A RETRACTION?

The decision taken by Peru's Supreme Counsel of Military Justice (Consejo Supremo de Justicia Militar), in the case of Northamerican journalist Lori Berenson does not surprise us.  The Peruvian government is used to making political decisions, so long as those decisions allow it to maintain power and to improve its image before the International Community. It is the same dictatorship that with great self interest and in a usual act of revenge sentenced that journalist to life imprisonment, in a summary trial in which, like thousands of detained Peruvians, she did not have the right to defend herself.  It did not provide due process, in which case it could have promptly been shown that she did not belong to MRTA, and certainly not to the Tupac Amaru National Directorate, (Direccion Nacional Tupacamarista.)

Why do we say that the sentence of Lori Berenson was an act of revenge? Because from the moment she was detained they knew that the reason for her trip to Peru was to deepen her knowledge of the truth of what goes on in our country.  Journalist Lori Berenson was offered a deal: in exchange for her freedom, she was to say that the MRTA is a terrorist organization.  Given the interviews she had conducted previously and by real situations she had observed all over the territory of Peru, she knew this was not true, as it was not true that the Peruvian people see the MRTA as a terrorist organization.  She did not accept that infamous proposition and with the indignation provoked by the proposal and the pressures to which she was being subjected, said: "The MRTA is not a terrorist organization and I am being sentenced for deeply loving the Peruvian people...".   That public defense of the truth about an organization satanized by the dictatorship was and is what the dictatorship cannot forgive the young Northamerican journalist.
Defending the truth in a country whose government uses lies as political weapons, has cost Lori Berenson 5 years of her youth in the cells of the worst prisons in the world, the Peruvian prisons, which do not have the minimal conditions to house human beings.  These cells in themselves are permanent torture, and had not been used in the world since Nazi times.These prisons now move the strongest people in the International Community.

This new trial of the journalist Lori Berenson has only one possibility of not becoming another mockery of justice, and that is if the Human Rights Organizations and the International Community make the dictatorial regime of Fujimori guarantee due process, a public trial, with an impartial jury, and the right of self-defense, with the presence of international observers who can vouch for the legality of the proceedings and the autonomy of the judicial power.
The step taken by the dictatorship in the case of Lori Berenson, does not offer hope of the fulfillment even of the dictator's own laws regarding the more than 3000 political prisoners of the popular sectors that were accused of being guerrillas, in order to shut them up, and, in this way, cause terror in the population, with a psychosocial program that turned into a suspected guerrilla or terrorist any citizen, man or woman, that opposed the regime.  Those who were detained without any reason or proof and after being arbitrarily detained, were tortured and sentenced in 72 hours by a civil or military tribunal with faceless judges, and from the jail they had to prove their "innocence".   Much less can we think that our brothers and sisters unjustly jailed for defending the ideas of freedom and dignity of our people, who made use of the constitutional right of insurgence, to struggle against a government that did not respect the will and the interests of the people and became a dictatorship.  The prisoners of war, the militant tupacamarus took up arms to defend our people according to the constitutional principle of the right to insurgence and with due respect to the laws of war, as stated in the Geneva Conventions and its additional protocols to internal conflicts that are not recognized and are systematically violated by this dictatorship and its ayayeros.

Nevertheless, the libertarian example of the Father of our nationhood and rebellion, worthy of those who neither sell themselves, nor bend their knees before injustice and corruption, freely grows now in the dungeons of the dictatorship with the example of those who are in conditions of total defenselessness, continue keeping high the tupacamarists flags of freedom and dignity.   Dignity, a word that has been erased from the dictionary of the dictatorship and of the distinguished lady of the Academy, of its ayayeros and turncoats.  All those who have violated the three fundamental laws of our ancestors: Ama sua, Ama quella y Ama llulla.  Only our millenarian and hard working people is capable of reviving the natural order, where the exploitation and oppression of man by man becomes only a bad memory of the past, thus ending corruption and authoritarianism.  The freedom of our people and of our prisoners will be the task of the Tupacamaru people, that mobilizing from the four corners of the world is uniting the dispersed members of the body of Tupac Amaru and when they unite with their head will take us to new times, to the times of Incarri, to the times of Pachacutic and Anahuarke, to found once again a country truly ours where Peace will be the daughter of the Social Justice our people have struggle so long and for which we are ready to keep struggling, with all the means at our reach, with our words, our mobilization, our organization and the weapons that we will take away from the corrupt, from all those who now  become richer with the misery and the suffering of our people.

TUPAC AMARU'S PEOPLE WITH THE MASCAIPACHA STANDING TALL HAS BEGUN TO WALK!
THIS IS THE HOUR OF THE PEOPLE, THIS IS THE HOUR OF THE SOCIALIST
REVOLUTION!
TUPAC AMARU LIVES AND WILL WIN!!