This record is a partial extract of the original cable. The full text of the original cable is not available.

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 05 LIMA 003474 
 
SIPDIS 
 
DRL for KBrokenshire, CNewling, KCumberland, JSchechter 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PHUM PGOV PE
SUBJECT: Peru: Human Rights Update 
 
REF: A) Lima 3337 
     B) Lima 2931 
     C) Lima 2865 
     D)...

id: 38430
date: 8/11/2005 20:51
refid: 05LIMA3474
origin: Embassy Lima
classification: UNCLASSIFIED
destination: 05LIMA1790|05LIMA2004|05LIMA2074|05LIMA2391|05LIMA2865|05LIMA2931|05LIMA3337|05LIMA462|05LIMA928
header:
This record is a partial extract of the original cable. The full text of the original cable is not available.



----------------- header ends ----------------

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 05 LIMA 003474 
 
SIPDIS 
 
DRL for KBrokenshire, CNewling, KCumberland, JSchechter 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PHUM PGOV PE
SUBJECT: Peru: Human Rights Update 
 
REF: A) Lima 3337 
     B) Lima 2931 
     C) Lima 2865 
     D) Lima 2391 
     E) Lima 1790 
     F) Lima 2074 
     G) Lima 928 
     H) Lima 462 
     I) Lima 2004 Human Rights Report 
 
¶1.  The following report provides a mid-year update on the 
Human Rights situation in Peru.  It is not meant to be 
comprehensive, but rather to identify emerging trends and 
highlight key issues.  Peru's human rights situation, in 
terms of the GOP's respect for the human rights of citizens, 
continues to improve, though significant challenges remain. 
 
¶2.  A separate update will be filed for Trafficking in 
Persons. 
 
-------- 
Summary: 
-------- 
 
¶3.  This human rights update covers highlights of the first 
half of 2005.  Themes discussed include the following: 
 
-GOP/NGOs Start Identity Rights Campaign (para 4-6) 
 
-Ombudsman Reports Drop in Caseload (para 7) 
 
-The Right to Life: Police Abuse, Prosecution for the 
Accomarca/Cayara Massacres, and Mob Justice (paras 8-11) 
 
-Disappearances: Police Arrested for Kidnapping (para 12) 
 
-Witness Protection (para 13) 
 
-Prison Battle Spurs Construction Plans (para 12) 
 
-Press Freedom Issues (paras 15-18) 
 
-Outreach to Evangelical Christians on Religious Freedom 
(paras 19) 
 
-Human Rights Notes: First Female is No. 1 Non-Com, Military 
Vote, Gays and Lesbians March, Racism in Ads Scored (para 
20) 
 
-Comment: Governability and Human Rights (para 21) 
 
---------------------------------- 
Identity Rights Campaign Continues 
---------------------------------- 
 
¶4.  The Women's Ministry (MIMDES) - in conjunction with the 
National Office for Registry and Identification (RENIEC), 
the National Institute for Adolescent and Child Welfare 
(INABIF), various utilities, the Catholic Church, and a 
variety of private companies - announced the National 
Crusade for the Right to a Name at a meeting in Lima on 
2/17.  The campaign will raise parents' awareness about the 
importance of getting birth certificates for their children. 
Right now, an estimated fifteen percent of Peruvian births 
go unregistered, producing a total of 95,000 new persons 
each year without a birth certificate.  Poor indigenous 
women and children in rural areas are highly overrepresented 
among those lacking basic identity documents. 
 
¶5.  Leaders of the crusade are undertaking a number of 
public activities throughout the provinces.  The coalition 
is also proposing a change in Peruvian Law that would allow 
single mothers to register children born out of wedlock with 
the last name of the presumed father.  (Registry itself 
would not be considered proof of paternity under this 
proposal.) 
 
