The Tyrant's Cowardice
by Jorge Vargas
Imagine a man who rose to the presidency of a poor nation by claiming that he would bring aid from foreign powers, feigning interest in the plight of the masses, and promising a change. Try to think of a man capable of murdering university students and professors at random, claiming that they were members of an insurgency without a shred of evidence. Imagine a man who kicked the dead bodies of his opponents on live television. Now suppose that he stole millions upon millions of US Dollars from the State's coffers to enrich himself and his supporters while simultaneously launching himself into business deals which included large kick-backs - including the buying of old fighter planes that led to the unnecessary deaths of air force pilots during a border conflict that this tyrant allowed to occur. He also once locked his wife up below the gilded halls of his presidential palace and tortured her because she spoke out against the fact that his cronies were selling clothes that had been donated from overseas to help the poor. He also took away civil rights, lied about his country's economic growth rate in order to hide the fact that the people were growing desperately poor, wrote a constitution – after dissolving Congress – to give himself more power, and allowed his secret spying agency to illegally tap the phones of civilians.
This individual eventually had to flee the country and submit his resignation as President of the Republic of Peru via fax from Japan where he remained until November of 2005 because, he argued, he was a Japanese citizen and, as a Japanese citizen, he could not be extradited to Peru where he is wanted for a variety of different crimes, including violations against human rights.
In November of 2005, Alberto K. Fujimori - president of Peru from 1990-2000 - left Japan where he was protected by the Asian government and arrived in Chile. Once in Chile, he was arrested and, since then, he has been living on a form of parole by which he is not allowed to enter any foreign embassies - such as Japan's - or leave Santiago, Chile's capital. Fujimori miscalculated since he obviously believed that, due to Chile's strained relations with Peru, Chile would refuse to hand him over and would allow Fujimori to be influential in Peru during the then upcoming 2006 Presidential elections in Peru. Whatever his intentions, it is likely that he had never planned on being arrested upon landing.
The Chilean judicial system, which has been recognized by most world governments, international observers, and media agencies as a fair and egalitarian system, started to investigate the charges against Fujimori on the part of the Peruvian State in order to decide whether or not the former Peruvian tyrant could be extradited to the Andean nation. Of course, that decision was not a judicial one so much as a political one.
Peru and Chile, along with Bolivia, fought a vicious conflict that began in 1879 and ended in 1883 which led to the deaths of thousands upon thousands of soldiers and civilians, primarily for Peru, along with territorial losses for both Peru and Bolivia. Since that era, Peru and Chile have had tense relations and have come to blows and insults over anything and everything from territorial disagreements to the origins of pisco, a popular drink in Peru but which is exported by Chilean industries which had the foresight to buy the rights to the product. The only major governmental issue between Peru and Chile that remains is a maritime dispute dating back to the 1920s when the Chilean occupation which followed the aforementioned war finally ended. Since the Peruvian coast line is diagonal to Chile's vertical coast, their maritime territories overlap, throwing into question the legitimacy of claims on the part of both nations to that area, especially since neither side is particularly willing to share the sea rights.
That is not the only issue that is being played out in the Fujimori case, however.
President Michele Bachelet of Chile lost her father several years ago. He was murdered at the hands of former Chilean dictator's Augusto Pinochet and his right-wing authoritarian government. Thus, she is very sensitive to crimes against humanity committed by any government and has demonstrated herself to be very understanding of the feelings being expressed by the Peruvian people who suffered nearly a decade of dictatorship and oppression despite the fact that, before she became President of Chile, she showed a strong willingness to escalate actions against Peru in terms of the aforementioned maritime dispute while acting as Defense Minister for Chile.
Complicated yet?
Fujimori is hailed by many in Japan as a national hero due to the fact that he expanded the interests of the Japanese Empire in Peru. Due to this reverence, Fujimori's request that he be allowed to run for Congress in Japan was accepted and, with his popularity, it is likely that he will be elected to the Japanese legislature in the July 29, 2007 elections despite the fact that he is currently residing in Santiago, Chile. If he is elected to Congress, according to Chile's laws, he can still be extradited to Peru and, naturally, Peru would not have to turn him over because the crimes were committed before he became a congressperson. However, Japan is a rich, powerful, and highly developed nation with much more bargaining power than both Peru and Chile combined, meaning that if it chose to exert pressure on the Peruvian and Chilean governments after the election, it would be difficult for either to take a particularly courageous stance against the Japanese.
Furthermore, if he were to run to the Japanese embassy in Santiago and Chile were to ask for Japan to return him, it is possible that Japan would comply, but if he were to go into that embassy as a congressman, Japan would never hand him over to the Chilean authorities. Thus the fear and disappointment that many feel when realizing that if Fujimori appeals the decision made by the lower courts - a decision that should be made any day now – and decides to take it to the Supreme Court of Chile where the process would take another few months, the elections in Japan would be over and Fujimori might already be a member of that Asian nation's congress.
And then, of course, once the trials in Chile are over and assuming that he is found guilty and worthy of extradition to Peru, he would need to go through the Peruvian judicial system which, unfortunately, does not have the prestige that its Chilean counterpart does and which would most likely be decried as not being competent enough to prosecute a Japanese political figure.
The question that begs to be asked amongst this regurgitation of facts and strategies is the following: Why have the Japanese people so willingly decided to sponsor and support such a tyrant? Does Japan not respect human rights and the spirit of the international legal system, as do the other nations of the West? Or are the Japanese people going to willingly take in a man without any honor, dignity, or respect for others - including the Japanese, as was proven by the corruption scandals that Fujimori was involved in while hiding in Tokyo from 2000 to 2005?
Naturally, one must here look to the United States and to the European Union, both of which have remained conspicuously quiet during the entire legal ordeal regarding the Peruvian-Japanese tyrant, but the problem lies even closer to home - for Peru - and it boils down not to a question of legality or justice or any other such concept. This is a question of unity.
Chile and Peru have not had the most pleasant of histories and the rivalry between the two is fierce and it has been played out in naval battles, in guerrilla warfare, in scorched cities, in air power displays, in arms acquisitions, in soccer matches, in franchise wars, in property right disputes, in legal conflicts, through hackers, in TV shows, and so forth and so on. Some things remain, however. Both are nations rooted not in the Andean traditions – for Peru, despite its geography, is not a nation dominated by Andean culture – but in their common Hispanic heritage that hails, quite naturally, from Spain and which is realized by a common usage of the Spanish language, by similar musical styles, by similar worldviews, by Roman Catholicism, and a variety of other cultural similarities.
Furthermore, and most importantly, Chileans, like almost all other South Americans save the people of Uruguay, know perfectly well what living under a dictatorship is like. The Chilean people have felt the same pains and fought the same struggles as their northern Peruvian brothers and sisters.
So, yes, Japan is powerful, and certainly, Japan is being egocentric in its constant defense of Alberto Fujimori, and it can not be denied that the silence on the part of the other developed nations is troubling at best, but if Chile and Peru show solidarity, Fujimori will be forced to go through the legal process where he will clearly be found guilty of the charges laid against him due to the insurmountable evidence being presented before him.
In the unfortunate days when the democracies are willing to let tyrants go free, the nations which know the horrors of tyranny must bind together and demonstrate the spirit of democracy to the world, even when the odds seem to stack in favor of the devil.
*** Addendum: It should be noted that Chile's lower courts have, since the original writing of this article, decided to not extradite Fujimori but the matter will be appealed before Chile's Supre Court. For the most precise information on the issue, continue reading Crossings Magazine. ***
