Below is a March 4 statement released by Hugo Blanco, a veteran revolutionary and campesino (peasant) leader. He is currently the director of the magazine Lucha Indigena. This statement was translated by Philip Stuart Cournoyer, and is reprinted from international socialist e-journal Links, .
Not long ago repression in Peru was more a matter of laws than actions.
Now, however, legislation pushed by APRA (the governing party of President Alan Garcia), supported by the ultra rightist Unidad Nacional party as well as the party of former president Fujimori (who is now being tried for massive crimes) — with no consequent parliamentary opposition — is being used to launch a full assault against the people.
The law ordered the army to undertake policing functions. It characterises protest actions as delinquencies. And it authorised the police to kill with impunity.
The legislation was passed to frighten people who, naturally, were going to protest government conduct in the service of the huge multinationals, a role that runs totally against the interests of the Peruvian population and the environment.
Campesino resistance
However, the reaction of the people was to overcome fear and hurl themselves into struggle. A national campesino strike was the strongest of the most recent mobilisations.
Campesinos are being crushed by increases in living costs aggravated by the miserable prices they receive for their products — as well as lack of credit, higher fertiliser prices, etc.
What the government has brought in practice (as a result of the signing of the Free Trade Agreement with the US, which subsidises its agriculture) is an agrarian policy that makes Peru an importer of agrarian produce at the expense of Peruvian producers.
The campesino strike was answered with violent repression. The police fired at the heads of the demonstrators. Victims' bodies revealed two or three bullet holes in the nape that indicate that the shots came from behind.
But interior minister Luis Alva — who is politically responsible for the killings — says, with no proof at all, that the demonstrators died from shotgun fire, and that in other cases demonstrators seized arms from the police to kill each other.
We know that despite their lies, they won't be censured. The majority of the parliamentary chamber members, no matter what party they're from, are agreed that everything must be done to defend the big multinational firms against grassroots protests. The main thing for them is the political and legal defence of the multinational mining companies against the Peruvian population.
The government also has a project to take away the lands of campesino communities. It is called "the law of the jungle". It aims to privatise the Amazon region without respecting in any way the populations living there.
The government wants to privatise water, the ports, put down the teachers, and renege on signed promises to increase public service wages. It is beginning to privatise our archeological patrimony.
Faced with complaints against the rising cost of living, the government claims that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is to blame for hunger in Peru.
Criminalising protests
The nation's chief prosecutor has reported that he has charged and called for the detention of 207 people because of the campesino strike. And that 33 of them have thus far been sentenced in Huaura.
Charges have been filed against many other social fighters. They include the coordinator of the Cusco Regional Assembly and the leader of the Cusco Civil Construction Union, charged for their involvement in blockades and mobilisations of the people of Cusco in defence of their cultural patrimony.
Ex-presidential candidate Ollanta Humala has been accused of responsibility for these mobilisations, but he has had nothing to do with them.
There are many other people charged in relation to different struggles at the national level.
We are now confronted with the surprise that in Tumbes, on the border with Ecuador, seven presumed terrorists have been arrested for "preparing terrorist actions" against the European, Latin American and Caribbean Summit scheduled to take place in Peru in May and the APEC forum scheduled for November. Those arrested are also charged with having relations with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the Tupac Amaru Revolution Movement in Peru.
Who are these terrible "terrorists"?
They are people who were returning to Peru after attending a public meeting in Quito that ended in a march in the streets of the Ecuadoran capital — the Second Congress of the Bolivarian Continental Coordinadora (Coordinating Network), which took place on February 24-28.
Representatives came from various countries, including Peru, Chile, Uruguay, Brazil, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Mexico, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic. There were also European delegations from Germany, Italy, and the Basque Country.
It is clear that this results from an order from Bush that is being loyally followed. One of the decisions of the meeting was to call for recognition of the FARC as a belligerent force to facilitate talks towards peace in Colombia. But that does not necessarily mean identification or contact with the FARC.
To our knowledge, no other participant in that meeting has been arrested in any other country, and accused of being "dangerous terrorists".
We call on national and international public opinion to be on the alert about this intensified repression in Peru, and to demonstrate opposition to it in every way possible, and for solidarity with the just demands of our people, victims of the regime's submission to multinational enterprises.