Reply #6: Concerning the Senderistas: [View All]

... Shining Path singled out the poor, indigenous populations, whose interests it disingenuously claimed to have at heart. It forced farmers to slash production to subsistence levels and to destroy whatever modern farm equipment the campesinos possessed. In addition, Shining Path imposed puritanical regulations that outlawed fiestas and prohibited drinking as part of a strategy of strong-arming local populations into submission and self-abnegation. Any person believed to be sympathetic to the government or to even slightly disagree with Shining Path’s fundamental beliefs, was a candidate to be tortured and killed. Outlandishly, Shining Path then abandoned its professedly leftist ideology and began to identify leftists as candidates to be kidnapped, tortured and/or murdered.

Not surprisingly, Shining Path failed to capture the hearts and minds of the natives due to this extremely bizarre metamorphosis. With leftist and trade union officials being specifically targeted, more and more Peruvians learned to lean more heavily in favor of government efforts to bear down on Shining Path’s revolutionary operations. In the DESCO study, leftist assassinations carried out by Shining Path began to rise a few years after the revolution was triggered—peaking in 1988 and then slowly declining. In 1992, now under Fujimori, assassinations increased drastically, and then dropped after Guzman’s capture. During the Garcia era, leftist assassinations were targeted against two main groups when ideological factors gave way to more bare-boned battles between Shining Path and the government: Garcia’s American Popular Revolutionary Alliance (APRA) and the more radical United Left (IU). Shining Path’s tactic to force individuals into submission was a strategy calculated to eliminate the competition. Considering its goals of ousting foreign influence and rival organizations, it was Shining Path’s sudden and unpredictable strategy to turn against its own people as well as like-minded potential allies which foredoomed its end. In the ensuing struggle, large numbers of deaths occurred, helping to transform its revolution into a stark case of conflicting interests. The question of principle was increasingly not in play.

In 1992, the Alberto Fujimori administration staged a coup against itself which led to the dissolving of Congress and the dismantling of the country’s legal system. This cynical ploy enabled his administration and the military police to carry out large numbers of murders and kidnappings of those though to be enemies of the state without having an opposition party or legal capacity capable of challenging various illegal acts.

The various degrees of power under the administrations Belaúnde, Garcia and Fujimori worked to subvert law and order more than to uphold it. Under these governments, Lima’s security forces exponentially increased the murders of ordinary Peruvians, who were suspected of being part of the Shining Path. In addition to the unrestricted power of the government, the Fujimori administration did little to solve the country’s stressful economic situation. Research reports at the time found that 4.5 million people in Peru were living in extreme poverty (lack of sanitation, water, electricity, and gas). Fujimori then sought to enlarge the death squads that carried out orders to kidnap, torture and murder those suspected of being part of the Shining Path or known to harbor anti-Fujimori sentiments. For example, in 1997, the gruesome discovery of anti-Fujimori activist Mariella Barreto Fiofano’s body was found with her hands cut off and spine broken in half. This demonstrated how far the regime was prepared to go in order to suppress and silence those it saw as its foes ...

http://octavioislas.wordpress.com/2008/05/07/989-coha-report-the-rise-and-fall-of-shining-path-sendero-luminoso-peru/

... The .. internal armed conflict experienced by Peru between 1980 and 2000 constituted the most intense, extensive and prolonged episode of violence in the entire history of the Republic .... The TRC <(Truth & Reconciliation Commission)> estimates that the most probable figure for victims who died in the violence is 69,280 individuals. These figures are greater than the number of human losses suffered by Peru in all of the foreign and civil wars that have occurred in its 182 years of independence ... More than 40 percent of the deaths and disappearances reported to the TRC are concentrated in the Andean department of Ayacucho ... Of the total victims reported, 79 percent lived in rural areas and 56 percent were engaged in farming or livestock activities ... While the national census of 1993 indicates that only 40 percent of the national population had failed to attain secondary school education, the TRC has found that 68 percent of the victims were below this level ...

In the TRC’s view, based on the number of persons killed and disappeared, the PCP-SL <(Sendero Luminoso)> was the principal perpetrator of crimes and violations of human rights. It was responsible for 54 percent of victim deaths reported to the TRC. This high degree of responsibility on the part of the PCP-SL is an exceptional case among subversive groups in Latin America, and one of the most notable unique features of the process that the TRC has had to analyze ... Additionally, the PCP-SL engaged in massive assassinations of social leaders (both men and women), community leaders, traditional mayors, and leaders of peasant, union, neighborhood, educators’ and women’s organizations ...

In 1984, the Movimiento Revolucionario Túpac Amaru (MRTA) initiated its own armed struggle against the State. MRTA is responsible for 1.5 percent of the victim deaths that were reported to the TRC. Unlike Shining Path, and like other armed Latin American organizations with which it maintained ties, the MRTA claimed responsibility for its actions, its members used uniforms or other identifiers to differentiate themselves from the civilian population, it abstained from attacking the unarmed population and at some points showed signs of being open to peace negotiations. Nevertheless, MRTA also engaged in criminal acts; it resorted to assassinations, such as in the case of General Enrique López Albújar, the taking of hostages and the systematic practice of kidnapping, all crimes that violate not only personal liberty but the international humanitarian law that the MRTA claimed to respect ...

The TRC has confirmed that with the entrance of the armed forces into Ayacucho and the later introduction of the political-military commands (CPM) in areas with a declared state of emergency, the police were subordinated to the armed forces, subject to orders given by military commanders, over and above their own commands and civilian authorities. In this context, and as the military offensive advanced, agents from all three police institutions acting in the emergency areas took part in grave human rights violations ... The TRC affirms that at some places and moments in the conflict, the behavior of members of the armed forces not only involved some individual excesses by officers or soldiers, but also entailed generalized and/or systematic practices of human rights violations that constitute crimes against humanity as well as transgressions of the norms of International Humanitarian Law ...

http://www.cverdad.org.pe/ingles/ifinal/conclusiones.php