Alberto Fujimori
Encyclopedia
Alberto Fujimori Fujimori (alˈβerto fuxiˈmoɾi) (born 28 July 1938) served as President of Peru from 28 July 1990 to 17 November 2000. A controversial figure, Fujimori has been credited with the creation of Fujimorism
, uprooting terrorism
(Sendero Luminoso) in Peru and restoring its macroeconomic
stability, though his methods have drawn charges of authoritarianism
and human rights violations. Even amidst his 2008 prosecution for crimes against humanity relating to his presidency, two-thirds of Peruvians polled voiced approval for his leadership in that period.
A Peruvian of Japanese descent
, Fujimori fled to Japan in 2000 amidst a corruption scandal, where he attempted to resign his presidency. His resignation was rejected by the Congress of the Republic, which preferred to remove him from office by the process of impeachment
. Wanted in Peru on charges of corruption and human rights abuses, Fujimori maintained a self-imposed exile until his arrest during a visit to Chile
in November 2005. He was finally extradited to face criminal charges in Peru in September 2007.
In December 2007, Fujimori was convicted of ordering an illegal search and seizure, and was sentenced to six years in prison. The Supreme Court upheld the decision upon his appeal.
In April 2009, Fujimori was convicted of human rights violations and sentenced to 25 years in prison for his role in killings and kidnappings by the Grupo Colina
death squad
during his government's battle against leftist guerrillas in the 1990s. The verdict delivered by a three-judge panel marked the first time that an elected head of state has been extradited back to his home country, tried, and convicted of human rights violations. Fujimori was specifically found guilty of murder, bodily harm, and two cases of kidnapping.
In July 2009 Fujimori was sentenced to 7½ years in prison for embezzlement, after he admitted to giving $15 million out of the Peruvian treasury to the former intelligence service
chief, Vladimiro Montesinos
. Two months later in a fourth trial, he pled guilty to bribery and was given an additional six-year term.
Under Peruvian law all the sentences must run concurrently, with a maximum length of imprisonment of 25 years.
, a district of Lima
. His parents, Naoichi Fujimori (1897–1971) and Mutsue Inomoto de Fujimori (1913–2009), were natives of Kumamoto
, Japan who immigrated to Peru in 1934. He holds dual Peruvian and Japanese citizenship
, his parents having secured the latter through the Japanese Consulate.
In July 1997, the news magazine Caretas
charged that Fujimori had actually been born in Japan. Because Peru's constitution requires the president to have been born in Peru, this would have made Fujimori ineligible to be president. The magazine, which had been sued for libel by Vladimiro Montesinos
seven years earlier, reported that Fujimori's birth and baptismal certificates might have been altered. Caretas also alleged that Fujimori's mother declared having two children when she entered Peru; Fujimori is the second of four children. Caretas contentions were hotly contested in the Peruvian media; the magazine Sí, for instance, described the allegations as "pathetic" and "a dark page for [Peruvian] journalism". Latin American scholars Cynthia McClintock and Fabián Vallas note that the issue appeared to have died down among Peruvians after the Japanese government announced in 2000 that "Fujimori's parents had registered his birth in the Japanese consulate in Lima".
He went on to undergraduate studies at the Universidad Nacional Agraria La Molina in 1957, graduating in 1961 first in his class as an agricultural engineer
. There he lectured on mathematics
the following year.
In 1964 he went on to study physics
at the University of Strasbourg
in France. On a Ford scholarship, Fujimori also attended the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee in the United States, where he obtained his master's degree in mathematics in 1969. In 1974, he married Susana Higuchi
, also a Peruvian of Japanese descent. They had four children, including a daughter, Keiko
, who followed her father into politics.
In recognition of his academic achievements, the sciences faculty of the Universidad Nacional Agraria offered Fujimori the deanship
and in 1984 appointed him to the rector
ship of the university, which he held until 1989. In 1987, Fujimori also became president of the National Commission of Peruvian University Rectors (Asamblea Nacional de Rectores), a position which he has held twice. He also hosted a TV show called "Concertando" from 1987 to 1989, on Peru's state-owned network, Channel 7.
A dark horse
candidate, Fujimori won the 1990 presidential election under the banner of the new party Cambio 90
("cambio" meaning "change"), beating world-renowned writer Mario Vargas Llosa
in a surprising upset. He capitalized on profound disenchantment with previous president Alan García and his American Popular Revolutionary Alliance
party (APRA). He exploited popular distrust of Vargas Llosa's identification with the existing Peruvian political establishment, and uncertainty about Vargas Llosa's plans for neoliberal
economic reforms. Fujimori won much support from the poor, who had been frightened by Vargas Llosa's austerity proposals.
During the campaign, Fujimori was nicknamed El Chino, which roughly translates to "Chinaman"; it is common for people of any East Asian descent to be called chino in Peru, as elsewhere in Latin America, both derogatively and affectionately. Although he is of Japanese heritage, Fujimori has suggested that he was always gladdened by the term, which he perceived as a term of affection. With his election victory, he became the first person of East Asia
n descent to become head of government
of a Latin American nation, and just the third of East Asian descent to govern a South American state, after Arthur Chung
of Guyana
and Henk Chin A Sen of Suriname
(each of whom had served as head of state
, rather than head of government).
Fujimori's initiative relaxed private sector price controls
, drastically reduced government subsidies and government employment, eliminated all exchange controls, and also reduced restrictions on investment, imports, and capital flow. Tariffs were radically simplified, the minimum wage was immediately quadrupled, and the government established a $400 million poverty relief fund. The latter measure seemed to anticipate the economic agony that was to come, as electricity costs quintupled, water prices rose eightfold, and gasoline prices rose 3000%.
The IMF
was impressed by these measures, and guaranteed loan funding for Peru. Inflation began to fall rapidly and foreign investment capital flooded in. Fujimori's privatization
campaign featured the selling off of hundreds of state-owned enterprises, and the replacing of the country's troubled currency, the inti
, with the Nuevo Sol
. The Fujishock restored macroeconomic
stability to the economy and triggered a considerable long-term economic upturn in the mid-1990s. In 1994, the Peruvian economy grew at a rate of 13%, faster than any other economy in the world.
, remained in control of both chambers of Congress (the Chamber of Deputies and Senate), hampering the government's ability to enact economic reforms. Fujimori also found it difficult to combat the threat posed by the Maoist
guerrilla organization Shining Path
, due largely to what he perceived to be the intransigence and obstructionism of Congress. By March 1992, Congress met with the approval of only 17% of the electorate, according to one poll (the presidency stood at 42%, in the same poll).
In response to the political deadlock, on 5 April 1992, Fujimori with the support of the military carried out a presidential coup
, also known as the autogolpe (auto-coup or self-coup) or Fujigolpe (Fuji-coup) in Peru. He shut down Congress, suspended the constitution, and purged the judiciary. The coup was welcomed by the public, according to numerous polls. Not only was the coup itself marked by favorable public opinion in several independent polls, but also public approval of the Fujimori administration jumped significantly in the wake of the coup. Fujimori often cited this public support in defending the coup, which he characterized as "not a negation of real democracy, but on the contrary… a search for an authentic transformation to assure a legitimate and effective democracy." Fujimori believed that Peruvian democracy had been nothing more than "a deceptive formality – a facade"; he claimed the coup was necessary to break with the deeply entrenched special interests that were hindering him from rescuing Peru from the chaotic state in which García had left it.
Fujimori's coup was immediately met with the near-unanimous condemnation by the international community. The Organization of American States
denounced the coup and demanded a return to "representative democracy
", despite Fujimori's claims that his coup represented a "popular uprising". Various foreign ministers of OAS member states reiterated this condemnation of the autogolpe. They proposed an urgent effort to promote the re-establishment of "the democratic institutional order" in Peru. Following negotiations involving the OAS, the government, and opposition groups, Alberto Fujimori's initial response was to hold a referendum to ratify the auto-coup, which the OAS rejected. Fujimori then proposed scheduling elections for a Democratic Constituent Congress (CCD), which would be charged with drafting a new constitution, to be ratified by a national referendum. Despite the lack of consensus among political forces in Peru regarding this proposal, the ad hoc OAS meeting of ministers nevertheless approved Fujimori’s offer in mid-May, and elections for the CCD were held on 22 November 1992.
Various states acted to condemn the coup individually. Venezuela
broke off diplomatic relations, and Argentina
withdrew its ambassador. Chile
joined Argentina
in requesting that Peru be suspended from the Organization of American States
. International financiers delayed planned or projected loans, and the United States, Germany and Spain suspended all non-humanitarian aid to Peru. The coup appeared to threaten the economic recovery strategy of reinsertion, and complicated the process of clearing arrears with the International Monetary Fund
.
Whereas Peruvian–U.S. relations early in Fujimori's presidency had been dominated by questions of coca eradication
, Fujimori's autogolpe immediately became a major obstacle to international relations, as the United States immediately suspended all military and economic aid to Peru, with exceptions for counter-narcotic and humanitarian-related funds. Two weeks after the self-coup, the George H.W. Bush
administration changed its position and officially recognized Fujimori as the legitimate leader of Peru.
, Fujimori sought to legitimize his position. He called elections for a Democratic Constitutional Congress
that would serve as a legislature and a constituent assembly
. While APRA
and Popular Action attempted to boycott this, the Popular Christian Party (PPC, not to be confused with PCP Partido Comunista del Peru) and many left-leaning parties participated in this election. His supporters won a majority in this body, and drafted a new constitution
in 1993. A referendum was scheduled, and the coup and the Constitution of 1993 were approved by a narrow margin of between four and five percent.
Later in the year, on 13 November, there was a failed military coup, led by General Jaime Salinas
. Salinas asserted that his efforts were a matter of turning Fujimori over for trial, for violating the Peruvian constitution.
In 1994, Fujimori separated from his wife Susana Higuchi
in a noisy, public divorce. He formally stripped her of the title First Lady
in August 1994, appointing their elder daughter First Lady in her stead. Higuchi publicly denounced Fujimori as a "tyrant" and claimed that his administration was corrupt. They formally divorced in 1995.
, won only 22 percent of the vote. Fujimori's supporters won comfortable majorities in the legislature. One of the first acts of the new congress was to declare an amnesty for all members of the Peruvian military or police accused or convicted of human rights abuses between 1980 and 1995.
During his second term, Fujimori signed a peace agreement with Ecuador
over a border dispute that had simmered for more than a century. The treaty allowed the two countries to obtain international funds for developing the border region. Fujimori also settled unresolved issues with Chile, Peru's southern neighbor, still outstanding since the Treaty of Lima
of 1929.
The 1995 election was the turning point in Fujimori's career. Peruvians now began to be more concerned about freedom of speech and the press. However, before he was sworn in for a second term, Fujimori stripped two universities of their autonomy and reshuffled the national electoral board. This led his opponents to call him "Chinochet," a reference to his previous nickname and to Chile
an ruler Augusto Pinochet
.
According to a poll by the Peruvian Research and Marketing Company conducted in 1997, 40.6% of Lima residents considered President Fujimori an authoritarian.
In addition to the nature of democracy under Fujimori, Peruvians were becoming increasingly interested in the myriad criminal allegations involving Fujimori and his chief of the National Intelligence Service, Vladimiro Montesinos
. A 2002 report by Health Minister Fernando Carbone would later suggest that Fujimori was involved in the forced sterilizations of up to 300,000 indigenous women from 1996 to 2000, as part of a population control program. A 2004 World Bank
publication would suggest that, in this period, Montesinos' abuse of the power accorded him by Fujimori "led to a steady and systematic undermining of the rule of law".