¶6.  Comment: Post has followed Peru's Identity Rights 
Movement since last fall.  Pushed by Oxfam Great Britain, 
the campaign addresses a cross-cutting issue, one that 
affects a number of areas, including voting rights, property 
rights, trafficking in persons, the rights of children, etc. 
Perhaps the most attractive aspect of the Right to a Name 
Crusade is that what it proposes - a reduction in the 
numbers of undocumented persons - is an achievable goal. 
Post would be eager to learn of similar campaigns in Latin 
America or in other developing countries to explore possible 
cooperation. 
 
--------------------------- 
Ombudsman's Case Load Drops 
--------------------------- 
 
¶7.  The Ombudsman's Office attended almost 60,000 cases - 
among them consultations, complaints and petitions - during 
2004 and 2005, according to the Eighth Annual Report of that 
office presented to Congress in early June.  The total 
caseload covered from April 2004 to April 2005; it 
represented a drop of 13.4 percent from the previous year. 
 
--------------------------------------------- -------- 
Questions on Exercise of Criminal Court Jurisdiction 
over Military Accused in Massacre Prosecution 
--------------------------------------------- -------- 
 
¶8.  Judge Walter Castillo of Lima's Third Provincial Penal 
Court on 6/1 ordered 29 members of the military, some 
retired, others who remain on active duty, detained for 
having allegedly massacred 72 campesinos in the town of 
Accomarca in Ayacucho in 1985.  Among those to be arrested 
was General Jose Williams Zapata, an active duty military 
officer considered a hero of the operation Chauvin de 
Huantar, where 74 hostages at the Japanese Ambassador's 
Residence were rescued from MRTA terrorists in April 1997. 
The defendants appealed their detention, and a higher court 
ordered that Williams Zapata remain free on his own 
recognizance.  So far, the police have not detained any of 
the accused military figures. 
 
¶9.  In a similar case, Judge Miluzka Cano Lopez of Lima's 
Fourth Provincial Penal Court ordered the arrest of 118 
military figures, including retired General Jose Valdivia 
Duenas, for allegedly having carried out a massacre of 37 
campesinos in the remote town of Cayara in Ayacucho on 
5/14/1988.  The court has also announced that it will ask 
former President Alan Garcia to testify in the case on 8/29. 
The accused in the case have yet to be detained by the 
police. 
 
¶10.  Comment: Press reports have criticized the fact that 
the accused have yet to be detained.  Sources at the 
Institute for Legal Defense (IDL) say that both cases test 
the power of the police to arrest members of the military 
accused of human rights violations.  They contend that 
Peruvian National Police (PNP) officials are afraid to make 
the necessary arrests.  PNP Officials have told RSO that the 
arrests are in process.  Active duty military officers are 
supposed to be detained by military authorities, and the 
judges are working with the military on this issue.  Many of 
the retired soldiers who are facing charges are former NCOs 
and are very difficult to locate, according to the PNP. 
Embassy will continue to monitor these attempts by criminal 
court judges to exercise jurisdiction over current and 
former military members.  End Comment. 
 
----------- 
Mob Justice 
----------- 
 
¶11.  Incidents of mob justice continue to be a human rights 
problem (Ref E).  On March 26, Fermin Duran Inga, age 39, 
was found in a men's bathroom with a five year old girl in a 
large, popular market in San Martin de Porres.  Duran said 
that the girl was in the bathroom when he entered.  Local 
merchants discounted Duran's story and were about to lynch 
him when the police arrived.  Later, the girl received a 
detailed medical examination and no signs of abuse were 
discovered.  There were other cases of near-lynchings and 
one frustrated attempt to burn three people who had robbed a 
taxi cab driver in Lima in late April.  In early June, angry 
Aymara residents of the village of Masocruz in Puno burned 
alive two local men accused of theft.  One died and the 
other remains severely injured. 
 
-------------------------- 
Kidnapping Involves Police 
-------------------------- 
 
¶12.  Four Policemen are accused of kidnapping and extortion 
in the abduction of Lima businessman Raul Carlos Tucto 
Vigilio.  He was abducted in February and his wife was 
forced to pay USD 30,000 for his release.  Four police 
officers are charged with organizing the abduction.  They 
are also being investigated for other crimes.  Press reports 
stated that one officer's file contained four hundred 
previous citations for improper conduct. 
 
