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Families of Peru's disappeared
demand role in truth commission

          By Ronald J. Morgan

     LIMA, PERU --- Who is corporal Marquis?
     Crispin Baldeon, a 51-year-old Quechua speaking farmer from Ayacucho has been trying to find out for the past 11 years. He has a list of 31 witnesses that say that on September 25, 1990, the soldier and his platoon tortured 100 persons in a church in
Pacchahuallhua, Ayacucho. Among them was Baldeon's 68-year-old father who died after being drowned and burned in a tub of hot water. His attempted legal actions fill a worn black leather briefcase.
    Julia Castillo Garcia, 46, knows that in February, 1984, a soldier named Ventura and others entered the village of Parcco, Ayacucho, tortured her mother and then blew her up with dinamite in a nearby river.
     "After they did this they ate a dinner in my mother's house and then set it on fire."
    Marcelina Medina, 48, remembers a police commander named Ivan who used to impress friends in the restaurants of Tocache, San Martin, by displaying a string laced with the fingers of killed Shinging Path Guerrilla suspects, which authorities had disparagingly nicknamed Terrucos. It was typical of the environment where the war was fought. "They called the military and police,the dogs," Medina remembered. "And they say a dog ate my son." Medina´s 18 year'old
son vanished into a Tocache military base in January, 1991.
    Freddy Vizarro constantly flashes back to age seven where on March 28, 1985, a battle is going on in Santiago de Acco, Huancavelica, between members of his village self-defense committee, armed with knife tipped sticks, and a group of Shinging Path guerrillas, firing small arms and throwing home-made bombs. After several hours of fighting the army arrives, nearly destroying the village, and then takes the captured Shining Path Commandante Vilma, off to a
hilltop and executes her.
     Vizarro isn't sure why he's still experiencing such powerful effects. "Its as if my attention
suddenly increases." he said.
     Survivors of Peru's two decades of insurgency and brutal government countermeasures which left 30,000 dead, more than 5,000 missing and 600,000 displaced have been largely battling alone without resources to account for their love ones and free unjustly imprisoned relatives.
     During the past three Peruvian presidencies the families of the disappeared grew accustomed to government harassment and infiltration of their ranks. But in recent months, first the transitional government of Valentin Paniagua, and now the newly elected government of Alejandro Toledo, have promised unprecedented backing to clarify what happened during
20 years of battle against the Maoist Sendero Luminoso and pro-Cuban Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement.
    A truth commission will begin sifting through records and testimony in coming months. And throughout the former battle zones clandestine grave sites have begun to be identified.
    "Since the end of the Fujimori dictatorship in November, 2000, the atmosphere for human rights work has improved," said Yoffre Depaz Mejia, a lawyer who represents families of the missing and detained. "Before we were threatened and we were photographed.
The government used to send people to my office and ask what we were doing. Now there's been a radical change. The people are recuperating their rights."
    Over the past eight months there have been sweeping changes, he noted. The Paniagua government ended the special emergency zones which restricted the right to free association, free movement and access to legal defense. Arrest warrants, known as RQ's for some
5,000 terrorism suspects were modified to allow a judge to hear testimony from the suspects before ordering their detention. And prison conditions and visiting rights for some 4,000 serving jail sentences for terrorism have improved as well. A prominent human rights activist, Father Hubert Lanssiers, has been appointed to continue the review of the cases of those jailed under military terrorism court sentences. An Ad Hoc pardon commission under Fujimori, in 1999, freed about 500 prisoners. And 100 more persons have been released in recent months. (Despite the progress demands for further terrorism court sentence reduction prompted a prison
protest in early August with prisoners calling for the overturn of all terrorism court sentences.)
     In another crucial human rights decision the Paniagua transitional government returned Peru to the jurisdiction of the Interamerican Court of Human Rights of the Organization of American States. This March, the court ruled that a 1995 blanket amnesty granted to Peruvian human rights violators was unconstitutional. The ruling paves the way for prosecution of human rights crimes in Peru.
    While the moves have been perceived as encouraging, families of the disappeared are still
concerned that after years of working in the shadows that the government will exclude them from a meaningful role in investigating what happened to their loved ones.
    Members of the National Committee of Detained Disappeared and Refugee Families in Lima, known as Copreder, are demanding that the truth commission have one member that is a relative of a disappeared person and that a member of the Fujimori Peru 2000 party be removed.
    Copreder President Ofelia Artezana, said the Paniagua administration failed to consult them when it named the members of the truth commission in July. "It seems to me they were very mistaken," she said, "They're are many people who would have been better
