Online Encyclopedia
Alberto Fujimori
Alberto Kenyo Fujimori Fujimori (born July 28, 1938) was president of Peru from July 28, 1990, to November 17, 2000, when he fled to Japan as allegations of far-reaching corruption in his administration began to emerge. From Japan, he submitted his resignation by fax, but the Peruvian Congress rejected his resignation and removed him from office.
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Early years
Fujimori was born in Lima to Japanese parents, natives of Kumamoto who moved to Peru in 1934. His parents applied to the Japanese consulate to keep the baby's Japanese citizenship.
He was trained as an agricultural engineer. Before being elected president, he was rector of La Molina National University and then later president of the National Commission of Peruvian University Rectors (Asamblea Nacional de Rectores), a position that he held twice.
A dark horse candidate, Fujimori won the 1990 presidential election with his new party Cambio 90, beating the world-renowned writer Mario Vargas Llosa in a surprising upset. He capitalized on profound disenchantment with the previous president of Peru, Alan García and his APRA party. He also exploited distrust of Vargas Llosa's identification with the existing Peruvian political establishment and distrust of his carefully-reasoned campaign promises for neoliberal economic reform. Since the campaign, he was affectionately nicknamed el chino ("the Chinky"). Most observers believe his Japanese descent benefited Fujimori as much of the population is of Native American-descent, and his ethnicity helped set him apart from the Spanish-dominated political elites.
First term
During his first term in office, Fujimori's economic strategy, which Peruvians dubbed Fujishock, bore no resemblance to the vague, populist program set out during the campaign under the slogan "Work, technology, honesty". Under close tutelage of the IMF, Fujimori embarked upon tough and wide-ranging economic reforms — far more drastic than anything Vargas Llosa had proposed — resulting in Peru's much-needed reinsertion in the global economy, from which it had become estranged during the García administration. Spurred on by the IMF, Fujimori went on a privatization binge, selling off hundreds of state-owned enterprises, many in hasty and badly-organized privatizations. Of the estimated USD $9 billion raised in the process, only a small part ever benefited the Peruvian people; much of the money raised disappeared in Fujimori's patronage machine. Although Fujishock brought macroeconomic stability and a brief upturn in the mid 1990s (economic growth exceeded 12% in 1994), it did so at tremendous social cost; it generated massive poverty and pushed Peru's economy into a deep recession from which it has yet to recover.
Self-coup
On April 5, 1992, Fujimori mounted a self-coup (in Spanish: autogolpe; sometimes called, in his honour fujigolpe), a coup d'etat against his own government. His goals were thought to have been:
- the dissolution of parliament and setting up a subservient Congress (Congreso Constituyente Democrático) for the purpose of amending the constitution and ensuring his re-election.
- the co-option of the judiciary and the curtailment of the constitutional rights by state-of-emergencies and curfews.
- the total annihilation of the rebels, using 'severe emergency laws' (which reportedly included putting rebel supporters and their relatives in front of death squads).
There was little initial domestic resistance to the self-coup. An opinion poll carried out shortly thereafter indicated that Fujimori's decision to dissolve Congress and restructure the judicial system had a 73% approval rating. The economic and political situation was so poor at the time that for many Peruvians things could only get better. At the time, Fujimori's bold and risky economic reforms (the "Fujishock") appeared to be working.
The international reaction to the self-coup was predictably negative. International financial organizations delayed planned or projected loans, and the United States government suspended all aid to Peru other than humanitarian assistance, as did Germany and Spain. 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. The coup appeared to threaten the economic recovery strategy of reinsertion and complicated the process of clearing arrears with the IMF.
Even before the coup, relations with the United States had been strained because of Fujimori's reluctance to sign an accord that would increase United States and Peruvian military efforts in eradicating coca fields. Although Fujimori eventually signed the accord in May 1991, in order to get desperately needed aid, the disagreements did little to enhance bilateral relations. The Peruvians saw drugs as primarily a United States problem, and the least of their concerns, given the economic crisis, Shining Path guerrillas, and an outbreak of cholera, which further isolated Peru, due to the resulting ban on food imports.
However, two weeks after the self-coup, the Bush administration backed off and officially recognized Fujimori as the legitimate leader of Peru. The OAS and United States agreed that Fujimori's self-coup may have been extreme, but they did not want to see Peru return to the deteriorating state that it had been in before. In fact, the self-coup came not long after the US government and media had launched a media offensive against the Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso, or SL) rural guerrilla movement. On March 12, 1992, Undersecretary of State for Latin American Affairs Bernard Aronson told the US Congress: "The international community and respected human rights organizations must focus the spotlight of world attention on the threat which Sendero poses." "Latin America has seen violence and terror, but none like Sendero's... and make no mistake, if Sendero were to take power, we would see this century's third genocide" [after Nazi Germany and Cambodia]. Given Washington's concerns, long-term repercussions for the self-coup turned out to be modest.
Fujimori himself claimed the self-coup was necessary to break with the deeply entrenched interests which were hindering him from rescuing Peru from the chaotic state in which García had left it. But critics say he never could have implemented the drastic ultraliberal economic reforms in a democratic government.