----------------------------- 
Witness Protection Still Weak 
----------------------------- 
 
¶13.  For the third time in fifteen months, unknown 
assailants tried to kill Luis Alberto Ramirez, the key 
witness in the trial of General Luiz Perez for the murders 
at the December Ninth Barracks in Huancayo from 1991-1993. 
Ramirez was fired upon by unknown persons as he left the 
Institute for Legal Defense (IDL), a human rights and legal 
defense organization, at 6:30 PM on 6/1.  A police escort 
saved Ramirez' life by covering Ramirez with his own body as 
he returned fire on the assailants. 
 
--------------------------------------------- ------- 
Prison Battle Spurs Promises to Build New Facilities 
--------------------------------------------- ------- 
 
¶14.  Prisoners at Peru's San Juan de Lurigancho prison 
fought a virtual civil war over which faction would control 
the smuggling of drugs and guns into the facility on 2/8 
(Ref G).  Five were killed and twenty-five wounded as 
inmates from different cell blocks battled for eight hours, 
using an astonishing array of arms that included revolvers, 
hand-held automatic weapons (among them 9 mm Uzis), and hand 
grenades.  Five hundred police were called in to quell the 
violence.  Prison experts warned that anarchy in Lurigancho 
cannot be solved without reforms to Peru's clogged and 
corrupt judicial system.  In his address to the nation on 
7/28, president Toledo promised that the GOP would construct 
two more high security prisons (Ref A). 
 
------------- 
Press Freedom 
------------- 
 
¶15.  In January, the Anti-Corruption Chamber of the Lima 
Superior Court convicted fifteen persons -- among them 
former newspaper owners, military officers, and government 
officials -- to prison sentences ranging from two to eight 
years for participating in a scheme directed by former 
President Alberto Fujimori's Intelligence Advisor, Vladimiro 
Montesinos, to manipulate the news through systematic bribes 
paid to the owners, editors, and writers of various tabloids 
during Fujimori's second term (1995-2000).  The court's 
decision received highly favorable coverage in the local 
media, whose members believe that Montesinos' manipulations 
undermined their own credibility (Ref H). 
 
¶16.  A group of Aguarunas, an Amazonian indigenous group, 
kidnapped journalist Luis Alberto Pena Vergaray and his 
translator for five days in May.  Allegedly, the kidnapping 
was motivated by locals' desire to participate in an 
investigation into the killings of four health workers in 
the same area earlier in the year (Refs B, D). 
 
¶17.  The Lima Superior Court's Fifth Chamber nullified a 
trial court's conviction of British journalists Sally Bowen 
and Jane Holligan for libeling narco-kingpin Fernando 
Zevallos on 6/27 (Ref C).  Bowen's and Holligan's case 
became a cause celebre for press freedom when, in May, a 
lower court ruled that both were guilty of libel for having 
quoted a source in their book, "The Accidental Spy," who 
alleged that Fernando Zevallos was a narcotrafficker (Ref 
F).  (Note: Zevallos appeared on the most recent USG Drug 
Kingpin List.  End Note.)  The Superior Court found that 
trial court Judge Alfredo Catacora had violated Bowen's and 
Holligan's due process rights and ordered a new trial before 
a different judge.  The court also issued a reprimand to 
Judge Catacora and recommended that the judiciary's 
disciplinary agency, the Office of Control of Magistrates 
(OCMA), investigate Catacora's conduct.  While the new 
ruling does not end the case, it starts the process of 
reversing a much-protested miscarriage of justice and 
infringement upon press freedom. 
 
