Peru- State Dept: Section 1 a-c

["Chris, London" <100423.2040@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

 RESPECT FOR HUMAN RIGHTS

 Section 1   Respect for the Integrity of the Person, Including Freedom
from:

    a.   Political and Other Extrajudicial Killings

 Since 1980 Peru has suffered a bloody guerrilla war waged by the
terrorist groups Sendero Luminoso and the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary
Movement (MRTA).  Sendero activity decreased dramatically in 1995 and
security forces continue to arrest the remaining Sendero terrorists.
 Statistics compiled by the National Coordinating Committee for Human
Rights (Coordinadora), an umbrella group of forty nongovernmental human
rights organizations, showed that the security forces were responsible
for one extrajudicial killing.  This figure is much smaller than the 39
killings reported for 1994 and substantially smaller than the number of
killings which took place at the height of the insurgency in 1992, when
the Coordinadora estimated that the security forces were responsible for
114 extrajudicial killings.
 Joel Huaman Garcia, age 19, was detained by police in Cerro de Pasco on
May 26 and died in custody the following day.  An autopsy showed that
Huaman had died from torture and beatings.
 Police officers Edson Condor Arredondo, Rolando Huere Ore, and Wilson
Torralva Davila face criminal charges for Huaman's killing.  In Ucayali
department, in the only death the Coordinadora considered extrajudicial
(others were due to torture and beatings), 16-year-old Indalecio
Pomatanta Albarcan died on April 6 as a result of burns after naval
personnel tried to arrest him at home on April 2.  Navy personnel
acknowledged abandoning Pomatanta after the burning incident.  They
claimed that Pomatanta as well as one of their own men suffered burns
after accidentally being drenched by fuel near an open fire.  A group of
soldiers beat to death 21-year-old Wilder Alex Osorio in May in Pasco
department.  In September Jose Eugenio Chamaya Rumacharis died in police
custody after they subjected him to water torture in a Lima police
station.  The Public Ministry is investigating the actions of two police
officers in the Chamaya case.
 The passage of the Amnesty Law on June 14 created considerable concern
over military and police impunity for past abuses.  This law, which
granted amnesty from prosecution to those who committed human rights
abuses during the war on terrorism from May 1980 to June 1995, as well
as to those who participated in the November 1992 coup attempt, was
presented and passed by the Congress in one night with no time provided
for national debate.  The law also cleared the records of security force
personnel who had already been convicted of human rights abuses,
including the eight military perpetrators of the 1992 La Cantuta
massacre, who were sentenced in 1994 but released by military
authorities a few days after the Amnesty Law's passage.  In addition, 10
police officers were granted amnesty on June 16 for their role in the
1986 Lurigancho prison massacre, in which some 200 prisoners died.
Relatives of the La Cantuta massacre victims announced in late October
that the military had agreed to pay them over 1 million dollars as an
indemnity in accordance with a decree issued by the military court which
sentenced the perpetrators of the massacre.
 First-instance Judge Antonia Saquicuray ruled on June 16 that the
Amnesty Law did not apply to the 1991 Barrios Altos massacre case, in
which military personnel killed 15 people including an 8-year-old child.
She also disallowed an effort by lawyers for the accused to have a
civilian investigation of the case dropped.  After a superior court
overturned her ruling, relatives of the massacre victims appealed the
superior court decision to the Supreme Court, which in a divided
decision in October upheld the constitutionality of the Amnesty Law.  In
response to Saquicuray's ruling, the Congress passed a controversial law
on June 28 which stated that the judiciary had no right to review the
constitutionality of the Amnesty Law.
 In two cases a civilian superior court denied requests by military and
police officers for amnesty, ruling that their crimes were not committed
in the course of antiterrorist activities.  On August 14, a superior
court in Puno decided that the Amnesty Law did not apply to four
military officers convicted in civilian courts of the assault and armed
robbery of civilians near Juli and Ayaviri in December 1992.  In
September a superior court in Callao ruled that the Amnesty Law did not
apply to the five police officers charged in the 1991 killings of
university student Carlos Rodriguez Pighi and brothers Emilio and Rafael
Gomez Paquillauri.  Three of the police officers were sentenced to 15 to
18 years in 1994; the other two were never arrested and are believed to
have fled the country.
 The Congress never concluded its investigation of the extrajudicial
killings which occurred in 1994 in Huanuco as a result of the army's
"Operation Aries."  The Public Ministry's investigation into these
killings was effectively closed when Congress passed the Amnesty Law.
 In February then Justice Minister Fernando Vega stated to the United
Nations Human Rights Commission that during the previous 7 years, 108
officers and 453 noncommissioned officers had been punished for
committing human rights abuses.  Of these, Vega said that 28 officers
and 151 noncommissioned officers were given prison sentences.
 In the few areas of Peru where it continues to operate, Sendero Luminoso
continues to assassinate civilians who oppose it.


    b.   Disappearance

 The Coordinadora is investigating whether 4 more disappearances occured
in Huanuco department, in addition to the 10 cases of disappearance it
recorded during the year.  Either number represents a vast improvement
over the mid- and late-1980's and early 1990's, at the height of the
Sendero Luminoso insurgency, when the military and police caused
hundreds of persons to disappear.  The use since 1992 of military courts
to try those accused of terrorism has resulted in a high conviction rate
and has contributed to a significant decrease in disappearances and
extrajudicial killings.  Of the nine disappearance cases, seven occurred
in Ucayali department and two in Lima department, both emergency zones
where the insurgents have been most active.  In addition, a few
disappearances from previous years came to light in 1995.
 The seven disappearances in Ucayali department involved persons detained
by naval personnel in front of witnesses.  For example, Marcial
Hernandez Melgarejo was detained together with Wilder Ahuanari Canayo on
February 13 in Caserio Raya Rio Aguaytia.  While Ahuanari was later
released, Hernandez has not been seen or heard from since his detention.
Despite the credibility of these disappearance reports, navy authorities
in Ucayali assert that they know of no instance during 1995 in which
navy personnel have been responsible in any manner for the disappearance
of any citizen.