Exit polls showed Fujimori fell short of the 50% required to avoid an electoral runoff, but the first official results showed him with 49.6% of the vote, just short of outright victory. Eventually, Fujimori was credited with 49.89%—20,000 votes short of avoiding a runoff. Despite reports of numerous irregularities, the international observers recognized an adjusted victory of Fujimori. His primary opponent, Alejandro Toledo
, called for his supporters to spoil their ballots in the runoff by writing "No to fraud!" on them (voting is mandatory in Peru). International observers pulled out of the country after Fujimori refused to delay the runoff.
In the runoff, Fujimori won with 51.1% of the valid votes. While votes for Toledo declined from 40.24% of the valid votes cast in the first round to 25.67% of the valid votes in the second round, invalid votes jumped from 2.25% of the total votes cast in the first round to 29.93% of total votes in the second round. The large percentage of votes cast as invalid suggested that many Peruvians took Toledo's advice to spoil their ballots.
(The 51.1 and 25 figures are as percentages of valid votes, that is, excluding invalid votes. Thus, there were 29.93% invalid votes and 70.07% valid votes. Of this 70.07%, 51.1% were for Fujimori and 25.67% for Toledo.)
Although Fujimori had won the runoff with only a bare majority, rumors of irregularities led most of the international community to shun his third swearing-in on July 28. For the next seven weeks, there were daily demonstrations in front of the presidential palace.
As a conciliatory measure, Fujimori appointed former opposition candidate Federico Salas as the new prime minister. However, opposition parties in Parliament refused to support this move while Toledo campaigned vigorously to have the election annulled. At this point, a corruption scandal involving Vladimiro Montesinos broke out, and exploded into full force on the evening of 14 September 2000, when the cable television station Canal N
broadcast footage of Montesinos apparently bribing opposition congressman Alberto Kouri for his defection to Fujimori's Perú 2000 party. This video was presented by Fernando Olivera
, leader of the FIM (Independent Moralizing Front), who purchased it from one of Montesinos's closest allies (nicknamed by the Peruvian press El Patriota).
Fujimori's support virtually collapsed, and a few days later he announced in a nationwide address that he would shut down the SIN and call new elections—in which he would not be a candidate. On 10 November, Fujimori won approval from Congress to hold elections on 8 April 2001. On 13 November, Fujimori left Peru for a visit to Brunei
to attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum. On 16 November, Valentín Paniagua
took over as president of Congress after the pro-Fujimori leadership lost a vote of confidence. On 17 November, Fujimori traveled from Brunei to Tokyo, where he submitted his presidential resignation
via fax. Congress refused to accept his resignation, instead voting 62–9 to remove Fujimori from office on the grounds that he was "permanently morally disabled."
On 19 November, government ministers presented their resignations en bloc. Because Fujimori's first vice president, Francisco Tudela, had broken with Fujimori and resigned a few days earlier, his successor Ricardo Márquez came to claim the presidency. Congress, however, refused to recognize him, as he was an ardent Fujimori loyalist; Márquez resigned two days later. Paniagua was next in line, and became interim president to oversee the April elections.
insurgent group Sendero Luminoso ("Shining Path
"), and the Marxist-Leninist group Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement
(MRTA). In 1989, 25% of Peru's district and provincial councils opted not to hold elections, owing to a persistent campaign of assassination, over the course of which over 100 officials had been killed by Shining Path in that year alone. That same year, over one-third of Peru's positions for justices of the peace stood vacant, owing to Shining Path intimidation. Union leaders and military officials had also been assassinated throughout the 1980s.
By the early 1990s, some parts of the country were under the control of the insurgents, in territories known as "zonas liberadas" ("liberated zones"), where inhabitants lived under the rule of these groups and paid them taxes. When Shining Path arrived in Lima, it organized "paros armados" ("work stoppages"), which were enforced by killings and other forms of violence. The leadership of Shining Path was largely university students and teachers. Two previous governments, those of Fernando Belaúnde Terry
and Alan García, at first neglected the threat posed by Shining Path, then launched an unsuccessful military campaign to eradicate it, undermining public faith in the state and precipitating an exodus of elites.
By 1992, Shining Path guerrilla attacks had claimed an estimated 20,000 lives over the course of 12 years. The 16 July 1992 Tarata Bombing
, in which several car bombs exploded in Lima's wealthiest district, killed over 40 people; the bombings were characterized by one commentator as an "offensive to challenge President Alberto Fujimori." The bombing at Tarata was followed up with a "weeklong wave of car bombings ... Bombs hit banks, hotels, schools, restaurants, police stations and shops ... [G]uerrillas bombed two rail bridges from the Andes
, cutting off some of Peru's largest copper mines from coastal ports."
Fujimori has been credited by many Peruvians with ending the fifteen-year reign of terror of Shining Path. As part of his anti-insurgency efforts, Fujimori granted the military broad powers to arrest suspected insurgents and try them in secret military courts with few legal rights. This measure has often been criticized for having compromised the fundamental democratic and human right of an open trial wherein the accused faces the accuser. Fujimori contended that these measures were justified, that this compromise of open trials was necessary because the judiciary was too afraid to charge alleged insurgents, and that judges and prosecutors had legitimate fears of insurgent reprisals against them or their families. At the same time, Fujimori's government armed rural Peruvians, organizing them into groups known as "rondas campesinas" ("peasant patrols").
Insurgent activity was in decline by the end of 1992, and Fujimori took credit for this development, claiming that his campaign had largely eliminated the insurgent threat. After the 1992 auto-coup, the intelligence work of the DINCOTE
(National Counter-Terrorism Directorate) led to the capture of the leaders from Shining Path and MRTA, including notorious Shining Path leader Abimael Guzmán
. Guzmán's capture was a political coup for Fujimori, who used it to great effect in the press; in an interview with documentarian Ellen Perry
, Fujimori even notes that he specially ordered Guzmán's prison jumpsuit to be white with black stripes, to enhance the image of his capture in the media.
Critics charge that to achieve the defeat of Shining Path, the Peruvian military engaged in widespread human rights
abuses, and that the majority of the victims were poor highland countryside inhabitants caught in the crossfire between the military and insurgents. The final report of the Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission
, published on 28 August 2003, revealed that while the majority of the atrocities committed between 1980 and 1995 were the work of Shining Path, the Peruvian armed forces were also guilty of having destroyed villages and murdered countryside inhabitants whom they suspected of supporting insurgents.
The Japanese embassy hostage crisis
began on 17 December 1996, when fourteen MRTA
militants seized the residence of the Japanese ambassador in Lima during a party, taking hostage some four hundred diplomats, government officials, and other dignitaries. The action was partly in protest of prison conditions in Peru. During the four-month standoff, the Emerretistas gradually freed all but 72 of their hostages. The government rejected the militants' demand to release imprisoned MRTA members and secretly prepared an elaborate plan to storm the residence, while stalling by negotiating with the hostage-takers.
On 22 April 1997, a team of military commando
s, codenamed "Chavín de Huantar", raided the building. One hostage, two military commandos, and all 14 MRTA insurgents were killed in the operation. Images of President Fujimori at the ambassador's residence during and after the military operation, surrounded by soldiers and liberated dignitaries, and walking among the corpses of the insurgents, were widely televised. The conclusion of the four-month long standoff was used by Fujimori and his supporters to bolster his image as tough on terrorism.
and the MRTA. According to Amnesty International
, "the widespread and systematic nature of human rights violations committed during the government of former head of state Alberto Fujimori (1990–2000) in Peru constitute crimes against humanity under international law." Fujimori's alleged association with death squad
s is currently being studied by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights
, after the court accepted the case of "Cantuta vs Perú".
The 1991 Barrios Altos massacre
by members of the death squad Grupo Colina
, made up of members of the Peruvian Armed Forces
, was one of the crimes cited in the request for his extradition submitted by the Peruvian government to Japan in 2003.
From 1996 to 2000, the Fujimori government oversaw a massive family planning campaign known as Voluntary Surgical Contraception. The United Nations
and other international aid agencies supported this campaign. The Nippon Foundation
, headed by Ayako Sono
, a Japanese novelist and personal friend of Fujimori, supported as well. Nearly 300,000, mostly indigenous
, women were coercively or forcefully sterilized during these years.
The success of the operation in the Japanese embassy hostage crisis
was tainted by subsequent allegations that at least three and possibly eight of the insurgents had been summarily executed by the commandos after surrendering. In 2002, the case was taken up by public prosecutors, but the Peruvian Supreme Court ruled that the military tribunals had jurisdiction. A military court later absolved them of guilt, and the "Chavín de Huantar" soldiers led the 2004 military parade. In response, in 2003 MRTA family members lodged a complaint with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights
(IACHR) accusing the Peruvian state of human rights violations, namely that the MRTA insurgents had been denied the "right to life, the right to judicial guarantees and the right to judicial protection". The IACHR accepted the case and is currently studying it.
Peruvian Minister of Justice Maria Zavala has stated that this verdict by the IACHR supports the Peruvian government's extradition of Fujimori from Chile. Though the IACHR verdict does not directly implicate Fujimori, it does fault the Peruvian government for its complicity in the 1992 Cantuta University killings
.
in Japan, where he resided with his friend, the famous Catholic novelist Ayako Sono
. Several senior Japanese politicians have supported Fujimori, partly for his decisive action in ending the 1997 Japanese embassy crisis
.
Alejandro Toledo
, who assumed the presidency in 2001, spearheaded the criminal case against Fujimori. He arranged meetings with the Supreme Court, tax authorities, and other powers in Peru in order to "coordinate the joint efforts to bring the criminal Fujimori from Japan." His vehemence in this matter at times compromised Peruvian law: forcing the judiciary and legislative system to keep guilty sentences without hearing Fujimori's defense; not providing Fujimori with a lawyer in absence of representation; and expelling pro-Fujimori congressmen from the parliament without proof of the accusations against them. The latter action was later reversed by the judiciary.
The Toledo administration's review of the Fujimori administration led to the Peruvian Congress authorizing charges against Fujimori, in August 2001. Fujimori was alleged to be a co-author, alongside Vladimiro Montesinos, in the death-squad killings at Barrios Altos
in 1991 and La Cantuta
in 1992. At the behest of Peruvian authorities, Interpol
issued an arrest order for Fujimori on charges that included murder, kidnapping, and crimes against humanity
. Meanwhile, the Peruvian government found that Japan was not amenable to the extradition of Fujimori; a protracted diplomatic debate ensued, when Japan showed itself unwilling to accede to the extradition request.
In September 2003, Congressman Dora Dávila, joined by Minister of Health Luis Soari, denounced Fujimori and several of his ministers for crimes against humanity, for allegedly having overseen forced sterilizations during his regime. In November, Congress approved charges against Fujimori, to investigate how much he had been involved in the airdrop of Kalashnikov
rifles into the Colombia
n jungle in 1999 and 2000 for guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia
(FARC). Fujimori maintains he had no knowledge of the arms-trading, and blames Montesinos. By approving the charges, Congress lifted the immunity granted to Fujimori as a former president, so that he could be criminally charged and prosecuted.
Congress also voted to support charges against Fujimori for the detention and disappearance of 67 students from the central Andean city of Huancayo
and the disappearance of several residents from the northern coastal town of Chimbote
during the 1990s. It also approved charges that Fujimori mismanaged millions of dollars from Japanese charities, suggesting that the millions of dollars in his bank account were far too much to have been accumulated legally.
By March 2005, it appeared that Peru had all but abandoned its efforts to extradite Fujimori from Japan. In September of that year, Fujimori obtained a new Peruvian passport in Tokyo and announced his intention to run in the Peruvian national election, 2006.