Later in the year, on November 13, there was a failed military coup led by General Salinas. Fujimori sought temporary refuge in the Japanese Embassy.
In 1994, Fujimori separated from wife Susana Higuchi (also of Japanese descent) in a noisy, "public" divorce, and he formally stripped her of the title First Lady in August 1994. He thereupon appointed their elder daughter First Lady. Higuchi publicly denounced Fujimori as a tyrant and his administration as corrupt.
Second term
In April 1995, at the height of his popularity, Fujimori was re-elected in a landslide victory over Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, the former Secretary General of the United Nations. His independent party won control of the legislature.
During his second term, Fujimori signed a peace agreement with Ecuador, with which Peru had territorial differences in the Amazon basin for more than a century, thereby allowing the two countries to obtain international funds for developing the border region. Fujimori also settled unresolved issues with Peru's southern neighbor Chile regarding El Tratado de Ancon (the Ancon Treaty ).
However, his re-election was the turning point in Fujimori's career. After several years of economic stability and less terrorism, Peruvians now began to turn to other concerns, such as human rights, freedom of the press, and the return to genuine democracy; they also started paying closer attention to the growing web of scandals surrounding Fujimori and his chief of the National Intelligence Service, Vladimiro Montesinos, which finally led to his downfall in 2000.
2000 election
Despite a constitutional prohibition of a third term of office, Fujimori insisted in declaring his candidacy for the 2000 elections.
He was declared winner of the May 28 election, amidst a flurry of accusations of irregularities. The main opposition leader, Alejandro Toledo, campaigned vigorously to have the election annulled, but the corruption scandal then emerging around Vladimiro Montesinos, who was the director of Peru's National Intelligence Service (SIN), did his work for him. The already developing scandal exploded into full force when sources released to the media a videotape of Montesinos bribing an opposition legislator to switch sides. The allegations severely compromised Fujimori, causing him to flee to Japan in November 2000. That same month, on November 17, the Peruvian Congress voted to remove him from office after condemning him as morally unfit to hold the presidency.
Valentín Paniagua was sworn in as interim president shortly thereafter. In an election rerun on May 28, 2001, Toledo was elected president in elections widely acknowledged to be clean and fair. He was sworn in on July 28. However, an insider in Alejandro Toledo's campaign leadership, Alvaro Vargas Llosa , gave an explosive hour-and-a-half interview in April of 2001 on the Peruvian talk show, "The Sniper," in which he revealed (among other things) that he had arranged a meeting between Toledo, George Soros, and others, in Warsaw, Poland, at which Soros had agreed to give a million dollars to Toledo, to finance Toledo's July 2000 "March of the Four Corners." The funding from Soros has special significance in Peru, because of Soros' high-profile support for various campaigns to legalize recreational drugs; terrorist groups such as Sendero Luminoso were closely intertwined with Peru's coca cultivators.
Anti-terrorism
Fujimori is credited by many Peruvians for ending the fifteen-year reign of terror of Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) and the arrest of its leader, Abimael Guzmán. As part of his anti-terrorism efforts, Fujimori granted the military broad powers to arrest suspected terrorists and try them in secret military courts with few legal rights. At the same time he armed rural Peruvians to form the so called rondas campesinas ("peasant patrols") which were attributed part of the success of the fight against terrorism.
Critics charge that many thousands of Peruvians (many of whose guilt is disputed) got caught up in this net, as did the American activist Lori Berenson.
Guerilla activity declined onwards from 1992, and Fujimori claimed that his campaign had largely eliminated the terrorist threat. While few people dispute the results, critics point out that to achieve its ends the Peruvian military indulged in widespread human rights abuses, and the vast majority of the victims were poor highland campesinos caught in the crossfire between military and the guerrillas. 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 committed by the guerrillas, the Peruvian armed forces were also guilty of having destroyed villages and murdered campesinos they suspected of supporting the rebels.
In one case, 14 members of the armed forces were tried by a military tribunal and sentenced to prison terms ranging from three months to one year for their part in the May 14, 1988, massacre of 47 men, women and children in Cayara, Ayacucho department. The massacre was in retribution for an ambush the previous day in which a column of Senderistas killed an army captain and three soldiers. The 14 did not spend a day in jail, and returned to active service.
On December 17, 1996, in one of the last major episodes of terrorism, Movimiento Revolucionario Túpac Amaru (MRTA) rebels seized the Residence of the Japanese ambassador in Lima during a party, taking hostage some 800 diplomats, government officials, and other dignitaries. During the protracted four-month standoff, the Emerretistas gradually freed all but 72 of their hostages. The government rejected the terrorists demand to release imprisoned MRTA members and prepared an elaborate plan to storm the Embassy, while gaining time by negotiating with the terrorists.
On April 22, 1997, a team of Peruvian military commandos stormed the building to free the hostages. Two commandos and all 14 of the rebels died in the raid. One hostage, Supreme Court Judge Carlos Ernesto Giusti , died during the operation.