    c.   Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or
Punishment

 Although the Constitution prohibits torture and inhuman or humiliating
treatment, torture and brutal treatment of detainees are common.
Eyewitnesses and human rights monitors reported that government security
forces still routinely tortured suspected subversives at military and
police detention centers.
 Torture most often takes place in the period immediately following
detention.  The law permits police to hold terrorism suspects
incommunicado for 15 days, and for another 15-day period in cases of
treason.  Human rights groups report that the incidence of torture is
high during this time, partly because detainees are not allowed access
to family or an attorney except when giving sworn statements to the
public prosecutor.
 Besides beatings, common methods of torture included electric shock,
water torture, asphyxiation, and the hanging of detainees by a rope
attached to their hands tied behind the back.  Common forms of
psychological torture included sleep deprivation and death threats
against both detainees and their families.  Interrogators frequently
blindfold their victims during torture to prevent them from later
identifying their abusers.
 Credible sources reported that torture by security forces in emergency
zones is still common.  In Ucayali department, Tomas Flores Huanio was
allegedly beaten and tortured for several days after being detained on
April 19 for possession of cocaine base at the naval base in Contamana,
before being taken to a hospital on April 23.  The following day Flores
was taken to a civilian jail despite still suffering from injuries
related to torture.  Navy personnel assert, however, that Flores was not
tortured, but had injured himself by banging his head on an object in
his detention cell.
 Reports of police and military rape of female detainees occurred, and
cases from previous years continued to come to light.  While the number
of those raped by security personnel during the past year is difficult
to determine, credible reports indicate the total number of female
detainees raped during the past few years to be in the hundreds.
According to CEAPAZ, a nongovernmental human rights organization, in one
1993 prison rape in La Merced, a pregnant 15-year-old detainee, who had
unwittingly married an MRTA terrorist, was infected with AIDS by a
member of the security forces.  Despite the April antiterrorism
legislation which required that an adolescent be transferred to a
juvenile detention facility, the victim remained detained as an adult
terrorist in Huamancacca prison in Huancayo department until her release
in September.  She received no medical attention for her AIDS condition
while she was in prison, and those responsible for her rape have not
been punished.  After being absolved of terrorism charges and released
in October from Picsi prison in Chiclayo, environmentalist Maria Elena
Faronda claimed that two female detainees in Picsi prison had been raped
by security force personnel during the past year.

 Many victims of Sendero Luminoso terrorism also showed signs of torture.
Credible accounts indicate that Sendero tortured people to death by
slitting throats, strangulation, stoning, and burning.  Mutilation of
the body was common.

 Conditions for many prisoners continued to be inadequate, even though
the Government continues to make a costly and extensive effort to
improve existing penal facilities, construct new penitentiaries, and
ameliorate the physical conditions of detention.  The renovation of
Castro Castro Prison in Lima and Yanamayo Prison in Puno department in
1994 helped alleviate severe overcrowding in the prison system and
improved the physical conditions in which many inmates lived.
Nonetheless, prisoners in many facilities continued to experience
unsanitary conditions, poor nutrition and health care, and occasionally
harsh treatment by both prison staff and fellow inmates.  Picsi prison
near Chiclayo, for example, holds twice the number of inmates for which
it was designed and still has no running water.  Illegal drugs are in
abundance, and tuberculosis and AIDS are reportedly at near-epidemic
proportions in Lima's Lurigancho prison, the country's largest,
containing just over 24 percent of the male prison population.  The
police chief at Lurigancho prison announced publicly in December that
there were 7 prisoners with AIDS and 37 with tuberculosis receiving
daily medical attention.  He admitted that some of the prisoners had
contracted their illness while in prison.  Detainees held temporarily in
windowless cells in Lima's Palace of Justice are not allowed outside for
exercise and fresh air and are taken to the bathroom only once a day.
Basic food, health care, and basic bedding are often not provided by the
prison authorities.
 Corruption continued to be a problem among prison staff, who were
implicated in offenses such as sexual blackmail, selling narcotics and
weapons, and arranging escapes.  Twenty-six employees of the National
Penitentiary Institute (INPE) were fired in October because they helped
three criminals escape from Callao Prison on September 6.  In addition,
four INPE employees were dismissed in October for using undue violence
against a group of journalists who were covering the aftermath of the
September 6 prison escape.  Prisoners often have to bribe guards to get
a mattress and report that guards subject inmates to beatings, torture,
and degrading treatment.  In some prisons mothers who are detained for
terrorism, many of them later found innocent by the courts after years
of detention, are allowed to see their children and new-born infants
only once every 3 months for only half an hour.
 The authorities continued to permit International Committee of the Red
Cross (ICRC) representatives to visit detainees in any place of
detention, including prisons, jails, police stations, and military
bases.  The Government provided the ICRC with regular access to
Ecuadorian soldiers detained by the Peruvian military during and after
the January-February border conflict, and the ICRC facilitated prisoner
transfers between Peru and Ecuador in March, June, and August.




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