The Special Prosecutor established to investigate Fujimori released a report alleging that the Fujimori administration had obtained US$2 billion though graft. Most of this money came from Vladimiro Montesinos' web of corruption. The Special Prosecutor's figure of two billion dollars is considerably higher than that arrived at by Transparency International
, an NGO that studies corruption. In its "Global Corruption Report 2004", Transparency International listed Fujimori as leading the seventh most corrupt government of the past two decades worldwide, estimating that the corruption may have embezzled USD $600 million in funds.
Undaunted by the judicial proceedings underway against him, which, citing Toledo's involvement, he dismissed as "politically motivated", Fujimori, working from Japan, established a new political party in Peru, Sí Cumple
, in hopes of participating in the 2006 presidential elections. In February 2004, the Constitutional Court dismissed the possibility of Fujimori participating in those elections, noting that the ex-president was barred by Congress from holding office for ten years. The decision was regarded as unconstitutional by Fujimori supporters such as ex-congress members Luz Salgado, Marta Chávez and Fernán Altuve, who argued it was a "political" maneuver and that the only body with authority to determine the matter was the Jurado Nacional de Elecciones (JNE). Valentín Paniagua disagreed, suggesting that the Constitutional Court finding was binding and that "no further debate is possible".
Fujimori's Sí Cumple (roughly translated, "He Keeps His Word") received more than 10% in many country-level polls, contending with APRA
for the second place slot.
On 7 April 2009 a three-judge panel convicted Fujimori on charges of human rights abuse
s, declaring that the "charges against him have been proven beyond all reasonable doubt". The panel found him guilty of ordering the Grupo Colina
death squad
to commit the November 1991 Barrios Altos massacre
and the July 1992 La Cantuta Massacre
, which resulted in the deaths of 25 people, and for taking part in the kidnappings of Peruvian opposition journalist Gustavo Gorriti
and businessman Samuel Dyer. Fujimori's conviction is the only instance of a democratically elected head of state being tried and convicted of human rights abuses in his own country. Later on 7 April, the court sentenced Fujimori to 25 years in prison.
He faced a third trial in July 2009 over allegations that he illegally gave $15 million in state funds to Vladimiro Montesinos
, former head of the National Intelligence Service
, during the two months prior to his fall from power. Fujimori admitted paying the money to Montesinos but claimed that he had later paid back the money to the state. On July 20, the court found him guilty of embezzlement and sentenced him to a further seven and a half years in prison.
A fourth, and apparently final, trial took place in September 2009 in Lima. Fujimori was accused of using Montesinos to bribe and tap the phones of journalists, businessmen and opposition politicians – evidence of which led to the collapse of his government in 2000. Fujimori admitted the charges but claimed that the charges were made to damage his daughter's presidential election campaign. The prosecution asked the court to sentence Fujimori to eight years imprisonment with a fine of $1.6 million plus $1 million in compensation to ten people whose phones were bugged. Fujimori pled guilty and was sentenced to six years' imprisonment on 30 September 2009.
High growth during Fujimori's first term petered out during his second term. "El Niño
" phenomena had a tremendous impact on the Peruvian economy during the late 1990s. Nevertheless, total GDP growth between 1992 and 2001, inclusive, was 44.60%, that is, 3.76% per annum; total GDP per capita growth between 1991 and 2001, inclusive, was 30.78%, that is, 2.47% per annum. Also, studies by INEI
, the national statistics bureau show that the number of Peruvians living in poverty increased dramatically (from 41.6% to more than 70%) during Alan García's term, but they actually decreased (from more than 70% to 54%) during Fujimori's term. Furthermore, FAO reported Peru reduced undernourishment by about 29% from 1990–92 to 1997–99.
Peru was reintegrated into the global economic system, and began to attract foreign investment. The sell-off of state-owned enterprises led to improvements in some service industries, notably local telephony, mobile telephony and Internet. For example, before privatization, a consumer or business would need to wait up to 10 years to get a local telephone line installed from the monopolistic state-run telephone company, at a cost of $607 for a residential line. A couple of years after privatization, the wait was reduced to just a few days. Peru's Physical land based telephone network had a dramatic increase in telephone penetration from 2.9% in 1993 to 5.9% in 1996 and 6.2% in 2000, and a dramatic decrease in the wait for a telephone line. Average wait went from 70 months in 1993 (before privatization) to two months in 1996 (after privatization). Privatization also generated foreign investment in export-oriented activities such as mining and energy extraction, notably the Camisea
gas project and the copper and zinc
extraction projects at Antamina.
By the end of the decade, Peru's international currency reserves were built up from nearly zero at the end of García's term to almost US$10 billion. Fujimori also left a smaller state bureaucracy and reduced government expenses (in contrast to the historical pattern of bureaucratic expansion), a technically minded (but widely perceived as politicized) administration of public entities like SUNAT (the tax collection agency), a large number of new schools (not only in Lima but in Peru's small towns), more roads and highways, and new and upgraded communications infrastructure. These improvement led to the revival of tourism, agroexport, industries and fisheries.
Some analysts state that some of the GDP growth during the Fujimori years reflects a greater rate of extraction of non-renewable resources by transnational companies; these companies were attracted by Fujimori by means of near-zero royalties, and, by the same fact, little of the extracted wealth has stayed in the country. Peru's mining legislation, they claim, has served as a role model for other countries that wish to become more mining-friendly.
Fujimori's privatization program also remains shrouded in controversy. A congressional investigation in 2002, led by socialist opposition congressman Javier Diez Canseco
, stated that of the USD $9 billion raised through the privatizations of hundreds of state-owned enterprises, only a small fraction of this income ever benefited the Peruvian people.
Some scholars claim that Fujimori's government became a "dictatorship" after the auto-coup, permeated by a network of corruption organized by his associate Montesinos, who now faces dozens of charges that range from embezzlement
to drug trafficking to murder (Montesinos is currently on trial in Lima). Fujimori's style of government has also been described as "populist authoritarianism". Numerous governments and human rights organizations such as Amnesty International
, have welcomed the extradition of Fujimori to face human rights charges. As early as 1991, Fujimori had himself vocally denounced what he called "pseudo-human rights organizations" such as Amnesty International and Americas Watch
, for allegedly failing to criticize the insurgencies targeting civilian populations throughout Peru against which his government was struggling.
According to a more recent Universidad de Lima
survey, Fujimori still retains public support, ranking fifth in personal popularity among other political figures. Popular approval for his decade-long presidency (1990–2000) has reportedly grown (from 31.5% in 2002 to 49.5% in May 2007). Despite accusations of corruption and human rights violations, nearly half of the individuals interviewed in the survey approved of Fujimori’s presidential regime. In a 2007 Universidad de Lima
survey of 600 Peruvians in Lima and the port of Callao, 82.6% agreed that the former president should be extradited from Chile to stand trial in Peru.
The Lima-based newspaper Perú 21 ran an editorial noting that even though the Universidad de Lima
poll results indicate that four out of every five interviewees believe that Fujimori is guilty of some of the charges against him, he still enjoys at least 30% of popular support and enough approval to restart a political career.
In the 2006 congressional elections, his daughter Keiko
was elected to the congress with the highest vote count. She came in second place in the 2011 Peruvian presidential election
with 23.2% of the vote, and lost the June run-off against Ollanta Humala
.
|-
Fujimorism
right|thumb|[[Alberto Fujimori]], founder of FujimorismFujimorism or Fujimorismo is a political ideology in Peru, established by former president Alberto Fujimori.-History:...
, uprooting terrorism
Terrorism
Terrorism is the systematic use of terror, especially as a means of coercion. In the international community, however, terrorism has no universally agreed, legally binding, criminal law definition...
(Sendero Luminoso) in Peru and restoring its macroeconomic
Macroeconomics
Macroeconomics is a branch of economics dealing with the performance, structure, behavior, and decision-making of the whole economy. This includes a national, regional, or global economy...
stability, though his methods have drawn charges of authoritarianism
Authoritarianism
Authoritarianism is a form of social organization characterized by submission to authority. It is usually opposed to individualism and democracy...
and human rights violations. Even amidst his 2008 prosecution for crimes against humanity relating to his presidency, two-thirds of Peruvians polled voiced approval for his leadership in that period.
A Peruvian of Japanese descent
Japanese Peruvian
Japanese Peruvians are people of Japanese ancestry who were born in or immigrated to Peru. The immigrants from Japan are called the Issei generation. Second and third generation Peruvians are referred to as nisei and sansei in Japanese...
, Fujimori fled to Japan in 2000 amidst a corruption scandal, where he attempted to resign his presidency. His resignation was rejected by the Congress of the Republic, which preferred to remove him from office by the process of impeachment
Impeachment
Impeachment is a formal process in which an official is accused of unlawful activity, the outcome of which, depending on the country, may include the removal of that official from office as well as other punishment....
. Wanted in Peru on charges of corruption and human rights abuses, Fujimori maintained a self-imposed exile until his arrest during a visit to Chile
Chile
Chile ,officially the Republic of Chile , is a country in South America occupying a long, narrow coastal strip between the Andes mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage in the far...
in November 2005. He was finally extradited to face criminal charges in Peru in September 2007.
In December 2007, Fujimori was convicted of ordering an illegal search and seizure, and was sentenced to six years in prison. The Supreme Court upheld the decision upon his appeal.
In April 2009, Fujimori was convicted of human rights violations and sentenced to 25 years in prison for his role in killings and kidnappings by the Grupo Colina
Grupo Colina
Grupo Colina was a paramilitary anti-communist death squad created in Peru that was active from 1990 until 1994, during the administration of Alberto Fujimori...
death squad
Death squad
A death squad is an armed military, police, insurgent, or terrorist squad that conducts extrajudicial killings, assassinations, and forced disappearances of persons as part of a war, insurgency or terror campaign...
during his government's battle against leftist guerrillas in the 1990s. The verdict delivered by a three-judge panel marked the first time that an elected head of state has been extradited back to his home country, tried, and convicted of human rights violations. Fujimori was specifically found guilty of murder, bodily harm, and two cases of kidnapping.
In July 2009 Fujimori was sentenced to 7½ years in prison for embezzlement, after he admitted to giving $15 million out of the Peruvian treasury to the former intelligence service
National Intelligence Service (Peru)
The National Intelligence Service was an intelligence agency of the Government of Peru. The agency was disbanded by Alberto Fujimori after its de facto chief, Vladimiro Montesinos, was caught paying bribes to major political, military and media figures. Fujimori later pleaded guilty to charges...
chief, Vladimiro Montesinos
Vladimiro Montesinos
Vladimiro Ilyich Montesinos Torres was the long-standing head of Peru's intelligence service, Servicio de Inteligencia Nacional , under President Alberto Fujimori. In 2000, secret videos, which he had recorded, were televised that showed his bribing an elected congressman to leave the opposition...
. Two months later in a fourth trial, he pled guilty to bribery and was given an additional six-year term.
Under Peruvian law all the sentences must run concurrently, with a maximum length of imprisonment of 25 years.
Birthplace
According to government records, Fujimori was born on 28 July 1938, in MirafloresMiraflores District, Lima
Miraflores is a district of the Lima Province in Peru. Known for its shopping areas, gardens, flower-filled parks and beaches, it is one of the upscale districts that make up the city of Lima....
, a district of Lima
Lima
Lima is the capital and the largest city of Peru. It is located in the valleys of the Chillón, Rímac and Lurín rivers, in the central part of the country, on a desert coast overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Together with the seaport of Callao, it forms a contiguous urban area known as the Lima...
. His parents, Naoichi Fujimori (1897–1971) and Mutsue Inomoto de Fujimori (1913–2009), were natives of Kumamoto
Kumamoto, Kumamoto
is the capital city of Kumamoto Prefecture on the island of Kyushu, Japan. Greater Kumamoto has a population of 1,460,000, as of the 2000 census...
