(The following has been excerpted from a statement made by Hugo Blanco in Lima on June 15. The translation is by Intercontinental Press/ Inprecor.]
In recent weeks in Peru repression and violations of human rights have been stepped up by the Military Junta. The Constituent Assembly, dominated by a bourgeois majority, has not come out against this repressive drive.
The workers at the Cromotex factory were shot at. The miners have suffered many attacks, even including having their children kicked out of school by the Southern Peru Copper Company, the U.S. owner of the Cuajone mine. Teachers have been and still are under attack. Peasants in Alto Piura have been shot at for no other crime than being at work in the fields.
In face of all these attacks, the rightwing parties in the Constituent Assembly have placed themselves not on the side of the people, but on the side of the dictatorship. Furthermore, they have little by little allowed attacks to be carried out against members of the Constituent Assembly itself. Prime examples of this are the cases of Victor Cuadros and Hernán Cuentas, both leftist deputies and leaders of the miners, who have come under government indictment. Although the Assembly threw out the charges against them, it did not protest the attacks.
The same is true in my case. At the time of my arrest I was not "caught in the act of committing a crime," which is the only situation in which the police are authorized to detain a member, of the Constituent Assembly. Even the police do not claim that I was committing any crime at the time.
Now, however, they say that I have been committing crimes ever since last August, although they never once made a formal accusation to that effect in front of the Assembly.
The charges leveled against me relate precisely to my function as a member of the Agrarian Commission of the Constituent Assembly. They relate also to my functions as a member of the Human Rights Commission of the Assembly.
For example, when I went to Huancavelica—one of the crimes the police accuse me of-I went there at the invitation of the peasants. They had informed the Human Rights Commission that one peasant, an Indian, had been murdered by the police.
When I went to the Department of Ayacucho, to the district of Cangallo, it was because people there had accused the police of killing two students. And we confirmed that they had indeed been murdered.
When I have gone to Cañete, it has been in response to complaints by peasants. I was sent there by the commission to look was sent there by the commission to look into cases of attacks against the peasants of the area.
When I went to Alto Piura, that was also in response to an outerv that arose over in response to an outery that arose over the massacre that peasants had suffered at the hands of the police and other government forces.
So these have been my activities as a member of the Human Rights Commission, and of the Agrarian Commission of the Constituent Assembly, which are now being called crimes, committed by me between August of last year and May of this year.
In other words, it is a crime for me to fulfill my duties!
The military junta is waiting for the Constituent Assembly to adjourn on July 15 in order to go after all of us leftist deputies. Various police officials and their subordinates have already said as much on several occasions when leftist members of the Assembly have gone to inquire about the cases of political or trade-union prisoners. It seems the police can hardly restrain themselves.
Since there is no hope that the bourgeois majority of the Constituent Assembly will bring respect for the human rights of the Peruvian people, and since the Assembly is now about to adjourn and there will be escalating attacks against us and against the rest of the Peruvian people, we are calling on the people of Latin America, the United States, Canada, and Europe-on defenders of human rights throughout the world and on working people everywhere-
In This Issue
FEATURES
630 New
NICARAGUA
620 IRAN 621
CZECHOSLOVAKIA
POLAND
SOUTHEAST ASIA
SOUTH AFRICA
HONG KONG
635 ITALY 636 639
NEWS ANALYSIS
DRAWINGS
628 Pope
Intercontinental Press (ISSN) 0162-5594
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to raise your voices in protest against the attacks being committed in Peru. The voices of working people and of defenders of human rights around the world must block the wave of repression that is being prepared by the military dictatorship for after July 15.
Closing News Date: June 18, 1979
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Copyright ® 1979 by Intercontinental Press.
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