El Frontón is an island off the coast of Callao

Callao

Callao is the largest and most important port in Peru. The city is coterminous with the Constitutional Province of Callao, the only province of the Callao Region. Callao is located west of Lima, the country's capital, and is part of the Lima Metropolitan Area, a large metropolis that holds almost...

, Peru

Peru

Peru , officially the Republic of Peru , is a country in western South America. It is bordered on the north by Ecuador and Colombia, on the east by Brazil, on the southeast by Bolivia, on the south by Chile, and on the west by the Pacific Ocean....

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For much of El Frontón's history, the island was used as a prison

Prison

A prison is a place in which people are physically confined and, usually, deprived of a range of personal freedoms. Imprisonment or incarceration is a legal penalty that may be imposed by the state for the commission of a crime...

. Fernando Belaúnde Terry

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...

, who was twice president of Peru, was imprisoned on the island as a political prisoner

Political prisoner

According to the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, a political prisoner is ‘someone who is in prison because they have opposed or criticized the government of their own country’....

. During his imprisonment, Belaúnde Terry made an unsuccessful attempt to swim to freedom. Hugo Blanco

Hugo Blanco

Hugo Blanco is a popular Venezuelan musician. He is best known as the author of "Moliendo Café" and other songs like "El Burrito de Belén" , "Leche Condensada", "Luces de Caracas", "Sierra Nevada", "Mañanita Zuliana", and others...

 was also imprisoned on the island.

During the insurgency

Insurgency

An insurgency is an armed rebellion against a constituted authority when those taking part in the rebellion are not recognized as belligerents...

 of the 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...

, the island was used as a prison for 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...

 militants. On June 18, 1986, the Shining Path led an uprising on El Frontón as well as two other prisons. The government of Alan García treated the prisons as war zones, and the Peruvian Navy

Peruvian Navy

The Peruvian Navy is the branch of the Peruvian Armed Forces tasked with surveillance, patrol and defense on lakes, rivers and the Pacific Ocean up to 200 nautical miles from the Peruvian littoral...

 was sent to the island. Many of the prisoners involved in the rebellion were killed

Peruvian prison massacres

The Peruvian prison massacres occurred on June 18–19, 1986, after a series of riots in the San Pedro, Santa Mónica, and El Frontón prisons in Lima and Callao...

, and Human Rights 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,...

 claimed that evidence suggested that "no fewer than ninety" of the prisoners killed were victims of extrajudicial executions

Extrajudicial punishment

Extrajudicial punishment is punishment by the state or some other official authority without the permission of a court or legal authority. The existence of extrajudicial punishment is considered proof that some governments will break their own legal code if deemed necessary.-Nature:Extrajudicial...

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The behavior of the Peruvian Government during the uprising in the prison led to censure 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...

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