, Japan who immigrated to Peru in 1934. He holds dual Peruvian and Japanese citizenship
Citizenship
Citizenship is the state of being a citizen of a particular social, political, national, or human resource community. Citizenship status, under social contract theory, carries with it both rights and responsibilities...
, his parents having secured the latter through the Japanese Consulate.
In July 1997, the news magazine Caretas
Caretas
Caretas is a weekly newsmagazine published in Lima, Peru, renowned for its investigative journalism. It was founded in October 1950 by Doris Gibson and Francisco Igartua....
charged that Fujimori had actually been born in Japan. Because Peru's constitution requires the president to have been born in Peru, this would have made Fujimori ineligible to be president. The magazine, which had been sued for libel by Vladimiro Montesinos
Vladimiro Montesinos
Vladimiro Ilyich Montesinos Torres was the long-standing head of Peru's intelligence service, Servicio de Inteligencia Nacional , under President Alberto Fujimori. In 2000, secret videos, which he had recorded, were televised that showed his bribing an elected congressman to leave the opposition...
seven years earlier, reported that Fujimori's birth and baptismal certificates might have been altered. Caretas also alleged that Fujimori's mother declared having two children when she entered Peru; Fujimori is the second of four children. Caretas contentions were hotly contested in the Peruvian media; the magazine Sí, for instance, described the allegations as "pathetic" and "a dark page for [Peruvian] journalism". Latin American scholars Cynthia McClintock and Fabián Vallas note that the issue appeared to have died down among Peruvians after the Japanese government announced in 2000 that "Fujimori's parents had registered his birth in the Japanese consulate in Lima".
Early years
Fujimori obtained his early education at the Colegio Nuestra Señora de la Merced and La Rectora. Fujimori's parents were Buddhists, but he was baptised and raised as a Roman Catholic. While he spoke mainly Japanese at home, Fujimori also learned to become a proficient Spanish speaker during his years at school. In 1956, Fujimori graduated high school from La gran unidad escolar Alfonso Ugarte in LimaHe went on to undergraduate studies at the Universidad Nacional Agraria La Molina in 1957, graduating in 1961 first in his class as an agricultural engineer
Agricultural engineering
Agricultural engineering is the engineering discipline that applies engineering science and technology to agricultural production and processing...
. There he lectured on mathematics
Mathematics
Mathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...
the following year.
In 1964 he went on to study physics
Physics
Physics is a natural science that involves the study of matter and its motion through spacetime, along with related concepts such as energy and force. More broadly, it is the general analysis of nature, conducted in order to understand how the universe behaves.Physics is one of the oldest academic...
at the University of Strasbourg
University of Strasbourg
The University of Strasbourg in Strasbourg, Alsace, France, is the largest university in France, with about 43,000 students and over 4,000 researchers....
in France. On a Ford scholarship, Fujimori also attended the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee in the United States, where he obtained his master's degree in mathematics in 1969. In 1974, he married Susana Higuchi
Susana Higuchi
Susana Shizuko Higuchi Miyagawa is a Peruvian politician and engineer, better known as the former wife of ex-president of Peru Alberto Fujimori...
, also a Peruvian of Japanese descent. They had four children, including a daughter, Keiko
Keiko Fujimori
Keiko Sofía Fujimori Higuchi is a Peruvian Fujimorista politician, daughter of former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori and Susana Higuchi. She served as First Lady, from 1994 to 2000, after her parents divorced, becoming the youngest First Lady in the history of the Americas...
, who followed her father into politics.
In recognition of his academic achievements, the sciences faculty of the Universidad Nacional Agraria offered Fujimori the deanship
Dean (education)
In academic administration, a dean is a person with significant authority over a specific academic unit, or over a specific area of concern, or both...
and in 1984 appointed him to the rector
Rector
The word rector has a number of different meanings; it is widely used to refer to an academic, religious or political administrator...
ship of the university, which he held until 1989. In 1987, Fujimori also became president of the National Commission of Peruvian University Rectors (Asamblea Nacional de Rectores), a position which he has held twice. He also hosted a TV show called "Concertando" from 1987 to 1989, on Peru's state-owned network, Channel 7.
A dark horse
Dark horse
Dark horse is a term used to describe a little-known person or thing that emerges to prominence, especially in a competition of some sort.-Origin:The term began as horse racing parlance...
candidate, Fujimori won the 1990 presidential election under the banner of the new party Cambio 90
Cambio 90
Cambio 90-Nueva Mayoría was a right-wing Peruvian political party which entered the political spectrum in early 1990, and by June 1991 was the most powerful political force in the nation....
("cambio" meaning "change"), beating world-renowned writer Mario Vargas Llosa
Mario Vargas Llosa
Jorge Mario Pedro Vargas Llosa, 1st Marquis of Vargas Llosa is a Peruvian-Spanish writer, politician, journalist, essayist, and Nobel Prize laureate. Vargas Llosa is one of Latin America's most significant novelists and essayists, and one of the leading authors of his generation...
in a surprising upset. He capitalized on profound disenchantment with previous president Alan García and his American Popular Revolutionary Alliance
American Popular Revolutionary Alliance
The Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana is a centre-left Peruvian political party.At the legislative elections held on 9 April 2006, the party won 22.6% of the popular vote and 36 out of 120 seats in the Congress of the Republic...
party (APRA). He exploited popular distrust of Vargas Llosa's identification with the existing Peruvian political establishment, and uncertainty about Vargas Llosa's plans for neoliberal
Neoliberalism
Neoliberalism is a market-driven approach to economic and social policy based on neoclassical theories of economics that emphasizes the efficiency of private enterprise, liberalized trade and relatively open markets, and therefore seeks to maximize the role of the private sector in determining the...
economic reforms. Fujimori won much support from the poor, who had been frightened by Vargas Llosa's austerity proposals.
During the campaign, Fujimori was nicknamed El Chino, which roughly translates to "Chinaman"; it is common for people of any East Asian descent to be called chino in Peru, as elsewhere in Latin America, both derogatively and affectionately. Although he is of Japanese heritage, Fujimori has suggested that he was always gladdened by the term, which he perceived as a term of affection. With his election victory, he became the first person of East Asia
East Asia
East Asia or Eastern Asia is a subregion of Asia that can be defined in either geographical or cultural terms...
n descent to become head of government
Head of government
Head of government is the chief officer of the executive branch of a government, often presiding over a cabinet. In a parliamentary system, the head of government is often styled prime minister, chief minister, premier, etc...
of a Latin American nation, and just the third of East Asian descent to govern a South American state, after Arthur Chung
Arthur Chung
Arthur Chung was a President of Guyana from 1970 to 1980. He was the first ethnic Chinese head of state in a non-Asian country...
of Guyana
Guyana
Guyana , officially the Co-operative Republic of Guyana, previously the colony of British Guiana, is a sovereign state on the northern coast of South America that is culturally part of the Anglophone Caribbean. Guyana was a former colony of the Dutch and of the British...
and Henk Chin A Sen of Suriname
Suriname
Suriname , officially the Republic of Suriname , is a country in northern South America. It borders French Guiana to the east, Guyana to the west, Brazil to the south, and on the north by the Atlantic Ocean. Suriname was a former colony of the British and of the Dutch, and was previously known as...
(each of whom had served as head of state
Head of State
A head of state is the individual that serves as the chief public representative of a monarchy, republic, federation, commonwealth or other kind of state. His or her role generally includes legitimizing the state and exercising the political powers, functions, and duties granted to the head of...
, rather than head of government).
Fujishock
During his first term in office, Fujimori enacted wide-ranging neoliberal reforms, known as Fujishock. During the presidency of Alan García, the economy had entered a period of hyperinflation and the political system was in crisis due to the country's internal conflict, leaving Peru in "economic and political chaos". It was Fujimori's objective to pacify the nation and restore economic balance. Even though this program bore little resemblance to his campaign platform and was in fact more drastic than anything Vargas Llosa had proposed, the Fujishock succeeded in restoring Peru to the global economy, though not without immediate social cost.Fujimori's initiative relaxed private sector price controls
Price controls
Price controls are governmental impositions on the prices charged for goods and services in a market, usually intended to maintain the affordability of staple foods and goods, and to prevent price gouging during shortages, or, alternatively, to insure an income for providers of certain goods...
, drastically reduced government subsidies and government employment, eliminated all exchange controls, and also reduced restrictions on investment, imports, and capital flow. Tariffs were radically simplified, the minimum wage was immediately quadrupled, and the government established a $400 million poverty relief fund. The latter measure seemed to anticipate the economic agony that was to come, as electricity costs quintupled, water prices rose eightfold, and gasoline prices rose 3000%.
The IMF
International Monetary Fund
The International Monetary Fund is an organization of 187 countries, working to foster global monetary cooperation, secure financial stability, facilitate international trade, promote high employment and sustainable economic growth, and reduce poverty around the world...
was impressed by these measures, and guaranteed loan funding for Peru. Inflation began to fall rapidly and foreign investment capital flooded in. Fujimori's privatization
Privatization
Privatization is the incidence or process of transferring ownership of a business, enterprise, agency or public service from the public sector to the private sector or to private non-profit organizations...
campaign featured the selling off of hundreds of state-owned enterprises, and the replacing of the country's troubled currency, the inti
Peruvian inti
The inti was the currency of Peru between 1985 and 1991. Its ISO 4217 code was PEI and its abbreviation in local use was "I/." The inti was divided into 100 céntimos. The inti replaced the inflation-stricken sol. The new currency was named after Inti, the Inca sun god.-History:The inti was...
, with the Nuevo Sol
Peruvian nuevo sol
The nuevo sol plural: nuevos soles; currency sign: S/.) is the currency of Peru. It is subdivided into 100 cents, called céntimos in Spanish. The ISO 4217 currency code is PEN. It is most commonly referred to just as sol...
. The Fujishock restored macroeconomic
Macroeconomics
Macroeconomics is a branch of economics dealing with the performance, structure, behavior, and decision-making of the whole economy. This includes a national, regional, or global economy...
stability to the economy and triggered a considerable long-term economic upturn in the mid-1990s. In 1994, the Peruvian economy grew at a rate of 13%, faster than any other economy in the world.
Constitutional crisis
During Fujimori's first term in office, APRA and Vargas Llosa's party, FREDEMODemocratic Front (Peru)
Democratic Front , also known as FREDEMO, was a center-right liberal and conservative political alliance in Peru founded in 1988 by Liberty Movement, Popular Action and Christian People's Party. FREDEMO contested the 1989 municipal elections and the 1990 presidential elections ....
, remained in control of both chambers of Congress (the Chamber of Deputies and Senate), hampering the government's ability to enact economic reforms. Fujimori also found it difficult to combat the threat posed by the Maoist
Maoism
Maoism, also known as the Mao Zedong Thought , is claimed by Maoists as an anti-Revisionist form of Marxist communist theory, derived from the teachings of the Chinese political leader Mao Zedong . Developed during the 1950s and 1960s, it was widely applied as the political and military guiding...
guerrilla organization Shining Path
Shining Path
Shining Path is a Maoist guerrilla terrorist organization in Peru. The group never refers to itself as "Shining Path", and as several other Peruvian groups, prefers to be called the "Communist Party of Peru" or "PCP-SL" in short...
, due largely to what he perceived to be the intransigence and obstructionism of Congress. By March 1992, Congress met with the approval of only 17% of the electorate, according to one poll (the presidency stood at 42%, in the same poll).
In response to the political deadlock, on 5 April 1992, Fujimori with the support of the military carried out a presidential coup
Self-coup
A self-coup or autocoup is a form of coup d'état that occurs when a country's leader, who has come to power through legal means, dissolves or renders powerless the national legislature and assumes extraordinary powers not granted under normal circumstances. Other measures taken may include...
