A Chara, - It is with sadness, mixed with some anger, that I read your account of the recapture of the Japanese embassy in Lima, Peru. Anyone who has lived in Peru and met some of the more downtrodden of its peoples could have predicted that the Tupac Amaru rebels were not going to emerge alive. President Fujimori is at the head of a government which has brutalised many of its people for 500 years.
Your statement (from Reuters, it must be said) said that: "Violent conflicts unleashed by it (Tupac Amaru) and the larger Shining Path movement have cost 30,000 lives . . . since 1980". This is a very common view in the media, but highly deceptive, to say the least. The vast majority of these deaths were inflicted by the Peruvian Army as they massacred whole villages in retaliation for, typically, a single assassination. Thus, it is a bit too tidy to lump all these lives together and blame it on a movement.
One of my most brilliant students in Arequipa was captured in 1988 and, to the best of my knowledge, is still in jail. His crime was that he was caught running away from a Tupac Amaru demonstration. There is no doubt among my friends that he has been tortured, as that is the standard practice with political prisoners. To me it does not seem unreasonable that the rebels holding the embassy would ask for release of prisoners, or at least better conditions for them. Yours etc.,
Oughterard
Co. Galway