The Inter-American Court of Human Rights, a bunch of pro-terrorists? That is what President Alberto Fujimori would have his fellow Peruvians believe now that the Court has announced its unanimous decision to declare null and void a summary trial by a "faceless" military court of four Chileans accused of belonging to the rebel Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA). The Chileans were convicted of treason and sentenced to life imprisonment in 1994.
The Inter-American Court—established by the Organization of American States in 1979 to apply and interpret the American Convention on Human Rights—found that the Chileans were deprived of basic due process: In addition to receiving a summary trial, they were tried by active military officers who could hardly be considered impartial judges and were denied legitimate rights of defense. Due process and other fundamental rights are guaranteed in the American Convention, to which Peru is signatory and which it is therefore bound to uphold. Consequently, the Court argued, the Peruvian state is obligated to hold a new civil trial for the Chileans. It also ordered the Peruvian government to pay a total of $10,000 to the families of the four Chileans for legal expenses.
Fujimori's response was immediate and absolute. On the same day the Court's decision was announced, he emphatically stated that his government would not abide by the Court's "unprecedented" resolution, nor would it "hand over a single cent" to the Chilean "terrorists." "My government will not free any terrorists, not a single one," he declared. "We made this clear when [leftist rebels] took over the residence of the Japanese Ambassador." The decision did not, of course, mandate the freeing of the Chileans, only a new—and fair—civil hearing.
Within a matter of hours Fujimori's spin doctors were launching attacks of all sorts against the Court and its decision. Ruling party officials accused the Court of "ignoring Peruvian reality" and being under the spell of a secretive left-wing conspiracy. In the words of one of Fujimori's most rabid supporters, congresswoman Martha Chávez: "A covert left-wing ideology has taken over [the Court]." As a result, she asserted, the Court's ruling was not only invalid but "reprehensible"; and not only was Peru not required to abide by the decision, but it should withdraw from the American Convention altogether.
The official campaign against the Inter-American Court has taken on a tone strikingly similar to the Chilean right's defense of former dictator Augusto Pinochet after his London arrest. Like Pinochet's supporters, who accused London and Madrid of imperialist designs for even considering the application of international law to try the General for crimes against humanity, Fujimori's cronies accused the Court of seeking to violate Peru's sovereignty by undermining the ruling of the "legally established" military tribunals. They also accused the Court of failing to take into account the extenuating circumstances of internal war which gave rise to the "necessity" of the military courts in the first place.
As Pinochet often did, Fujimori appealed to the violence and chaos of the past to defend his government's harsh measures. Extraordinary measures were required in those extraordinary times, he asserted, because civil judges "pissed in their pants in fear" of terrorists. The faceless military tribunals made it possible to convict hundreds of terrorists and, eventually, subdue the Shining Path and the MRTA.
What Fujimori does not say is that the military tribunals as well as the civil courts incarcerated hundreds—perhaps thousands—of innocent people. Fujimori himself has already pardoned nearly 500 prisoners who were found innocent of all charges by a special commission that he himself established. He also neglects to say that despite the constitutional provision making the military tribunals "legal," they in fact violate just about every aspect of due process outlined in the American Convention on Human Rights and every other international legal instrument dealing with human rights.
This is the real problem: The military tribunals, which have become the cornerstone of the repressive civil-military apparatus that has ruled Peru with an iron fist since 1992, violate Peru's international human rights obligations by denying due process to those accused of terrorism and treason, and therefore must be dismantled. This is unacceptable to Fujimori, who has built his reputation as being "tough on terrorism" and, moreover, who has dramatically extended the purview of the military courts to include cases of drug traffickers, members of youth gangs, and common criminals.
The Fujimori regime's reaction to the Inter-American Court's decision is not just that of a despotic regime defending its authoritarian project. As evidenced by the Chilean case, even centrist and left-of-center politicians have a hard time accepting that international actors can intervene in domestic matters by way of international trials, as in the case of Pinochet, or by overturning a ruling by an illegitimate if constitutionally sanctioned military court. Odd that the same elites who have little compunction about bowing to the dictates of international financial institutions like the IMF and the World Bank should find international human rights law so troubling.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jo-Marie Burt is the editor of NACLA Report on the Americas.