, also known as the autogolpe (auto-coup or self-coup) or Fujigolpe (Fuji-coup) in Peru. He shut down Congress, suspended the constitution, and purged the judiciary. The coup was welcomed by the public, according to numerous polls. Not only was the coup itself marked by favorable public opinion in several independent polls, but also public approval of the Fujimori administration jumped significantly in the wake of the coup. Fujimori often cited this public support in defending the coup, which he characterized as "not a negation of real democracy, but on the contrary… a search for an authentic transformation to assure a legitimate and effective democracy." Fujimori believed that Peruvian democracy had been nothing more than "a deceptive formality – a facade"; he claimed the coup was necessary to break with the deeply entrenched special interests that were hindering him from rescuing Peru from the chaotic state in which García had left it.
Fujimori's coup was immediately met with the near-unanimous condemnation by the international community. The Organization of American States
Organization of American States
The Organization of American States is a regional international organization, headquartered in Washington, D.C., United States...
denounced the coup and demanded a return to "representative democracy
Representative democracy
Representative democracy is a form of government founded on the principle of elected individuals representing the people, as opposed to autocracy and direct democracy...
", despite Fujimori's claims that his coup represented a "popular uprising". Various foreign ministers of OAS member states reiterated this condemnation of the autogolpe. They proposed an urgent effort to promote the re-establishment of "the democratic institutional order" in Peru. Following negotiations involving the OAS, the government, and opposition groups, Alberto Fujimori's initial response was to hold a referendum to ratify the auto-coup, which the OAS rejected. Fujimori then proposed scheduling elections for a Democratic Constituent Congress (CCD), which would be charged with drafting a new constitution, to be ratified by a national referendum. Despite the lack of consensus among political forces in Peru regarding this proposal, the ad hoc OAS meeting of ministers nevertheless approved Fujimori’s offer in mid-May, and elections for the CCD were held on 22 November 1992.
Various states acted to condemn the coup individually. Venezuela
Venezuela
Venezuela , officially called the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela , is a tropical country on the northern coast of South America. It borders Colombia to the west, Guyana to the east, and Brazil to the south...
broke off diplomatic relations, and Argentina
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
withdrew its ambassador. Chile
Chile
Chile ,officially the Republic of Chile , is a country in South America occupying a long, narrow coastal strip between the Andes mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage in the far...
joined Argentina
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
in requesting that Peru be suspended from the Organization of American States
Organization of American States
The Organization of American States is a regional international organization, headquartered in Washington, D.C., United States...
. International financiers delayed planned or projected loans, and the United States, Germany and Spain suspended all non-humanitarian aid to Peru. The coup appeared to threaten the economic recovery strategy of reinsertion, and complicated the process of clearing arrears with the International Monetary Fund
International Monetary Fund
The International Monetary Fund is an organization of 187 countries, working to foster global monetary cooperation, secure financial stability, facilitate international trade, promote high employment and sustainable economic growth, and reduce poverty around the world...
.
Whereas Peruvian–U.S. relations early in Fujimori's presidency had been dominated by questions of coca eradication
Coca eradication
Coca eradication is a controversial strategy strongly promoted by the United States government starting in 1961 as part of its "War on Drugs" to eliminate the cultivation of coca, a plant whose leaves are not only traditionally used by indigenous cultures but also, in modern society, in the...
, Fujimori's autogolpe immediately became a major obstacle to international relations, as the United States immediately suspended all military and economic aid to Peru, with exceptions for counter-narcotic and humanitarian-related funds. Two weeks after the self-coup, the George H.W. Bush
George H. W. Bush
George Herbert Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 41st President of the United States . He had previously served as the 43rd Vice President of the United States , a congressman, an ambassador, and Director of Central Intelligence.Bush was born in Milton, Massachusetts, to...
administration changed its position and officially recognized Fujimori as the legitimate leader of Peru.
Post-coup period
With FREDEMO dissolved and APRA's leader, Alan García, exiled to ColombiaColombia
Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia , is a unitary constitutional republic comprising thirty-two departments. The country is located in northwestern South America, bordered to the east by Venezuela and Brazil; to the south by Ecuador and Peru; to the north by the Caribbean Sea; to the...
, Fujimori sought to legitimize his position. He called elections for a Democratic Constitutional Congress
Democratic Constitutional Congress
The Democratic Constituent Congress was a Constituent Assembly created in Peru after the dissolution of Congress by President Alberto Fujimori in 1992...
that would serve as a legislature and a constituent assembly
Constituent assembly
A constituent assembly is a body composed for the purpose of drafting or adopting a constitution...
. While APRA
American Popular Revolutionary Alliance
The Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana is a centre-left Peruvian political party.At the legislative elections held on 9 April 2006, the party won 22.6% of the popular vote and 36 out of 120 seats in the Congress of the Republic...
and Popular Action attempted to boycott this, the Popular Christian Party (PPC, not to be confused with PCP Partido Comunista del Peru) and many left-leaning parties participated in this election. His supporters won a majority in this body, and drafted a new constitution
Constitution of Peru
The Constitution of Peru is the supreme law of Peru. The current constitution, enacted on December 31, 1993, is Peru's fifth in the 20th century and replaced the 1979 Constitution....
in 1993. A referendum was scheduled, and the coup and the Constitution of 1993 were approved by a narrow margin of between four and five percent.
Later in the year, on 13 November, there was a failed military coup, led by General Jaime Salinas
Jaime Salinas
Jaime Salinas López-Torres is a Peruvian politician, son of General Jaime Salinas Sedó. He was Justicia Nacional's presidential candidate for the 2006 national election. He received 0.535% of the vote, coming in 8th place....
. Salinas asserted that his efforts were a matter of turning Fujimori over for trial, for violating the Peruvian constitution.
In 1994, Fujimori separated from his wife Susana Higuchi
Susana Higuchi
Susana Shizuko Higuchi Miyagawa is a Peruvian politician and engineer, better known as the former wife of ex-president of Peru Alberto Fujimori...
in a noisy, public divorce. He formally stripped her of the title First Lady
First Lady
First Lady or First Gentlemanis the unofficial title used in some countries for the spouse of an elected head of state.It is not normally used to refer to the spouse or partner of a prime minister; the husband or wife of the British Prime Minister is usually informally referred to as prime...
in August 1994, appointing their elder daughter First Lady in her stead. Higuchi publicly denounced Fujimori as a "tyrant" and claimed that his administration was corrupt. They formally divorced in 1995.
Second term
The 1993 Constitution allowed Fujimori to run for a second term, and in April 1995, at the height of his popularity, Fujimori easily won reelection with almost two-thirds of the vote. His major opponent, former Secretary-General of the United Nations Javier Pérez de CuéllarJavier Pérez de Cuéllar
Javier Pérez de Cuéllar y de la Guerra is a Peruvian diplomat who served as the fifth Secretary-General of the United Nations from January 1, 1982 to December 31, 1991. He studied in Colegio San Agustín of Lima, and then at Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. In 1995, he ran unsuccessfully...
, won only 22 percent of the vote. Fujimori's supporters won comfortable majorities in the legislature. One of the first acts of the new congress was to declare an amnesty for all members of the Peruvian military or police accused or convicted of human rights abuses between 1980 and 1995.
During his second term, Fujimori signed a peace agreement with Ecuador
Ecuador
Ecuador , officially the Republic of Ecuador is a representative democratic republic in South America, bordered by Colombia on the north, Peru on the east and south, and by the Pacific Ocean to the west. It is one of only two countries in South America, along with Chile, that do not have a border...
over a border dispute that had simmered for more than a century. The treaty allowed the two countries to obtain international funds for developing the border region. Fujimori also settled unresolved issues with Chile, Peru's southern neighbor, still outstanding since the Treaty of Lima
Treaty of Lima
The Treaty of Lima solved the dispute between Peru and Chile regarding the status of the Chilean administered territories of Tacna and Arica. According to the Treaty, the Tacna-Arica Territory was divided between both countries; Tacna being awarded to Peru and with Chile retaining sovereignty over...
of 1929.
The 1995 election was the turning point in Fujimori's career. Peruvians now began to be more concerned about freedom of speech and the press. However, before he was sworn in for a second term, Fujimori stripped two universities of their autonomy and reshuffled the national electoral board. This led his opponents to call him "Chinochet," a reference to his previous nickname and to Chile
Chile
Chile ,officially the Republic of Chile , is a country in South America occupying a long, narrow coastal strip between the Andes mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage in the far...
an ruler Augusto Pinochet
Augusto Pinochet
Augusto José Ramón Pinochet Ugarte, more commonly known as Augusto Pinochet , was a Chilean army general and dictator who assumed power in a coup d'état on 11 September 1973...
.
According to a poll by the Peruvian Research and Marketing Company conducted in 1997, 40.6% of Lima residents considered President Fujimori an authoritarian.
In addition to the nature of democracy under Fujimori, Peruvians were becoming increasingly interested in the myriad criminal allegations involving Fujimori and his chief of the National Intelligence Service, Vladimiro Montesinos
Vladimiro Montesinos
Vladimiro Ilyich Montesinos Torres was the long-standing head of Peru's intelligence service, Servicio de Inteligencia Nacional , under President Alberto Fujimori. In 2000, secret videos, which he had recorded, were televised that showed his bribing an elected congressman to leave the opposition...
. A 2002 report by Health Minister Fernando Carbone would later suggest that Fujimori was involved in the forced sterilizations of up to 300,000 indigenous women from 1996 to 2000, as part of a population control program. A 2004 World Bank
World Bank
The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans to developing countries for capital programmes.The World Bank's official goal is the reduction of poverty...
publication would suggest that, in this period, Montesinos' abuse of the power accorded him by Fujimori "led to a steady and systematic undermining of the rule of law".
Third term
The 1993 constitution limits a presidency to two terms. Shortly after Fujimori began his second term, his supporters in Congress passed a law of "authentic interpretation" which effectively allowed him to run for another term in 2000. A 1998 effort to repeal this law by referendum failed. In late 1999, Fujimori announced that he would run for a third term. Peruvian electoral bodies, which were politically sympathetic to Fujimori, accepted his argument that the two-term restriction did not apply to him, as it was enacted while he was already in office.Exit polls showed Fujimori fell short of the 50% required to avoid an electoral runoff, but the first official results showed him with 49.6% of the vote, just short of outright victory. Eventually, Fujimori was credited with 49.89%—20,000 votes short of avoiding a runoff. Despite reports of numerous irregularities, the international observers recognized an adjusted victory of Fujimori. His primary opponent, Alejandro Toledo
Alejandro Toledo
Alejandro Celestino Toledo Manrique is a politician who was President of Peru from 2001 to 2006. He was elected in April 2001, defeating former President Alan García...
, called for his supporters to spoil their ballots in the runoff by writing "No to fraud!" on them (voting is mandatory in Peru). International observers pulled out of the country after Fujimori refused to delay the runoff.
In the runoff, Fujimori won with 51.1% of the valid votes. While votes for Toledo declined from 40.24% of the valid votes cast in the first round to 25.67% of the valid votes in the second round, invalid votes jumped from 2.25% of the total votes cast in the first round to 29.93% of total votes in the second round. The large percentage of votes cast as invalid suggested that many Peruvians took Toledo's advice to spoil their ballots.
(The 51.1 and 25 figures are as percentages of valid votes, that is, excluding invalid votes. Thus, there were 29.93% invalid votes and 70.07% valid votes. Of this 70.07%, 51.1% were for Fujimori and 25.67% for Toledo.)
Although Fujimori had won the runoff with only a bare majority, rumors of irregularities led most of the international community to shun his third swearing-in on July 28. For the next seven weeks, there were daily demonstrations in front of the presidential palace.
