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4,000 peasants disappear in Peru in 16 years

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November 18, 2000 

LIMA, Peru (AP) — More than 4,000 Peruvians, most of them peasants taken away by soldiers on suspicion of being leftist guerrillas, disappeared between 1980 and 1996 and were never heard from again, according to an official government report released Friday.

Peru's first official report on the ``disappeared'' came after a three-year study by the human rights ombudsman's office.

The report, signed by Ombudsman Jorge Santistevan, calls for a repeal of the blanket amnesty granted in June 1995 to all military and civilian personnel engaged in the fight against Peru's leftist insurgencies.

A spokesman for Peru's Defense Ministry declined to comment on the report.

The report said that 72 percent of the documented disappearances occurred in the 1980s during the governments of former presidents Fernando Belaunde and Alan Garcia. The remaining cases occurred during the first six years of President Alberto Fujimori's decade-long rule, the report said.

Fujimori announced in September he would step down next July following special elections after a corruption scandal erupted around his now-fugitive former spy chief, Vladimiro Montesinos.

The report said 4,022 people disappeared. The ombudsman's office said human rights groups have provided names of an additional 2,342 missing people but their cases are yet to be verified.

The report backs up charges from Peruvian and international human rights groups that Peruvian security forces made a regular practice of kidnapping, torturing and murdering peasants suspected of involvement with the deadly Maoist Shining Path guerrilla movement.

Peru's war with the Shining Path and the smaller Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement left more than 30,000 people dead, including rebels, members of the security forces and unarmed combatants slain by both sides. The violence dropped off sharply in the early 1990s following the capture of key rebel leaders.

``Disappearances'' at the hands of the guerrillas was relatively rare, with only 50 cases attributed to the rebels, the report said.

Most of those who disappeared were young men between the ages of 15 and 34, largely Quechua-speaking Indians from the impoverished highland states of Ayacucho, Huancavelica, Junin and Apurimac, where 75 percent of the cases were reported. Women accounted for 12 percent of the victims. Forty children under the age of four also were listed, as well as 98 cases involving children between the ages of five and 14.