included. There would be more trust with a familiy member of the disappeared on the commission. We want somebody who really knows and understands."
    The families of the disappeared also would like to see the commission empowered to function longer than the 23 months mandated (18 months with a possible five-month extension). "President (Alejandro) Toledo told us when he met with us (during the election campaign) that the truth commission would have a permanent character," Artezana stressed.
    Shortly after taking office Toledo decided against removing the Fujimori 2000 Party
Congresswoman Beatriz Alva Hart. A decision, that he said would show the commission's impartiality And although he plans to expand the commission by up to five additional
persons none will be a family member.
     Truth Commission President Solomon Lerner said he expects Toledo to add representatives of human rights organizations and church groups to the commission. ¨I think personally, and I think the commission feels the same way, that it´s not right to take people who have
been participants in the conflict. This could damage the seriousness of judgement and objectivity. We have to talk to these people and listen to them. But we would prefer that the people on the board have full objectivity.¨
     Salomon, who also serves as rector of Peru's Pontifical Catholic University, said the commission will review information already compiled by several human rights and church organizations and then proceed to hold a series of public hearings throughout the conflict zone to recieve testimony. The commission also plans to investigate the military´s role in prosecuting the war.
     ¨One of the things we will have to study,¨ Lerner said, ¨is whether there was a systematic policy of extermination with orders given from high officials or whether these occurrences are the responsibility of individuals who were in the field patrolling. Or possibly there was a mixed paradigm of 'do it, it doesn't matter how, just resolve the problem'¨    The evidence gathered should provide ¨sufficient data¨ so the judicial branch can follow up with prosecutions, he said. The commission, however, will not have the legal power to subpoena witnesses. Lerner
said the final report will "indicate guilty persons where we have the full moral conviction of it."
Otherwise, he said, it will recommend further investigation. "Its a very difficult matter that of
guilt," Lerner stressed.
    The commission will also recommend a series of compensatory measures aimed at making whole the victims both in the personal and collective sense. The Toledo administration has pledged that the recommendations will be implemented.
   Whether the true identity of human rights violators like Corporal Marquis or Ivan will be discovered and criminal prosecution become possible in large part will depend on how the commission is operated. And the families of the disappeared will be watching closely. To push
their demands for a more pivotal role in the process protests are planned for later this month.
     "The people are looking at this with expectation.But there are families without much confidence in the process said Carla Chipoco Caceda of the Defender of the Nation Office, a strong advocate of creation of the truth commission. "The confidence will have to be
generated as we go along. We have to think about the protection of witnesses, civilian witnesses but also military witnesses. Because the declaration of members of the armed forces and police are what we most need."
     In what will serve as a foundation for the Truth Commission's work the Defender's office investigated forced disappearance from 1980 to 1996. The study used reports filed with the Public Ministry and nongovernmental organizations. Issued in November, 2000, it reported 7,000 cases of disappearance and extrajudicial killings. Some 57% of those killed were
Quechua speaking peasants; 14% were students and 8% teachers. The department of Ayacucho accounted for 58% of the disappearances.
    The study attributed 31% of the killings to the Belaunde Terry administration (1980-85), 42% to the Alan Garcia Administration (1985-90) and 26% to the Alberto Fujimori
administration (1990-2000). The Peruvian army was charged with committing 61.4% of the disappearances, the National Police, 12.4%, self-defense committees, sometimes called Rondas,7.4%, and the Marines 5.6%.
     The study attributed 45 disappearances to Shinging Path and 5 to the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement. Other abuses by insurgent forces were not studied.
    The truth commission, however, does plan a review of insurgent rights violations, which include numerous gruesome murders and the kidnapping of children to form guerrilla cadre. The report will also describe the causes of the violence and ways to prevent a future outbreak of war.
    Even with extensive assistance programs it will take years for the conflict region to recover. The violence by both sides has left tens of thousands of orphans, stressed Copreder Lawyer Luis Alonso Yangali.
    "Many have seen their fathers killed. They have psychological effects. They are more aggressive, or nervous or too easily scared. Their mothers have had their throats slit. They've seen eyes pulled out of peoples heads, horrible crimes."

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