As a conciliatory measure, Fujimori appointed former opposition candidate Federico Salas as the new prime minister. However, opposition parties in Parliament refused to support this move while Toledo campaigned vigorously to have the election annulled. At this point, a corruption scandal involving Vladimiro Montesinos broke out, and exploded into full force on the evening of 14 September 2000, when the cable television station Canal N
Canal N
Canal N is a 24-hour cable news channel in Peru. The channel was founded as a joint venture between El Comercio and Telefónica....
broadcast footage of Montesinos apparently bribing opposition congressman Alberto Kouri for his defection to Fujimori's Perú 2000 party. This video was presented by Fernando Olivera
Fernando Olivera
Fernando Olivera Vega is a Peruvian politician and leader of Independent Moralizing Front , a Peruvian political party...
, leader of the FIM (Independent Moralizing Front), who purchased it from one of Montesinos's closest allies (nicknamed by the Peruvian press El Patriota).
Fujimori's support virtually collapsed, and a few days later he announced in a nationwide address that he would shut down the SIN and call new elections—in which he would not be a candidate. On 10 November, Fujimori won approval from Congress to hold elections on 8 April 2001. On 13 November, Fujimori left Peru for a visit to Brunei
Brunei
Brunei , officially the State of Brunei Darussalam or the Nation of Brunei, the Abode of Peace , is a sovereign state located on the north coast of the island of Borneo, in Southeast Asia...
to attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum. On 16 November, Valentín Paniagua
Valentín Paniagua
Valentín Paniagua Corazao was a Peruvian politician and former Interim President of Peru. Paniagua was elected by the Peruvian Congress to serve as interim president of the country after Alberto Fujimori was ousted from office by Congress in November 2000.As Interim President, his main task was to...
took over as president of Congress after the pro-Fujimori leadership lost a vote of confidence. On 17 November, Fujimori traveled from Brunei to Tokyo, where he submitted his presidential resignation
Resignation
A resignation is the formal act of giving up or quitting one's office or position. It can also refer to the act of admitting defeat in a game like chess, indicated by the resigning player declaring "I resign", turning his king on its side, extending his hand, or stopping the chess clock...
via fax. Congress refused to accept his resignation, instead voting 62–9 to remove Fujimori from office on the grounds that he was "permanently morally disabled."
On 19 November, government ministers presented their resignations en bloc. Because Fujimori's first vice president, Francisco Tudela, had broken with Fujimori and resigned a few days earlier, his successor Ricardo Márquez came to claim the presidency. Congress, however, refused to recognize him, as he was an ardent Fujimori loyalist; Márquez resigned two days later. Paniagua was next in line, and became interim president to oversee the April elections.
Terrorism
When Fujimori came to power, much of Peru was dominated by the MaoistMaoism
Maoism, also known as the Mao Zedong Thought , is claimed by Maoists as an anti-Revisionist form of Marxist communist theory, derived from the teachings of the Chinese political leader Mao Zedong . Developed during the 1950s and 1960s, it was widely applied as the political and military guiding...
insurgent group Sendero Luminoso ("Shining Path
Shining Path
Shining Path is a Maoist guerrilla terrorist organization in Peru. The group never refers to itself as "Shining Path", and as several other Peruvian groups, prefers to be called the "Communist Party of Peru" or "PCP-SL" in short...
"), and the Marxist-Leninist group Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement
Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement
The Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement was a Marxist revolutionary group active in Peru from the early 1980s to 1997 and one of the main actors in the internal conflict in Peru...
(MRTA). In 1989, 25% of Peru's district and provincial councils opted not to hold elections, owing to a persistent campaign of assassination, over the course of which over 100 officials had been killed by Shining Path in that year alone. That same year, over one-third of Peru's positions for justices of the peace stood vacant, owing to Shining Path intimidation. Union leaders and military officials had also been assassinated throughout the 1980s.
Fernando Belaúnde Terry
Fernando Belaúnde Terry was President of Peru for two non-consecutive terms . Deposed by a military coup in 1968, he was re-elected in 1980 after eleven years of military rule...
and Alan García, at first neglected the threat posed by Shining Path, then launched an unsuccessful military campaign to eradicate it, undermining public faith in the state and precipitating an exodus of elites.
By 1992, Shining Path guerrilla attacks had claimed an estimated 20,000 lives over the course of 12 years. The 16 July 1992 Tarata Bombing
Tarata bombing
The Tarata bombing was a terrorist attack in Lima, Peru, on July 16, 1992, by the Shining Path guerrilla group. The blast was the deadliest Shining Path bombing during the Internal conflict in Peru and was part of a larger bombing campaign in the city....
, in which several car bombs exploded in Lima's wealthiest district, killed over 40 people; the bombings were characterized by one commentator as an "offensive to challenge President Alberto Fujimori." The bombing at Tarata was followed up with a "weeklong wave of car bombings ... Bombs hit banks, hotels, schools, restaurants, police stations and shops ... [G]uerrillas bombed two rail bridges from the Andes
Andes
The Andes is the world's longest continental mountain range. It is a continual range of highlands along the western coast of South America. This range is about long, about to wide , and of an average height of about .Along its length, the Andes is split into several ranges, which are separated...
, cutting off some of Peru's largest copper mines from coastal ports."
Fujimori has been credited by many Peruvians with ending the fifteen-year reign of terror of Shining Path. As part of his anti-insurgency efforts, Fujimori granted the military broad powers to arrest suspected insurgents and try them in secret military courts with few legal rights. This measure has often been criticized for having compromised the fundamental democratic and human right of an open trial wherein the accused faces the accuser. Fujimori contended that these measures were justified, that this compromise of open trials was necessary because the judiciary was too afraid to charge alleged insurgents, and that judges and prosecutors had legitimate fears of insurgent reprisals against them or their families. At the same time, Fujimori's government armed rural Peruvians, organizing them into groups known as "rondas campesinas" ("peasant patrols").
Insurgent activity was in decline by the end of 1992, and Fujimori took credit for this development, claiming that his campaign had largely eliminated the insurgent threat. After the 1992 auto-coup, the intelligence work of the DINCOTE
DIRCOTE
The Counter-Terrorist Directorate is the branch of the National Police of Peru that is responsible for Peru's anti-terrorist law enforcement efforts....
(National Counter-Terrorism Directorate) led to the capture of the leaders from Shining Path and MRTA, including notorious Shining Path leader Abimael Guzmán
Abimael Guzmán
Manuel Rubén Abimael Guzmán Reynoso , also known by the nom de guerre Presidente Gonzalo , a former professor of philosophy, was the leader of the Shining Path during the Maoist insurgency known as the internal conflict in Peru...
. Guzmán's capture was a political coup for Fujimori, who used it to great effect in the press; in an interview with documentarian Ellen Perry
Ellen Perry
Ellen Perry is an award-winning film director, writer, producer and cinematographer. She attended the USC School of Cinematic Arts.Her first feature documentary, Great Wall Across the Yangtze, aired nationally on PBS in 2000. Narrated by Martin Sheen, the film investigates the Three Gorges Dam...
, Fujimori even notes that he specially ordered Guzmán's prison jumpsuit to be white with black stripes, to enhance the image of his capture in the media.
Critics charge that to achieve the defeat of Shining Path, the Peruvian military engaged in widespread human rights
Human rights
Human rights are "commonly understood as inalienable fundamental rights to which a person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human being." Human rights are thus conceived as universal and egalitarian . These rights may exist as natural rights or as legal rights, in both national...
abuses, and that the majority of the victims were poor highland countryside inhabitants caught in the crossfire between the military and insurgents. The final report of the Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission
Truth and Reconciliation Commission (Peru)
The Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission was established in 2001 after the fall of president Alberto Fujimori, to examine abuses committed during the 1980s and 1990s, when Peru was plagued by the worst political violence in the history of the republic...
, published on 28 August 2003, revealed that while the majority of the atrocities committed between 1980 and 1995 were the work of Shining Path, the Peruvian armed forces were also guilty of having destroyed villages and murdered countryside inhabitants whom they suspected of supporting insurgents.
The Japanese embassy hostage crisis
Japanese embassy hostage crisis
The Japanese embassy hostage crisis began on 17 December 1996 in Lima, Peru, when 14 members of the Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement took hostage hundreds of high-level diplomats, government and military officials and business executives who were attending a party at the official residence of...
began on 17 December 1996, when fourteen MRTA
Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement
The Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement was a Marxist revolutionary group active in Peru from the early 1980s to 1997 and one of the main actors in the internal conflict in Peru...
militants seized the residence of the Japanese ambassador in Lima during a party, taking hostage some four hundred diplomats, government officials, and other dignitaries. The action was partly in protest of prison conditions in Peru. During the four-month standoff, the Emerretistas gradually freed all but 72 of their hostages. The government rejected the militants' demand to release imprisoned MRTA members and secretly prepared an elaborate plan to storm the residence, while stalling by negotiating with the hostage-takers.
On 22 April 1997, a team of military commando
Commando
In English, the term commando means a specific kind of individual soldier or military unit. In contemporary usage, commando usually means elite light infantry and/or special operations forces units, specializing in amphibious landings, parachuting, rappelling and similar techniques, to conduct and...
s, codenamed "Chavín de Huantar", raided the building. One hostage, two military commandos, and all 14 MRTA insurgents were killed in the operation. Images of President Fujimori at the ambassador's residence during and after the military operation, surrounded by soldiers and liberated dignitaries, and walking among the corpses of the insurgents, were widely televised. The conclusion of the four-month long standoff was used by Fujimori and his supporters to bolster his image as tough on terrorism.
Accusations of human rights abuses
Several organizations criticized Fujimori's methods in the struggle against Shining PathShining Path
Shining Path is a Maoist guerrilla terrorist organization in Peru. The group never refers to itself as "Shining Path", and as several other Peruvian groups, prefers to be called the "Communist Party of Peru" or "PCP-SL" in short...
and the MRTA. According to Amnesty International
Amnesty International
Amnesty International is an international non-governmental organisation whose stated mission is "to conduct research and generate action to prevent and end grave abuses of human rights, and to demand justice for those whose rights have been violated."Following a publication of Peter Benenson's...
, "the widespread and systematic nature of human rights violations committed during the government of former head of state Alberto Fujimori (1990–2000) in Peru constitute crimes against humanity under international law." Fujimori's alleged association with death squad
Death squad
A death squad is an armed military, police, insurgent, or terrorist squad that conducts extrajudicial killings, assassinations, and forced disappearances of persons as part of a war, insurgency or terror campaign...
s is currently being studied by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights
Inter-American Court of Human Rights
The Inter-American Court of Human Rights is an autonomous judicial institution based in the city of San José, Costa Rica. Together with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, it makes up the human rights protection system of the Organization of American States , which serves to uphold and...
, after the court accepted the case of "Cantuta vs Perú".
The 1991 Barrios Altos massacre
Barrios Altos massacre
The Barrios Altos massacre took place on 3 November 1991, in the Barrios Altos neighborhood of Lima, Peru. Fifteen people, including an eight-year-old child, were killed, and four more injured, by assailants who were later determined to be members of Grupo Colina, a death squad made up of members...
by members of the death squad Grupo Colina
Grupo Colina
Grupo Colina was a paramilitary anti-communist death squad created in Peru that was active from 1990 until 1994, during the administration of Alberto Fujimori...
, made up of members of the Peruvian Armed Forces
Military of Peru
The Peruvian Armed Forces are the military services of Peru, comprising independent Army, Navy and Air Force components. Their primary mission is to safeguard the country's independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity against any threat...
, was one of the crimes cited in the request for his extradition submitted by the Peruvian government to Japan in 2003.
