PERU: TRUTH COMMISSION ISSUES REPORT.
After two years of work, Peru's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (Comision de la Verdad y la Reconciliacion, CVR) issued its report Aug. 28. It found that the number of victims exceeded 69,000, more than double most previous estimates for the years of internal conflict, which ran between 1980 and 2000 (see NotiSur, 2003-06-20).
The 12-member commission, created in June 2001 by interim President Valentin Paniagua, included two university rectors, two sociologists, two lawyers, a retired general, an engineer, an anthropologist, a Catholic bishop, a priest, and a Protestant minister. It had widespread support from national and international human rights groups and from foreign governments.
Salomon Lerner, head of the CVR, turned over the report to President Alejandro Toledo. "Today is Peru's moment to confront a time of national shame," Lerner said after giving the report to the president. "This report exposes a double scandal--of the assassinations, disappearances, and massive torture and of the indolence, ineptitude, and indifference of those who could have prevented this human catastrophe but did not."
Lerner said the closing decades of the 20th century were ones of "horror and dishonor" for the country, in which "crimes against humanity were practiced by subversive organizations against society and by the Peruvian state through members of the security forces."
Lerner said three of every four victims were campesinos whose first language was Quechua and who came from a sector of society historically ignored and treated with disdain.
Receiving the report, Toledo said he would work for national reconciliation that excludes both revenge and impunity. He said the "time has come to know the truth with justice and walk toward reconciliation."
The president said it was "indispensable that we look into the mirror of the past. We can't open the doors to the future without looking first at the past, but it would be a serious error for a nation to remain trapped in the past, denying Peru the construction of the future."
Commission finds many responsible
The CVR attributed responsibility for 54% of the victims to Sendero Luminoso, for 31% to the security forces, for 13% to paramilitary groups and "rondas campesinas" or government armed and backed campesino militias, and for 1.5% to the Movimiento Revolucionario Tupac Amaru (MRTA).
Victims and families testified openly to the CVR in community forums. Hundreds of politicians and political activists...
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