human rights watch | peru's questioned elections

Lima, Friday, July 28, 9:30 a.m.
A hush in the taxi as we make our way to the Paseo de la Republica. A delay getting started meant that we were not at the head of the march but still watching our TV when the violence erupted.

Copyright Sebastian Brett 2000 We walk up Lampa street against the current of marchers fleeing the gas, eyes streaming. I see a woman in a wheelchair having her face dabbed with vinegar. The police have cordoned off the Congress building and the Plaza Mayor, where the presidential palace is located, and are repelling all attempts to get close with volleys of teargas and water cannon. Ahead are white clouds of gas, but luckily the wind is in our favor.

Members of the fleeing crowd are indignant at the unexpectedly violent reaction of the police when the marchers tried to reach the agreed rally points, which had been widely advertised in the press. A distance of fifty yards separates the marchers and the police in Lampa street. As we advance towards the gas clouds, we pass a heap of burning tyres in the street. Fumes from a burning garbage can stick in my throat. My companion walks over to remonstrate with a couple of kids. One of them tells him the smoke counteracts the effects of the gas. I look over my shoulder and see him urinating on the flames.

The crowd passes the word to the observers, but their claims range from factual to fantastic. A young girl has been hit in the head by a tear gas canister. Three people have been wounded with birdshot or rubber bullets (perdigones), one man tells me. The police have killed two people, another says. Some believe that Toledo (who advanced to the head of the march in an effort to negotiate with the police) has "disappeared." Later, a whole group bursts into enthusiastic applause after someone announces that the army in Arequipa has risen against Fujimori. In circumstances like this, rumor takes hold instantly.

Three opposition congressmen, still wearing their red and white sashes from the inauguration, bordered by bodyguards, head purposefully past the Sheraton towards the action, evidently bent on negotiating with the police. They are swallowed up by the crowd and I do not see them again.

What is clear from repeated accounts and the injuries I see is that the police are firing CS tear gas canisters indiscriminately and directly at people. They fire the projectiles from moving vehicles and from rooftops, sometimes in opposite directions, creating panic in the crowd. I am told by a reporter that a Fox television cameraman has been hit on the head and taken to the hospital. From later reports it appears that it was Paul Vanotti, from the California press agency "Public Media Center," who was reporting for The Nation. He was hit in the face by a canister fired from a police vehicle in Lampa street, and was saved from worse injury by the gas mask he was wearing, although glass splinters from the mask had to removed from his eye by microsurgery. A man shows me a groin injury from a canister just before an ambulance takes him away.

Toledo, in jeans and a leather jacket, appears in the Paseo de la Republica and addresses a small impromptu gathering, looking disconcerted and angry. Tear gas canisters are lobbed in his direction and the group breaks up, to reorganize across the street where it is again dislodged by tear gas.

A group of demonstrators of middle class appearance gather around me in curiosity, wearing some of the many variants of gas mask I was to see during the day, ranging from sophisticated military equipment, surgical masks, to cotton wool dabs. (Only the military equipment is really effective.) They ask me to tell the world what is happening to their country.

My eyes are streaming as I am now downwind of the gas. I reach for my vinegar-soaked cotton wool and dab it over my face, stinging my eyes in the process. Not much use. I head for the Sheraton, doff my yellow tunic and talk my way past the crowd barrier. From my vantage point on the sixteenth floor I see a knot of people around a waiting ambulance. I later learn that the man being taken away is Victor Delfin, a well known sculptor and human rights activist, whom I once met in his beautiful home on Lima's oceanfront. Another canister victim.

I did not see the aggression that provoked this violent police response. But my head is buzzing with questions: Who are these violentistas, who have so suddenly degraded this massive display of democratic protest? Could they be agents provocateurs instructed to make trouble to discredit Toledo and "justify" the police repression? Or simply the young delinquents that often attach themselves to public protests? Either way, did the authorities take reasonable steps to uphold law and order while respecting the right to demonstrate of the marchers? I remember that two days earlier, Jorge Santistevan, the Peruvian ombudsman, complained in an interview that the police had refused to provide him or the marchers with any information about the policing plan. If they wanted an orderly march, why did they not discuss and agree on a route? And why did the police not use their aerial surveillance to pinpoint the aggressors and then use snatch squads to arrest the troublemakers, instead of this indiscriminate violence against everyone present in the area?

Noon: Sheraton hotel.
I look across from the narrow 16th floor balcony at the imposing gray neo-classical structure of the Palace of Justice. The streets surrounding it are virtually deserted, apart from knots of disoriented demonstrators

Copyright Sebastian Brett 2000

recovering from the tear gas I have just escaped from. I see no police cordon protecting the building. There is a tinkle of breaking glass in a ground floor window on the far right of the building. I see three or four people, apparently kids, stoning the windows from the broad steps on which, the night before, hundreds of demonstrators had gathered without violence. Another window breaks on an upper floor. Flames appear in the first window struck. Then another fire on the upper floor. I can clearly see three police or security guards moving about on the roof of the building. A white cloud of tear gas forms below as one of them apparently lobs a tear gas grenade in the direction of the vandals. I watch as the flames crackle merrily. There is no cover for the vandals, who nevertheless seem to be very relaxed. It takes forty-five minutes for the first police and fire service vehicles to arrive. Plumes of white smoke emerge from the windows as the fires are slowly extinguished. I see no arrests being made in the vicinity. The vandals have long since disappeared.

I am struck by how cut off the vandals seem to be from the demonstrators, the vast majority of whom are still bent on gaining access to the plazas where the police are concentrated. Where did they get their gasoline supply from? If they brought it with them in bottles, they came here with a plan to burn buildings. Moreover, they seem to act with impunity. Despite police helicopters circling overhead, the presence of guards on the roof, and the absence of any obstruction in the streets, the police and fire-services take ages to arrive. It is, to say the least, suspicious.

2:00 p.m.
I don my observer's jacket again and re-enter the fray, heading back up Lampa toward the fire in the National Bank, from which clouds of black and gray smoke are belching. I make a brief detour to the Plaza San Martin, now occupied by weary demonstrators. A man in a red bandanna empties a sweater-load of spent CS canisters at my feet. A woman asks me for vinegar. I tear off a bit of cotton-wool to give her and a crowd forms around me. My remaining cotton-wool quickly disappears.

Copyright Sebastian Brett 2000 Unlike in the morning, Lampa is almost deserted, and I now see why. There are police APCs parked in the center of the road, and ahead is a white curtain of gas. I head cautiously up the road checking behind to make sure I have a clear escape. A man urges me on, saying there is no problem, and I follow him. I want to see what is happening with the fire. Then a canister swishes past my head and another lands at my feet like a devilish firecracker. The man shouts at me and gestures me to follow him. He unbolts the door of an office building and takes me up in the elevator to the roof. I photograph the burning bank and National Electoral Jury. I see three police vehicles, and two white vans, but no fire engines or fire-fighting equipment. The streets are completely clear of protestors. The man, accompanied by two office colleagues, proceeds to drape a Toledo flag from the roof while a police helicopter hovers overhead observing the scene. I decide it is time to move on, and he lets me out into the street, where the coast is clear. On my way back south on Lampa I pass a man beating an uprooted lamp post with a hammer, possibly to make a spear or battering ram. I decide to call it a day.

Only a few blocks to the west, Lima seems completely normal. My taxi driver returns me to the safety of Miraflores. He says that Peru has never had a decent president in living memory and he wishes I could have seen the best of his dear country.

> > > PERU'S QUESTIONED ELECTIONS

Eyewitness dispatches from Sebastian Brett, Human Rights Watch researcher on Peru