From 1996 to 2000, the Fujimori government oversaw a massive family planning campaign known as Voluntary Surgical Contraception. The United Nations
United Nations
The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...
and other international aid agencies supported this campaign. The Nippon Foundation
Nippon Foundation
is a private, non-profit grant-making organization. It was established in 1962 by Ryoichi Sasakawa, the late statesman and businessman who, following World War II, was accused, albeit not convicted, of class A war crimes...
, headed by Ayako Sono
Ayako Sono
is a Catholic Japanese writer.She went to the Catholic Sacred Heart School in Tokyo after elementary school. During World War II, she evacuated to Kanazawa...
, a Japanese novelist and personal friend of Fujimori, supported as well. Nearly 300,000, mostly indigenous
Indigenous peoples of the Americas
The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North and South America, their descendants and other ethnic groups who are identified with those peoples. Indigenous peoples are known in Canada as Aboriginal peoples, and in the United States as Native Americans...
, women were coercively or forcefully sterilized during these years.
The success of the operation in the Japanese embassy hostage crisis
Japanese embassy hostage crisis
The Japanese embassy hostage crisis began on 17 December 1996 in Lima, Peru, when 14 members of the Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement took hostage hundreds of high-level diplomats, government and military officials and business executives who were attending a party at the official residence of...
was tainted by subsequent allegations that at least three and possibly eight of the insurgents had been summarily executed by the commandos after surrendering. In 2002, the case was taken up by public prosecutors, but the Peruvian Supreme Court ruled that the military tribunals had jurisdiction. A military court later absolved them of guilt, and the "Chavín de Huantar" soldiers led the 2004 military parade. In response, in 2003 MRTA family members lodged a complaint with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights
Inter-American Commission on Human Rights
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights is an autonomous organ of the Organization of American States .Along with the...
(IACHR) accusing the Peruvian state of human rights violations, namely that the MRTA insurgents had been denied the "right to life, the right to judicial guarantees and the right to judicial protection". The IACHR accepted the case and is currently studying it.
Peruvian Minister of Justice Maria Zavala has stated that this verdict by the IACHR supports the Peruvian government's extradition of Fujimori from Chile. Though the IACHR verdict does not directly implicate Fujimori, it does fault the Peruvian government for its complicity in the 1992 Cantuta University killings
La Cantuta massacre
The La Cantuta massacre, in which a university professor and nine students from Lima's La Cantuta University were abducted by a military death squad and "disappeared", took place in Peru on 18 July 1992 during the presidency of Alberto Fujimori...
.
Resignation, arrest, trial
After his faxed resignation was rejected by the Congress, Fujimori was relieved of his duties as president and banned from Peruvian politics for a decade. He remained in self-imposed exileExile
Exile means to be away from one's home , while either being explicitly refused permission to return and/or being threatened with imprisonment or death upon return...
in Japan, where he resided with his friend, the famous Catholic novelist Ayako Sono
Ayako Sono
is a Catholic Japanese writer.She went to the Catholic Sacred Heart School in Tokyo after elementary school. During World War II, she evacuated to Kanazawa...
. Several senior Japanese politicians have supported Fujimori, partly for his decisive action in ending the 1997 Japanese embassy crisis
Japanese embassy hostage crisis
The Japanese embassy hostage crisis began on 17 December 1996 in Lima, Peru, when 14 members of the Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement took hostage hundreds of high-level diplomats, government and military officials and business executives who were attending a party at the official residence of...
.
Alejandro Toledo
Alejandro Toledo
Alejandro Celestino Toledo Manrique is a politician who was President of Peru from 2001 to 2006. He was elected in April 2001, defeating former President Alan García...
, who assumed the presidency in 2001, spearheaded the criminal case against Fujimori. He arranged meetings with the Supreme Court, tax authorities, and other powers in Peru in order to "coordinate the joint efforts to bring the criminal Fujimori from Japan." His vehemence in this matter at times compromised Peruvian law: forcing the judiciary and legislative system to keep guilty sentences without hearing Fujimori's defense; not providing Fujimori with a lawyer in absence of representation; and expelling pro-Fujimori congressmen from the parliament without proof of the accusations against them. The latter action was later reversed by the judiciary.
The Toledo administration's review of the Fujimori administration led to the Peruvian Congress authorizing charges against Fujimori, in August 2001. Fujimori was alleged to be a co-author, alongside Vladimiro Montesinos, in the death-squad killings at Barrios Altos
Barrios Altos massacre
The Barrios Altos massacre took place on 3 November 1991, in the Barrios Altos neighborhood of Lima, Peru. Fifteen people, including an eight-year-old child, were killed, and four more injured, by assailants who were later determined to be members of Grupo Colina, a death squad made up of members...
in 1991 and La Cantuta
La Cantuta massacre
The La Cantuta massacre, in which a university professor and nine students from Lima's La Cantuta University were abducted by a military death squad and "disappeared", took place in Peru on 18 July 1992 during the presidency of Alberto Fujimori...
in 1992. At the behest of Peruvian authorities, Interpol
Interpol
Interpol, whose full name is the International Criminal Police Organization – INTERPOL, is an organization facilitating international police cooperation...
issued an arrest order for Fujimori on charges that included murder, kidnapping, and crimes against humanity
Crime against humanity
Crimes against humanity, as defined by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court Explanatory Memorandum, "are particularly odious offenses in that they constitute a serious attack on human dignity or grave humiliation or a degradation of one or more human beings...
. Meanwhile, the Peruvian government found that Japan was not amenable to the extradition of Fujimori; a protracted diplomatic debate ensued, when Japan showed itself unwilling to accede to the extradition request.
In September 2003, Congressman Dora Dávila, joined by Minister of Health Luis Soari, denounced Fujimori and several of his ministers for crimes against humanity, for allegedly having overseen forced sterilizations during his regime. In November, Congress approved charges against Fujimori, to investigate how much he had been involved in the airdrop of Kalashnikov
AK-47
The AK-47 is a selective-fire, gas-operated 7.62×39mm assault rifle, first developed in the Soviet Union by Mikhail Kalashnikov. It is officially known as Avtomat Kalashnikova . It is also known as a Kalashnikov, an "AK", or in Russian slang, Kalash.Design work on the AK-47 began in the last year...
rifles into the Colombia
Colombia
Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia , is a unitary constitutional republic comprising thirty-two departments. The country is located in northwestern South America, bordered to the east by Venezuela and Brazil; to the south by Ecuador and Peru; to the north by the Caribbean Sea; to the...
n jungle in 1999 and 2000 for guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia
The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia – People's Army is a Marxist–Leninist revolutionary guerrilla organization based in Colombia which is involved in the ongoing Colombian armed conflict, currently involved in drug dealing and crimes against the civilians..FARC-EP is a peasant army which...
(FARC). Fujimori maintains he had no knowledge of the arms-trading, and blames Montesinos. By approving the charges, Congress lifted the immunity granted to Fujimori as a former president, so that he could be criminally charged and prosecuted.
Congress also voted to support charges against Fujimori for the detention and disappearance of 67 students from the central Andean city of Huancayo
Huancayo
Huancayo with a rock') is the capital of the Junín Region, in the central highlands of Peru. It is located in Junín Province, of which it is also capital. Situated near the Mantaro Valley at an altitude of 3,271 meters, it has a population of 377,000 and is the fifth most populous city of the...
and the disappearance of several residents from the northern coastal town of Chimbote
Chimbote
Chimbote is the largest city in the Ancash Region of Peru, and the capital of both Santa Province and Chimbote District.The city is located on the coast in Chimbote Bay, south of Trujillo and north of Lima on the North Pan-American highway. It is the start of a chain of important cities like...
during the 1990s. It also approved charges that Fujimori mismanaged millions of dollars from Japanese charities, suggesting that the millions of dollars in his bank account were far too much to have been accumulated legally.
By March 2005, it appeared that Peru had all but abandoned its efforts to extradite Fujimori from Japan. In September of that year, Fujimori obtained a new Peruvian passport in Tokyo and announced his intention to run in the Peruvian national election, 2006.
The Special Prosecutor established to investigate Fujimori released a report alleging that the Fujimori administration had obtained US$2 billion though graft. Most of this money came from Vladimiro Montesinos' web of corruption. The Special Prosecutor's figure of two billion dollars is considerably higher than that arrived at by Transparency International
Transparency International
Transparency International is a non-governmental organization that monitors and publicizes corporate and political corruption in international development. It publishes an annual Corruption Perceptions Index, a comparative listing of corruption worldwide...
, an NGO that studies corruption. In its "Global Corruption Report 2004", Transparency International listed Fujimori as leading the seventh most corrupt government of the past two decades worldwide, estimating that the corruption may have embezzled USD $600 million in funds.
Undaunted by the judicial proceedings underway against him, which, citing Toledo's involvement, he dismissed as "politically motivated", Fujimori, working from Japan, established a new political party in Peru, Sí Cumple
Sí Cumple
Sí Cumple is a political party of Peru founded by Alberto Fujimori as Vamos Vecino in 1998 in order for the party to participate in that year's municipal elections. In 2005 it assumed its current name....
, in hopes of participating in the 2006 presidential elections. In February 2004, the Constitutional Court dismissed the possibility of Fujimori participating in those elections, noting that the ex-president was barred by Congress from holding office for ten years. The decision was regarded as unconstitutional by Fujimori supporters such as ex-congress members Luz Salgado, Marta Chávez and Fernán Altuve, who argued it was a "political" maneuver and that the only body with authority to determine the matter was the Jurado Nacional de Elecciones (JNE). Valentín Paniagua disagreed, suggesting that the Constitutional Court finding was binding and that "no further debate is possible".
Fujimori's Sí Cumple (roughly translated, "He Keeps His Word") received more than 10% in many country-level polls, contending with APRA
American Popular Revolutionary Alliance
The Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana is a centre-left Peruvian political party.At the legislative elections held on 9 April 2006, the party won 22.6% of the popular vote and 36 out of 120 seats in the Congress of the Republic...
for the second place slot.
On 7 April 2009 a three-judge panel convicted Fujimori on charges of human rights abuse
Human rights
Human rights are "commonly understood as inalienable fundamental rights to which a person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human being." Human rights are thus conceived as universal and egalitarian . These rights may exist as natural rights or as legal rights, in both national...
s, declaring that the "charges against him have been proven beyond all reasonable doubt". The panel found him guilty of ordering the Grupo Colina
Grupo Colina
Grupo Colina was a paramilitary anti-communist death squad created in Peru that was active from 1990 until 1994, during the administration of Alberto Fujimori...
death squad
Death squad
A death squad is an armed military, police, insurgent, or terrorist squad that conducts extrajudicial killings, assassinations, and forced disappearances of persons as part of a war, insurgency or terror campaign...
to commit the November 1991 Barrios Altos massacre
Barrios Altos massacre
The Barrios Altos massacre took place on 3 November 1991, in the Barrios Altos neighborhood of Lima, Peru. Fifteen people, including an eight-year-old child, were killed, and four more injured, by assailants who were later determined to be members of Grupo Colina, a death squad made up of members...
and the July 1992 La Cantuta Massacre
La Cantuta massacre
The La Cantuta massacre, in which a university professor and nine students from Lima's La Cantuta University were abducted by a military death squad and "disappeared", took place in Peru on 18 July 1992 during the presidency of Alberto Fujimori...
, which resulted in the deaths of 25 people, and for taking part in the kidnappings of Peruvian opposition journalist Gustavo Gorriti
Gustavo Gorriti
Gustavo Gorriti is a Peruvian journalist who has worked extensively on coverage pertaining to the politics, culture, and social issues of Central and South America, and the Caribbean...
and businessman Samuel Dyer. Fujimori's conviction is the only instance of a democratically elected head of state being tried and convicted of human rights abuses in his own country. Later on 7 April, the court sentenced Fujimori to 25 years in prison.
