Former Peruvian dictator Alberto Fujimori will soon be re-arrested as the Peruvian high court on October 3 annulled the pardon granted to him by former president Pedro Pablo Kuczynski last year. Fujimori was facing trial for human rights violations committed during his regime (1990-2000). Many believe that Kuczynski pardoned the ex-president in return for support from his daughter Keiko Fujimori’s party, Popular Force, for a no-confidence motion which he won with a slender margin. Kuczynski was forced to resign on March 21, 2018, following allegations of corruption.
After hearing the verdict, Fujimori said from his hospital bed on Thursday that a return to jail would be a “death sentence.”
Alberto Fujimori led a right-wing government that was notorious for widespread human rights violations on the pretext of fighting left-wing militancy. In 2000, as the Peruvian parliament geared up to impeach Fujimori over charges of corruption, he fled to Japan. He was arrested in Chile in 2005 during a private visit and extradited to Peru in 2007. Later, the Peruvian courts found him guilty on various charges, especially financing the human rights violations perpetrated by right-wing death squads like Grupo Colina, and financial irregularities. He was sentenced to serve an aggregate of 25 years in prison.
Many social movements and organizations of victims across Peru fervently denounced the pardon in December. The Peruvian chapter of Social Movements of ALBA declared: “We call the peoples of the world to repudiate this illegal pardon to a genocide, a pardon that insults the consciousness of humanity; to denounce the criminal repression of Kuczynski and to defend the life of the Peruvian people that is in the streets fighting in the name of dignity, justice and democracy.”
Alberto Fujimori’s government deployed right-wing death squads called rondas that were trained and supported by the CIA, along with Peruvian security forces, to eliminate left-wing insurgent groups, leading to the large-scale human rights violations and casualties.
