(New York) - Human Rights Watch today urged the Organization of American States (OAS) to unequivocally condemn a sweeping new amnesty law proposed by the Peruvian government. Peruvian officials have said that parliament must approve the new law before discussing a timetable for new elections.
The government proposal writes into the constitution a much-criticized 1995 amnesty, which provides impunity for military, police, and civilian personnel responsible for human rights abuses committed during Peru's fifteen-year counterinsurgency war. It also updates the law to include all human rights crimes committed since June 1995 until the present. Unlike the 1995 law, the present version apparently would include drug-trafficking crimes.
"This law would be a disaster for human rights in Peru," said Jose Miguel Vivanco, executive director of the Americas Division at Human Rights Watch. "The OAS, and all Latin American leaders, should make it clear that they strongly oppose the amnesty proposal."
The OAS has so far failed to oppose the proposal. In a recent statement, OAS Secretary General Cesar Gaviria said that "only the political and social sectors of Peru should comment at the moment on the national policy of reconciliation that the Government of Peru is proposing, and on its compatibility or otherwise with democracy and the preservation of the rule of law."
By contrast, the 1995 amnesty law was widely condemned by the international community. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and United Nations human rights bodies criticized that law for violating the prohibition against amnesty laws covering crimes against humanity.
The introduction of the amnesty proposal follows the return to Peru of Vladimiro Montesinos, unofficial head of the National Intelligence Service (SIN), and a close aide of President Alberto Fujimori. Montesinos fled to Panama after a video was broadcast on television showing him bribing an opposition congressman to defect to the government side.
Having formed and supervised in the early 1990s a death squad responsible for torture and extra-judicial executions, Montesinos would be one of the main beneficiaries of the amnesty. On arriving in Panama he had sought political asylum claiming to be a victim of persecution, but he left without obtaining it.
In a September 28 letter to OAS Secretary-General Gaviria, Human Rights Watch objected to the requests made by him and by many member states to Panama to accede to Montesinos's asylum petition.
"The Fujimori government cannot bargain for impunity as a condition for democratic reforms," said Vivanco. "It is time for the OAS to stand shoulder to shoulder with its own human rights commission on matters of principle such as the rules of asylum and accountability."
