QUINTANA
{The following is a statement from the Peruvian Movement of the Revolutionary Left on the arrest and subsequent disappearance of Peruvian revolutionary leader Enrique Amaya Quintana, which appeared in the Uruguayan weekly, Marcha.
[It is followed by a statement from the Peruvian Defense Committee of Human Rights dated June 12 denouncing this incident.]
* * *£
On April 25, Enrique Amaya Quintana, a national leader of the Movimiento de la Izquierda Revolucionario [MIR -- Movement of the Revolutionary Left] was arrested in the Province of Paucartambo, Department of Cuzco, along with several peasants.
Thereafter, he was separated from the other prisonefs and disappeared.
In view of these alarming facts, we appeal to the revolutionary and peoples organizations and representative organizations which defend civil liberties to demand that the authorities extend Enrique Amaya all the guarantees accorded all citizens equally by the constitution and the laws.
Enrique Amaya, the son of a rural working-class family from Trujillo, and a law student in the universities of Trujillo and Cuzco, distinguished himself by his defense of the peoples' rights.
He was a founder of APRA Rebelde {Rebel APRA, a grouping which split from APRA, the pro-American party of Haya de la Torre], and continued his political activities in MIR.
He gave guidance to the peasants’ struggles and is a revolutionary leader with extraordinary qualities of integrity, decisiveness, and unqualified devotion to the cause of national liberation.
He fought in the southern errilla struggle in the "Pachacutec" group at the side of Iuis de la Puente.
We demand that Enrique Amaya _be produced! Defend the lives of the politi-
cal prisoners!
Lina
June 12, 1967
Open Letter
To the Ministry of Government
Last April 25, the lawyer and ex-
university director Enrique Amaya Quin-
tana was seized in Paucartambo, a depart-
ment of Cuzco. Since then, he has myste-
riously disappeared. There are indications
that he has been assassinated as were
other revolutionary youths in previous
cases.
Not even his own relatives were
able to obtain any official information
on Amaya's situation, due to the intense
police investigations and similar steps
that continue to go on in Cuzco, as in
Lima and Trujillo.
Because of this fact which shows,
once again, the ferocity with which the
repression against the people is applied,
gross violations of the constitutional
and legal norms on the part of those who
claim to be the public defenders, the
stingy politicians of unanimous
form and most energetically, we denounce
before national and international public
opinion the repressive measures of the
Servicio de Intelegencia Militar [(Mili-
tary Intelligence Service] and of the
Divisién de Seguridad (Security Divi-
sion] of the PIP [Peruvian Intelligence
Service] -- organizations implicated
directly in this case -- and we demand
that the Minister of the government
give a public reply to this open letter.
We want to make clear that the
public denunciations made by the National
Defense Committee of Human Rights, the
Asociacién de Centrol de la Universidad
Nacional Ingenieria [Association of the
Centers of the National University of
Engineering], Ila Federaci6n Universi-
taria de San Marcos [The University Fed-
eration of San Marcos], and other orga-
nizations and individuals, in the course
of the last few weeks, have not been
answered at all by the authorities.