BELGIAN PARLIAMENT INTERVENE IN BEHALF OF HUGO BLANCO
Brussels
Forty-three members of the House of Representatives, belonging to all the different political parties, responded to the initiative taken by Pierre Legréve, deputy of the Union de la Gauche Socialiste, and sent the following’ message to President Belatinde Terry:
"The undersigned members of the House of Representatives in. Belgium are disturbed by the threat of death weighing on Hugo Blanco.
"This peasant union leader of the Valley of the Convention in the province of Cuzco, was arrested on May 30, 1963, because of his struggle for an agrarian reform. He was held in prison, where he carried out a number of hunger strikes, for more than three years until his trial opened August 30 before a military tribunal, He was sentenced, in accordance with the demand of the prosecuting attorney of the republic, to 25 years in prison, but against the demand of the military consulting judge who sought the death penalty. Hugo Blanco having appealed the sentence to the Supreme Council in Lima, the prosecution is demanding the death penalty.
"In view of the unquestionable idealism that inspired the action of the prisoner and the long detention that was imposed on him before he was granted.a trial, the undersigned members of the House of Representatives of Belgium believe themselves authorized to beg his Honor the President of the Republic to use the powers that are his in order to prevent carrying out the sentence if it involves the death penalty.'
PETITION FOR HUGO BLANCO