Peruvian rebel leader sentenced to life in prison

[Charlie Brown]

http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/americas/10/13/peru.terror.ap/index.html?section=cnn_latest

LAO, Peru (AP) -- Shining Path founder Abimael Guzman, whose messianic communist vision inspired a 12-year rebellion that cost nearly 70,000 lives, was found guilty Friday of aggravated terrorism and sentenced to life in prison.

Throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, Guzman was known to his followers as "Presidente Gonzalo," inspiring a cultlike obedience among a Maoist guerrilla insurgency that grew to 10,000 armed fighters.

"I am a revolutionary combatant and totally reject being a terrorist," Guzman declared as the trial began last year at the maximum-security naval base where he has been held since 1993.

But most Peruvians have little sympathy for Guzman, whose followers celebrated bloodshed in songs and slogans, describing blood as necessary to "irrigate" their glorious revolution.

The Shining Path bombed electrical towers, bridges and factories, assassinated mayors and massacred villagers, including 69 peasants in the Andean village of Lucanamarca, where nearly two dozen children were among those shot and hacked to death in retaliation for the killings of several rebels.

Guzman gloated about the massacre in a 1988 interview in the rebels' newspaper El Diario, saying: "Faced with reactionary military action, we responded with action: Lucanamarca."

[T_i_B]

1. Peru Shining Path head gets life

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/6048144.stm

The founder of Peru's Shining Path Maoist guerrillas has been found guilty of terrorism at a retrial and been sentenced to life imprisonment.

Former philosophy professor Abimael Guzman led a 12-year rebellion in which around 70,000 people died. Abimael Guzman was tried after his capture in 1992 by a secret military court, but the verdict and life sentence were thrown out in 2003.

The Shining Path, a Maoist guerrilla group, waged a violent campaign to overthrow the Peruvian state.

In 2003, a truth and reconciliation commission blamed more than 31,000 killings on the Shining Path.

[David__77]

2. This is not right.

I know I'm in a small minority here, but Sendero was an authentic peasant's movement addressing centuries of oppression by the white elites dominating the country. They committed many abuses, but so did FSLN and FMLN and other guerrilla groups. The difference is that the pro-Soviet radical left opposed Sendero because it was anti-Soviet.

[Downtown Hound]

3. The Peruvian government also committed many abuses

during the war, almost as many as the Shining Path did. If there's a case to be made against the Shining Path, it's for their tactics, not their cause. It was a civil war. But if they're going to be tried for war crimes, the Peruvian government should be tried right along with them. Currently Fujimori is awaiting trial on corruption charges, but not crimes against humanity.

[High Plains]

4. Sort of.

Sendero Luminoso was formed by professors and teachers in Ayacucho as a Maoist offshoot of the Peruvian Communist Party. It identified the peasantry as the mass base of revolution and attempted to make it happen. But Presidente Gonzalo and the boys were singularly vicious and bloody-minded. I remember writing about 15 years ago that anyone who supported them would have to explain away all the blood on his hands. What did they achieve? Oh, about 30,000 dead.

Which is by no means to excuse the Peruvian government, including that of former President Alain Garcia in the mid-1980s--you know, the same guy who is president again now. Remember the massacre at Lurigancho Prison? There were many more.