¶18.  Brothers Moises and Alex Wolfenson, two newspaper 
publishers on trial for press and media corruption during 
the Fujimori era, were released on 7/9 as the result of a 
decision of the Supreme Court, which applied a law recently 
passed by Congress that equated house arrest with prison 
sentencing in calculating the total of time served.  The 
Wolfensons' release set off a public outcry and two weeks 
later the Constitutional Tribunal found the new law 
unconstitutional.  The Wolfensons' returned to detention. 
Congress has since revoked the law. 
 
--------------------------------------- 
Peruvian Evangelical Christians and HRR 
--------------------------------------- 
¶19.  The Human Rights Report can be an excellent vehicle for 
outreach to new groups.  Its advocacy for religious equality 
in the eyes of the law proved a winning point with Peru's 
rapidly growing Evangelical Christian community.  On 3/29, 
Emboff made a presentation about U.S. Human Rights Policy 
and the role of Human Rights in U.S. History to the Union of 
Peruvian Evangelical Christians (UNICEP), an umbrella 
organization that represents some 6,000 churches with a 
total membership of 300,000 nationwide.  Peruvian 
Evangelicals are pushing hard to amend Article 50 of the 
Peruvian Constitution, which recognizes the special historic 
role that the Catholic Church has played in Peruvian 
society.  Article 50 has become the basis for a number of 
special tax, educational and legal benefits that the 
Catholic Church enjoys.  (Note: If other posts are 
interested in a draft of the PowerPoint presentation used, e- 
mail brooksdc2@state.gov.  End Note.) 
 
------------------ 
Human Rights Notes 
------------------ 
 
¶20.  The following noteworthy events also took place during 
the period. 
 
-First Female Takes Top Spot in Air Force School: In March, 
Maria Veronica Estrada Sevillano, 21 years of age, became 
the first woman to enter as the top ranked cadet into the 
Peruvian Air Force's School for Non-Commissioned Officers. 
Estrada scored highest of 212 cadets on the school's 
entrance exam, the first time that a woman has achieved this 
honor in the school's 64 year history.    Of 212 cadets in 
the entering class, 74 are women.  Ms. Estrada's achievement 
made front page headlines in Lima daily of record "El 
Comercio."  She plans to become an airplane mechanic. 
 
-Military Members Get the Vote: The Peruvian Congress 
approved a law extending voting rights to serving members of 
the Military and Police on March 10.  Both groups will be 
able to exercise suffrage in 2006.  The new law will extend 
voting rights to an additional 200,000 persons. 
 
-Lesbians, Gays and Bisexuals March in Lima: A group of 
hundreds of lesbians, gays, and bisexuals marched in 
downtown Lima on 7/16.  This was the fourth annual such 
march.  Congresswoman Cecilia Tait, author of a draft law 
prohibiting sexual discrimination, addressed the marchers, 
who were accompanied by a variety of youth and leftist 
groups. 
 
-Lima Anti-Racism Activists Award "Prizes" for Racist Ads: 
The Lima-based Association in Favor of Human Rights (APDH), 
a branch of the National Coordination Group for Human 
Rights, has been running a strong campaign focusing on 
racism in Peruvian daily life.  The group has carried out 
demonstrations, published articles and, last March, gave out 
awards to companies it felt used racist and socially 
excluding images in advertising.  This year's winner was 
Grupo Gloria, S.A., a producer of milk-based products whose 
advertising, according to critics, only features ethnically 
white Peruvians.  (Peruvian advertising in general features 
blonde, blue-eyed persons, who form a distinct minority.  It 
also frequently portrays darker-skinned individuals, 
particularly Afro-Peruvians, in terms of negative 
stereotypes.) 
 
-------- 
Comment: 
-------- 
 
¶21.  Peru's human rights situation, in terms of the GOP's 
respect for the human rights of citizens, continues to 
improve.  A worrisome trend is the violation of human rights 
by non-state actors - narcotraffickers, police acting 
outside official duties, violent criminals, citizen 
vigilantes and others - in ways that suggest how gaps in 
governability threaten citizens and produce frustration with 
democracy. 
STRUBLE 

=======================CABLE ENDS============================