A Light on Peru’s Shame

As the hostage crisis rolls unresolved into its seventh week, more attention is being paid to one of Peru’s top issues--the abysmal state of the justice system. The Tupac Amaru guerrillas holding Peruvian and foreign officials inside the Japanese ambassador’s residence in Lima have many demands, but none of them strike a stronger chord than those regarding the prisons.

President Alberto Fujimori has said he will not yield to the rebels’ demands that their jailed comrades be freed. That is commendable. Governments should not negotiate with terrorists, certainly not those holding guns to the heads of innocent victims. But episodes like the one in Lima tend to shine light into official corners, and in Peru that light discloses serious defects in police and military practices, sentencing and the treatment of prisoners.

Consider: There are about 22,000 inmates in the Peruvian prison system, half awaiting trial. Most are there because some anonymous witness accused them of being guerrillas. Amnesty International claims that at least 900 prisoners have never had an opportunity to defend themselves--no hearing, no lawyers.

Brought before military judges whose identities are hidden by hoods, the accused are denounced, sentenced and taken away to Peru’s teeming penitentiaries. Some are subsequently released, more than 700 in the past three years, but the vast majority remain behind bars without ever having had a fair legal defense. Estimates by several human rights organizations place the figure of Peruvians convicted or accused of terrorism at between 4,000 and 5,000, most of them suspected of being members of the country’s violent left-wing guerrilla armies.

Once sentenced, the convict will typically spend at least a year without contact with his or her family. Illustrative is the case of Victor Polay, the jailed leader of the Tupac Amaru, whose freedom is a key demand of the rebels at the Japanese compound. He is held in a 6-by-6-foot cell and allowed to exercise in a patio only once a day for half an hour.

It is under this dark shadow--one that tends to pull Peru’s fairly elected government down to the level of its rebel foes--that the hostage crisis must also be viewed. No government should let its policies be determined by the threat of domestic violence from armed groups. But the Fujimori government could take a rightful step by promising to open up its judicial system, to bring fair treatment even to those properly accused and convicted.