Ruling on Shining Path Rebels Angers Peru **UNIWORLD ALERT**

REUTERS ^ | 11 Jan 2007 | Staff

[Kitten Festival]

LIMA, Peru, Jan. 10 — A ruling by an international human rights court telling Peru’s government to honor 41 leftist rebels killed in a 1992 prison raid has provoked public indignation, and the government is considering withdrawing from the court.

The ruling has reopened scars of a rebellion that raged from 1980 to 1998. Javier Velásquez, leader of the governing APRA party in Congress, said after meeting with President Alan García on Monday that the authorities were mulling Peru’s withdrawal from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which issued the ruling.

The court serves to uphold and promote human rights in the Americas under the 1969 American Convention on Human Rights.

The court demanded in December that the government apologize for the bloody 1992 raid on the Miguel Castro prison, pay compensation to the families of 41 rebels from the Maoist Shining Path group killed there and put their names on a monument to thousands of victims of hostilities in Peru.

The verdict set off a wave of anger in Peru over what many see as honoring terrorists and killers.

[Kitten Festival]

Textbook example of the United Nations and other multilaterals, like this idiot court, run amok. They are ordering Peru to HONOR terrorist dirtbags killed in a prison riot they full well deserved. I'm gonna barf.

[Jaysun]

Groups and organizations like this attract leftist. They're unattractive to Conservatives by their very nature. So there will never be a "good UN" or any other kind of international body. They're always a nuisance and we should remember that in the future. No matter how noble or sensible their purpose seems at first, they always go left and become a problem.

[Enterprise]

Here's Peru's Answer - LOL:

"Peru president proposes referendum to introduce death penalty for terrorists"

Link

[speedy]

Even by radical leftist standards, the Shining Path was an exceptionally violent and deranged group of killers. They should give a medal to the guy who ordered them shot.

[Billthedrill]

The verdict set off a wave of anger in Peru over what many see as honoring terrorists and killers.

You can see a hint of this distorted concern for the rights of terrorists in this mealy-mouthed phrasing from the NY Times. "Many see" them as terrorists and killers because Shining Path was composed of precisely that, and it takes a boneheaded suspension of morality typical of the internationalist set to see them any other way. These were among the bloodiest-handed terrorists in the world.

The Times also has condemned conservatives for blocking the U.S. subordination to the ICC. This is a perfect example of the sort of thing we could expect from that august body. We'd be fools ever to opt in.

[fieldmarshaldj]

I didn't realize Shining Path terrorists are members of the international judiciary. Good to know. Peru can tell them to go f*ck themselves sideways.

[Mount Athos]

Thanks for posting this one.

This is an extreme ruling that shocks the conscience.
Maybe it is stomach turning enough to make Peru withdraw from the court,hope so.

[fat city]

Shining Path, established in the late 1960s by the former university professor Abimael Guzman, is a militant Maoist group that seeks to install a peasant revolutionary authority in Peru. The group took up arms in 1980, and its ranks once numbered in the thousands. Experts consider it one of the world’s most ruthless insurgencies; Shining Path often hacked its victims to death with machetes. The group, which now has only several hundred members remaining, operates mainly in jungle areas.

[Reaganesque]

Peru to the UN:

"Muerdeme!" (Bite me)

[pepsionice]

To briefly tell this tale of woe...in a simplistic fashion...let us review the situation. Up through the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s and 1960s...the government of Peru wasn't exactly playing fair and honest. It was extremely corrupt and run by 20-odd families/clans. The vast majority of Peruvians did not care for the continued political games and wanted change. Various efforts were made...always at the national university...where these idiot students got it into their mind that they could make a difference and change politics in Peru. Over and over...their efforts were easily discovered and they were "taught" the proper way to respect Peruvian leaders.

So the day finally comes...Abimael Guzman, college professor...goes off to China and discovers the Mao campaign. For those who never understood how Mao took command of China...it was his "walk" around the country and the influence with the rural people that made the difference. Guzman sees similar potential...comes back to Peru...gets into his car, and drives out of the capital city...to the country.

Guzman goes into the highlands...talking Mao principals. He is very intelligent and does a great con job with the poor villagers in the high country. They begin to show little respect to the local police or politicians...thus circumventing their authority. When a theft is encountered...the locals dispatch their own form of justice. The local cops tried to make the national government aware of this growing threat...and it merely taken as a joke. Why worry about a bunch of villagers in the high country of Peru? They can't do nothing to seize the country.

So Guzman continues...building Shining Path from scratch. They eventually move into the valleys and start interesting rural farmers. Same tactics....show that the cops are corrupt and that politicans can't help you. Build on socialized communities. By 1980 when the military finally started allowing for open and true elections...Shining Path declined and went into open warfare.

Throughout the 1980s...they targeted anyone and everyone. They went after politicians who were corrupt, business owners who weren't supportive, and even the police. The military fell into the open trap that Shining Path expected...they started arresting and killing innocent people that had nothing to do with Shining Path...thus pushing more of the rural population into the open arms of the Shining Path. Neither the government or Shining Path were positive for the country.

By 1991...Shining Path had a major lock on controlling 40 percent of the country. Lima was the only place where the government owned absolute control. Electrical outages in the valleys around Lima were a constant reminder as to the range and power of the Shining Path. Somewhere along the way though...in the 1990s...the rural population realized that Maoist rules didn't fit into a Catholic country. Local popular leaders who weren't corrupt....were being killed off by Shining Path to ensure only their leadership was in control. This was the decline of the Shining Path.

In 1992, Guzman was finally captured...probably with massive information provided by rural communities to end the whole affair. The key element keeping Shining Path going...was Guzman. There was no adequate leadership after that point to assume national command.

Here in 2007....Proseguir is the left-over remains of Shining Path and attempting the rebuilding of their fight. The Peruvian military will only admit that 300 members exist within that group. They perform mostly hit-and-run tactics and kidnappings. The support that they'd like to find amongst the rural community is long-gone. The interesting characteristic...is that when you find the top echelon of leadership of Prosequir or Shining Path...they tend to be all university-graduates and former teachers/professors. Few of these characters are actual real rural homegrown leaders. So for this reason...this whole banana guerrilla story...is just that...and never goes to page one news.

[speedy]

Thanks for the informative overview, pepsionice. I remember the ending with Guzman -- dressed in a cartoonish striped prison outfit and placed in a cage in a public square. Such treatment would have been therapeutic for many leftist revolutionairies, who thrive on their "mystique" and ability to show contempt for legitimate sources of authority.

[livius]

they tend to be all university-graduates and former teachers/professors. Few of these characters are actual real rural homegrown leaders.

The same is true of all these movements. FARC and ELN, for example, were formed and led by university types, including a number of leftist former priests, and the only rural types were the peasants they "conscripted" or the peasant children they kidnapped at an early age and brought up as fighters in the jungle. The same is true of Comandante Marcos, who is the son of a prosperous furniture store owner and was a graduate student or perhaps even professor when he began his stupidity.

And they abuse the poor. I once had to translate a testimony from woman who ran a tiny stall in a market, selling cheap hairdryers and items under the system where the stock is essentially consigned because the merchant doesn't have the capital to pay for it. FARC extorts money (the "revolutionary tax") from these people, and she said as soon as she heard the accents and speech of the two men who came to her stall, she was afraid because they were "university types." She ended up fleeing town at night because she couldn't come up with the money. Pretty sad, when the educated children of the comfortable classes spend their time preying on the poor. But heck, it's all in the name of the revolution, so I guess it's okay.