It emerged in 2002, on the basis of forensic investigation and testimony of witnesses, that only one of the 14 rebels actually died in the assault; the others surrendered peacefully but were summarily executed by the commandos by order of Montesinos.
Before leaving office, Fujimori declared an amnesty for any members of the Peruvian military or police convicted or accused of human rights abuses between 1980 and 1995. His action was condemned by human rights activists and by many other nations.
In exile
As of 2004 Fujimori is in self-imposed exile in Japan, where his citizenship as Foreign-born Japanese was confirmed because his parents registered him with Japanese consular authorities in Peru as an infant and he did not give it up under the 1985 citizenship law revision. Therefore his nationality was not an issue of his stay in Japan.
On September 5, 2001, Peru's attorney general filed homicide charges against ex-President Fujimori.
At the beginning of March 2003, at the behest of the Peruvian government, Interpol issued an international arrest order for Fujimori on charges that include murder, kidnapping and crimes against humanity. "The order will be issued worldwide for human rights crimes for which he can be pursued and which do not expire," said Peruvian Justice Minister Fausto Alvarado. In addition, the Toledo administration lodged an extradition request with the Japanese government in September 2003, but it is not clear how the petition can prosper, as Peru and Japan do not have an extradition treaty.
The former president is accused of murder in connection with the 1991 Barrios Altos massacre in which fifteen people at a barbecue in a poor neighborhood of Lima were killed by an army death squad known as the Grupo Colina and thought to have been set up on Montesinos' initiative. The victims included an 8-year-old boy. Fujimori is also accused of murder in the 1992 La Canuta massacre, in which nine students and a professor, suspected members of Shining Path, were abducted from their university and murdered by the same army death squad.
Peru's Attorney General Nelly Calderon plans to travel to Tokyo to argue Peru's request for Fujimori's extradition before Japan's judicial authorities. She plans to detail Fujimori's crimes to Japanese authorities and point out irregularities in the former president's double Peruvian-Japanese nationality.
In September 2003, congresswoman Dora Núñez Dávila (FIM) denounced Fujimori and several of his ministers for crimes against humanity because of forced sterilizations committed during his regime. According to Núñez, the Fujimori administration initiated a family planning program with extensive forced sterilizations in which health workers were given monthly quotas of sterilizations to perform.
On November 14, the Peruvian Congress approved more charges against Fujimori. It voted 63-0 with two abstentions to approve charges that he took part in the air-drop of nearly 10,000 Kalashnikov rifles into the Colombian jungle in 1999 and 2000 for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Fujimori maintains he had no knowledge of the arms smuggling and blames Montesinos. By approving the charges, Congress has lifted the immunity granted to Fujimori as a former president. It is now up to the attorney general's office to file charges and for courts to decide on a trial.
Congress also voted 65-0 with one abstention, to charge Fujimori for responsibility in the detention and disappearance of 67 students from Peru's central Andean city of Huancayo and the disappearance of several residents from the northern coastal town Chimbote during the 1990s. They also approved charges that Fujimori mismanaged millions of dollars from Japanese charities to build schools, with an unexplained USD $2.3 million shortfall in funds received, among other irregularities.
Undaunted by the denunciations and the judicial proceedings underway against him, which he dismissed as "politically motivated", Fujimori, from Japan, has established a new political party in Peru, Sí Cumple, to participate in the 2006 presidential elections. However, in September 2003, the president of the of the National Election Commission (JNE), Manuel Sánchez Palacios Paiva, dismissed the possibility of Fujimori participating in those elections, noting that the fugitive ex-president was barred by the Peruvian Congress from holding office for ten years because he had abandoned his office and submitted his resignation by fax from Japan. Critics of Fujimori believe that his new political party is more than anything a strategy of presenting himself as a "persecuted politician" so as to evade justice.
Fujimori remains a controversial figure in Peru. On the one hand, he is credited for bringing stability to the country after the tumultuous García years, and he still has a group of supporters. As of 2004 he is the most popular of potential presidential candidates, with an approval rating of seventeen percent in the polls. However, the population still views his rule as extremely corrupt. During his decade in power Fujimori established a vast network of corruption and patronage, unparalleled in the country's history, with the assistance of his associate, Montesinos, currently imprisoned at the Callao naval base. Montesinos is currently facing dozens of charges that range from embezzlement to drug trafficking to murder, and is undergoing a lengthy trial in Lima that is looking into the breadth and depth of corruption of the Fujimori regime.
Legacy
Although he undoubtedly made mistakes, Fujimori changed the underlying economic structure of the country for the better. He undid a great part of the damage to the country that was started by Juan Velazco Alvarado and "finished" by Alan Garcia.
References
- "Alberto Fujimori of Peru: The president who dared to dream", by Rei Kimura, 2003; ISBN 0846449579
See also
External links
- Interpol's wanted poster after Fujimori
- Fujimori's website (in English, Spanish, and Japanese)
- Fujimori Extraditable, website of the Peruvian National Coordinator of Human Rights (CNDDHH) and its campaign to extradite Fujimori (in English, Spanish, and Japanese)
- Amnistía Internacional Perú Information on human rights abuses during the Fujimori era (in Spanish)