some $33 million.”I reject the charges totally. I am innocent,” Fujimori shouted.During a court recess, Fujimori suffered a bout of high blood pressure and the proceedings were suspended until Wednesday morning.
Posted in Corruption, Criminal Justice, Law, Politics | No Comments »
Monday, December 10th, 2007
Residents in a mining town deep in Peru’s jungle set two men on fire for allegedly attacking three people yesterday. According to daily El Comercio, residents in Bajo Punkiri-Delta Uno-Boca Colorado, in Madre de Dios department, tied the two men to a tree trunk, sprayed them with gasoline and lit them on fire. One man died and the other suffered burns over 80 percent of his body.
Vigilante justice is common in rural Peru where there is little State presence. In August 2007, a mob of 2,000 people forced a father in a remote Andean village to hang his 16-year-old son. The mob accused the teenager of leading a gang of cattle thieves that had killed seven people. (more…)
Posted in Criminal Justice, Law | No Comments »