Further trials
Vladimiro Montesinos
Vladimiro Ilyich Montesinos Torres was the long-standing head of Peru's intelligence service, Servicio de Inteligencia Nacional , under President Alberto Fujimori. In 2000, secret videos, which he had recorded, were televised that showed his bribing an elected congressman to leave the opposition...
, former head of the National Intelligence Service
National Intelligence Service (Peru)
The National Intelligence Service was an intelligence agency of the Government of Peru. The agency was disbanded by Alberto Fujimori after its de facto chief, Vladimiro Montesinos, was caught paying bribes to major political, military and media figures. Fujimori later pleaded guilty to charges...
, during the two months prior to his fall from power. Fujimori admitted paying the money to Montesinos but claimed that he had later paid back the money to the state. On July 20, the court found him guilty of embezzlement and sentenced him to a further seven and a half years in prison.
A fourth, and apparently final, trial took place in September 2009 in Lima. Fujimori was accused of using Montesinos to bribe and tap the phones of journalists, businessmen and opposition politicians – evidence of which led to the collapse of his government in 2000. Fujimori admitted the charges but claimed that the charges were made to damage his daughter's presidential election campaign. The prosecution asked the court to sentence Fujimori to eight years imprisonment with a fine of $1.6 million plus $1 million in compensation to ten people whose phones were bugged. Fujimori pled guilty and was sentenced to six years' imprisonment on 30 September 2009.
Economic achievements
Fujimori is credited by many Peruvians for bringing stability to the country after the violence and hyperinflation of the García years. While it is generally agreed that the "Fujishock" brought short/middle-term macroeconomic stability, the long-term social impact of Fujimori's free market economic policies is still hotly debated.High growth during Fujimori's first term petered out during his second term. "El Niño
El Niño-Southern Oscillation
El Niño/La Niña-Southern Oscillation, or ENSO, is a quasiperiodic climate pattern that occurs across the tropical Pacific Ocean roughly every five years...
" phenomena had a tremendous impact on the Peruvian economy during the late 1990s. Nevertheless, total GDP growth between 1992 and 2001, inclusive, was 44.60%, that is, 3.76% per annum; total GDP per capita growth between 1991 and 2001, inclusive, was 30.78%, that is, 2.47% per annum. Also, studies by INEI
Instituto Nacional de Estadística e Informática
The Instituto Nacional de Estadística e Informática is a semi-autonomous Peruvian government agency which coordinates, compiles, and evaluates statistical information for the country...
, the national statistics bureau show that the number of Peruvians living in poverty increased dramatically (from 41.6% to more than 70%) during Alan García's term, but they actually decreased (from more than 70% to 54%) during Fujimori's term. Furthermore, FAO reported Peru reduced undernourishment by about 29% from 1990–92 to 1997–99.
Peru was reintegrated into the global economic system, and began to attract foreign investment. The sell-off of state-owned enterprises led to improvements in some service industries, notably local telephony, mobile telephony and Internet. For example, before privatization, a consumer or business would need to wait up to 10 years to get a local telephone line installed from the monopolistic state-run telephone company, at a cost of $607 for a residential line. A couple of years after privatization, the wait was reduced to just a few days. Peru's Physical land based telephone network had a dramatic increase in telephone penetration from 2.9% in 1993 to 5.9% in 1996 and 6.2% in 2000, and a dramatic decrease in the wait for a telephone line. Average wait went from 70 months in 1993 (before privatization) to two months in 1996 (after privatization). Privatization also generated foreign investment in export-oriented activities such as mining and energy extraction, notably the Camisea
Camisea Gas Project
The Camisea Gas Project extracts and transports natural gas originating near the Urubamba River in central Peru, the San Martín Reservoir.-History:...
gas project and the copper and zinc
Zinc
Zinc , or spelter , is a metallic chemical element; it has the symbol Zn and atomic number 30. It is the first element in group 12 of the periodic table. Zinc is, in some respects, chemically similar to magnesium, because its ion is of similar size and its only common oxidation state is +2...
extraction projects at Antamina.
By the end of the decade, Peru's international currency reserves were built up from nearly zero at the end of García's term to almost US$10 billion. Fujimori also left a smaller state bureaucracy and reduced government expenses (in contrast to the historical pattern of bureaucratic expansion), a technically minded (but widely perceived as politicized) administration of public entities like SUNAT (the tax collection agency), a large number of new schools (not only in Lima but in Peru's small towns), more roads and highways, and new and upgraded communications infrastructure. These improvement led to the revival of tourism, agroexport, industries and fisheries.
Criticism
Detractors have observed that Fujimori was able to encourage large-scale mining projects with foreign corporations and push through mining-friendly legislation laws because the post auto-coup political picture greatly facilitated the process.Some analysts state that some of the GDP growth during the Fujimori years reflects a greater rate of extraction of non-renewable resources by transnational companies; these companies were attracted by Fujimori by means of near-zero royalties, and, by the same fact, little of the extracted wealth has stayed in the country. Peru's mining legislation, they claim, has served as a role model for other countries that wish to become more mining-friendly.
Fujimori's privatization program also remains shrouded in controversy. A congressional investigation in 2002, led by socialist opposition congressman Javier Diez Canseco
Javier Diez Canseco
Javier Diez Canseco Cisneros is a Peruvian politician and former member of the Peruvian Congress representing the party Partido Democrático Descentralista , of which he is a co-founder. He was also a candidate for President of Peru as the head of the Socialist Party of Peru in 2006 elections...
, stated that of the USD $9 billion raised through the privatizations of hundreds of state-owned enterprises, only a small fraction of this income ever benefited the Peruvian people.
Some scholars claim that Fujimori's government became a "dictatorship" after the auto-coup, permeated by a network of corruption organized by his associate Montesinos, who now faces dozens of charges that range from embezzlement
Embezzlement
Embezzlement is the act of dishonestly appropriating or secreting assets by one or more individuals to whom such assets have been entrusted....
to drug trafficking to murder (Montesinos is currently on trial in Lima). Fujimori's style of government has also been described as "populist authoritarianism". Numerous governments and human rights organizations such as Amnesty International
Amnesty International
Amnesty International is an international non-governmental organisation whose stated mission is "to conduct research and generate action to prevent and end grave abuses of human rights, and to demand justice for those whose rights have been violated."Following a publication of Peter Benenson's...
, have welcomed the extradition of Fujimori to face human rights charges. As early as 1991, Fujimori had himself vocally denounced what he called "pseudo-human rights organizations" such as Amnesty International and Americas Watch
Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch is an international non-governmental organization that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. Its headquarters are in New York City and it has offices in Berlin, Beirut, Brussels, Chicago, Geneva, Johannesburg, London, Los Angeles, Moscow, Paris, San Francisco, Tokyo,...
, for allegedly failing to criticize the insurgencies targeting civilian populations throughout Peru against which his government was struggling.
Popular support
Fujimori still enjoys a measure of support within Peru. A poll conducted in March 2005 by the Instituto de Desarrollo e Investigación de Ciencias Económicas (IDICE) indicated that 12.1% of the respondents intended to vote for Fujimori in the 2006 presidential election. A poll conducted on 25 November 2005, by the Universidad de Lima indicated a high approval (45.6%) rating of the Fujimori period between 1990 and 2000, attributed to his counterinsurgency efforts (53%).According to a more recent Universidad de Lima
University of Lima
The University of Lima is a private university in Lima, the capital of Peru. It was founded in 1962. The decision to create the University of Lima was made in the early 1960s by a group of university professors, along with important commerce and industry representatives. It started with only 120...
survey, Fujimori still retains public support, ranking fifth in personal popularity among other political figures. Popular approval for his decade-long presidency (1990–2000) has reportedly grown (from 31.5% in 2002 to 49.5% in May 2007). Despite accusations of corruption and human rights violations, nearly half of the individuals interviewed in the survey approved of Fujimori’s presidential regime. In a 2007 Universidad de Lima
University of Lima
The University of Lima is a private university in Lima, the capital of Peru. It was founded in 1962. The decision to create the University of Lima was made in the early 1960s by a group of university professors, along with important commerce and industry representatives. It started with only 120...
survey of 600 Peruvians in Lima and the port of Callao, 82.6% agreed that the former president should be extradited from Chile to stand trial in Peru.
The Lima-based newspaper Perú 21 ran an editorial noting that even though the Universidad de Lima
University of Lima
The University of Lima is a private university in Lima, the capital of Peru. It was founded in 1962. The decision to create the University of Lima was made in the early 1960s by a group of university professors, along with important commerce and industry representatives. It started with only 120...
poll results indicate that four out of every five interviewees believe that Fujimori is guilty of some of the charges against him, he still enjoys at least 30% of popular support and enough approval to restart a political career.
In the 2006 congressional elections, his daughter Keiko
Keiko Fujimori
Keiko Sofía Fujimori Higuchi is a Peruvian Fujimorista politician, daughter of former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori and Susana Higuchi. She served as First Lady, from 1994 to 2000, after her parents divorced, becoming the youngest First Lady in the history of the Americas...
was elected to the congress with the highest vote count. She came in second place in the 2011 Peruvian presidential election
Peruvian general election, 2011
The Peruvian general election, 2011 took place on 10 April 2011. Since no candidate received more than half of all valid votes, a second round was necessary to determine the winner. This second round took place on 5 June and determined the successor of Alan García, as well as 130 members of the...
with 23.2% of the vote, and lost the June run-off against Ollanta Humala
Ollanta Humala
Ollanta Moisés Humala Tasso is a Peruvian politician and the President of Peru. Humala, who previously served as an army officer, lost the presidential election in 2006 but won the 2011 presidential election in a run-off vote...
.
See also
- History of PeruHistory of PeruThe history of Peru spans several millennia, extending back through several stages of cultural development in the mountain region and the coastal desert....
- Politics of PeruPolitics of PeruPolitics of the Republic of Peru takes place in a framework of a presidential representative democratic republic, whereby the President of Peru is both head of state and head of government, and of a pluriform multi-party system. Executive power is exercised by the government. Legislative power is...
- Japanese PeruvianJapanese PeruvianJapanese Peruvians are people of Japanese ancestry who were born in or immigrated to Peru. The immigrants from Japan are called the Issei generation. Second and third generation Peruvians are referred to as nisei and sansei in Japanese...
s - List of Presidents of Peru
- Vladimiro MontesinosVladimiro MontesinosVladimiro Ilyich Montesinos Torres was the long-standing head of Peru's intelligence service, Servicio de Inteligencia Nacional , under President Alberto Fujimori. In 2000, secret videos, which he had recorded, were televised that showed his bribing an elected congressman to leave the opposition...
- Peruvian national election, 2006
- Peruvian internal conflictInternal conflict in PeruIt has been estimated that nearly 70,000 people died in the internal conflict in Peru that started in 1980 and, although still ongoing, had greatly wound down by 2000. The principal actors in the war were the Shining Path , the Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement and the government of Peru.A great...
External links
- Biography and tenure by CIDOB Foundation (in Spanish)
- The Fall of Fujimori on POV at PBSPublic Broadcasting ServiceThe Public Broadcasting Service is an American non-profit public broadcasting television network with 354 member TV stations in the United States which hold collective ownership. Its headquarters is in Arlington, Virginia....
, 2006 - State of Fear a documentary of Peru's war on terror based on the findings of the Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation CommissionTruth and Reconciliation Commission (Peru)The Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission was established in 2001 after the fall of president Alberto Fujimori, to examine abuses committed during the 1980s and 1990s, when Peru was plagued by the worst political violence in the history of the republic...
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