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C O N F I D E N T I A L LIMA 000165 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SIPDIS 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 01/19/2017 
TAGS: PGOV PHUM PTER PE
SUBJECT: HUMAN RIGHTS COURT DECISION CAUSES GARCIA TO 
STUMBLE 
 
 
Classified By: Political Counselor Alexis Ludwig for reason 1.4(d). 
 
¶1.  (C) Summary: An Inter-American Court of Human Rights 
(IACHR) decision requiring the Peruvian government to pay 
reparations and to apologize for the May 1992 killing of 41 
prison inmates (associated with the Shining Path terrorist 
group) has caused the Garcia administration political 
problems.  Government and APRA representatives have blasted 
the decision, threatened to pull Peru out of the IACHR, and 
blamed former President Toledo for failing to represent the 
interests of the state.  Meanwhile, the government is seeking 
to shape a response that is both politically viable and 
legally valid -- a difficult balancing act.  Most analysts 
believe President Garcia has uncharacteristically stumbled in 
his public handing of the case, including when he renewed his 
support for the death penalty, perhaps out of a concern to 
shield himself from a future court decision.  End Summary. 
 
Controversial Court Ruling 
-------------------------- 

¶2.  (SBU) In late December the Inter-American Court of Human 
Rights issued a series of Peru-related rulings.  The most 
controversial of these was one that held the Government of 
Peru liable for the May 1992 killing of 41 inmates in Lima's 
Castro Castro prison.  Most observers acknowledge the 
evidence shows many of the prisoners were executed after 
surrendering.  At the same time, Peruvians maintain vivid 
memories of the violent and nihilistic Shining Path 
insurgency that in 1992 controlled vast swaths of the 
country, including state prisons like Castro Castro.  Further 
muddying the waters, the incident occurred one month after 
President Alberto Fujimori -- who many Peruvians credit with 
breaking the back of terrorism -- shut down Congress in the 
infamous "self-coup" inaugurating a near decade of autocratic 
and corrupt rule.  Wherever one stands on the ambivalent 
figure of Fujimori, the ruling has generated a thorny 
political challenge for the Garcia administration. 
 
¶3.  (SBU) The key elements of the court's decision have been 
like salt in a still open wound.  The court decreed that the 
state owed the "victims" a formal apology; that the families 
of the dead deserved financial compensation; and that the 
names of the victims should be inscribed in an artistic work 
-- a large Lima-based stone sculpture called "The Eye That 
Cries."  The idea that the state would reward the principal 
perpetrators of the era's violence -- the 41 dead prisoners 
were members of the Shining Path terrorist group -- with an 
apology, cash and a privileged place in a supposedly 
apolitical artistic work seems to many Peruvians the height 
of folly.  That none of the 30,000 plus innocent victims of 
the terrorists themselves, whether poor farmer or humble 
police officer, has received indemnification of any sort only 
compounds the political impracticability of the decision. 
Many observers believe that submitting to the ruling as is 
would be political suicide for the government. 
 
GOP Criticizes Court Excess 
--------------------------- 

¶4.  (C) Government officials and representatives of the 
ruling APRA party, including President Garcia, have publicly 
blasted the court's decision as outrageous and characterized 
the victims of the Castro Castro killings as terrorists. 
APRA Secretary General Mauricio Mulder stated that Peru 
should consider pulling out of the IACHR in protest. 
Government officials have also blamed the government of 
Alejandro Toledo -- President of Peru during the time the 
IACHR case ran its course -- for failing to represent the 
interests of the state, and have threatened to issue a 
Constitutional motion holding Toledo responsible for this 
alleged lapse.  (Comment: Sources in the Ad-Hoc Prosecutor's 
office told us that lawyers representing the state in the 
case were not given sufficient funding to do their jobs and 
even, in some cases, to pay for the plane ride to San Jose 
when relevant hearings were being held.  Some analysts have 
suggested that the Toledo administration may have blundered 
in conceiving the case as directed against the government of 
Fujimori -- for whom there was no love lost or responsibility 
felt -- rather than against the Peruvian state.  End 
Comment.) 
 
¶5.  (C) Meantime, since the court's decision is not subject 
 
to appeal, the government is seeking to shape a response that 
is both politically viable and legally valid.  Its first 
tactic has been to prepare a formal request for 
"clarification," to buy time while considering its options. 
But government officials and legal analysts acknowledge that 
the administration cannot thumb its nose indefinitely at the 
court's decision, given the terms of IAHCR membership. 
According to one foreign ministry official, a range of 
politico-legal strategies are being contemplated to manage 
this difficult balancing act.  One of these is for the 
government to set aside in a special escrow-type account the 
cash to indemnify the "victims," but to condition its 
dispersal on a similar or proportional amount of money being 
provided by the terrorist perpetrators to their own multiple 
victims. 
 
Garcia Stumbles 
--------------- 

¶6.  (C) Many analysts believe Garcia has uncharacteristically 
stumbled in response to the IAHCR ruling.  In publicly 
accusing the court of undermining Peru's democracy, he 
indiscriminately characterized as a terrorist an individual 
who has proven to be an authentic victim, and he claimed that 
hundreds of similar cases faced the Peruvian state in the 
IAHCR (when in fact there is only one.)  Raising the bar, 
Garcia publicly reiterated a constitutionally questionable 
proposal to apply the death penalty to terrorists as well as 
to child rapists.  When a series of high-profile political 
figures publicly challenged this proposal, Garcia dug deeper, 
calling for a popular referendum on the death penalty.  In 
the end, even Garcia appeared to realize he had gone too far, 
telling reporters mid January that he would say no more on 
the subject.  Some observers have invoked familiar rumors of 
Garcia's psychological instability, supposedly aggravated 
when the political temperature rises, in explaining his 
apparent political missteps. 
 
¶7.  (SBU) Others suspect more cynical motives in Garcia's 
public suppor for the death penalty.  Notwithstanding its 
dubious constitutionality and the consequences to Peru's 
membership in the IAHCR, the death penalty is supported by a 
clear maority of Peruvians.  Pointing to this fact, Garcia's 
detractors believe he secretly seeks to have Peru withdraw 
from the IAHCR in order to shield himself from a future court 
decision concerning his role in a 1986 prison massacre at El 
Fronton, which occurred when he was President.  Other critics 
have suggested Garcia is blowing smoke to conceal his 
administration's lack of concrete progress on other fronts. 
One congressman told us that, by publicly pursuing the death 
penalty, Garcia may inadvertently have created the structure 
of a genuine opposition in congress, which was forced to vote 
the measure down in a preemptive special session. 
POWERS