Diaz offends Peruvians

Actress Cameron Diaz laughs as photographers take her picture while she tours the Inca ruins of Machu Picchu near Cuzco, Peru on Friday. Diaz has inadvertently offended Peruvians by sporting a bag with one of Mao Zedong’s favourite political slogans. (Karel Navarro / AP)
By The Associated Press

AGUAS CALIENTES, Peru (AP) — Actress Cameron Diaz appears to have committed a major fashion crime in Peru.

The voice of Princess Fiona in the animated Shrek films may have inadvertently offended Peruvians who suffered decades of violence from a Maoist guerrilla insurgency by touring here Friday with a bag emblazoned with one of Mao Zedong’s favourite political slogans.

While exploring the Inca city of Machu Picchu high in Peru’s Andes, Diaz wore over her shoulder an olive green messenger bag emblazoned with a red star and the words “Serve the People” printed in Chinese on the flap, perhaps Chinese Communist leader Mao’s most famous political slogan.

While the bags are marketed as trendy fashion accessories in some world capitals, the phrase has particular resonance in Peru, where the Maoist Shining Path insurgency brought Peru to edge of chaos in the 1980s and early 1990s with a campaign of massacres, assassinations and bombings.

Nearly 70,000 people were killed during the insurgency.

A prominent Peruvian human rights activist said the star of There’s Something About Mary should have been a little more aware of local sensitivities when picking her accessories.

“It alludes to a concept that did so much damage to Peru, that brought about so many victims,” said Pablo Rojas about the bag’s slogan.

“I don’t think she should have used that bag where the followers of that ideology” did so much damage.

Chronicle Herald

Criminal Fujimori placed in house arrest in Chile

Fujimori under house arrest

SANTIAGO (Chile): A Chilean judge ordered former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori back under house arrest on Friday, a day after a prosecutor recommended his extradition to face charges of human rights abuses and corruption in his home country.

Criminal Fujimoru who directed the murders of thousands of Maoists in Peru

The ruling was a response to a request from Peru, which warned that Fujimori is a flight risk because of “the seriousness of the charges” against him, according to the press office of Chile’s Supreme Court.

Peru wants to try the 68-year-old Fujimori on charges including bribery, misuse of government funds and sanctioning death squad killings during his decade-long rule that ended in 2000.

Fujimori spent five years in exile in Japan after fleeing Peru as his decade-long government collapsed under a corruption scandal. But he flew to Chile on Nov. 6, 2005, as part of an apparent bid to launch a political comeback in neighboring Peru.

Upon arriving in Chile, however, he was placed under house arrest and held for six months. He was freed last year on the condition he not leave Chile.

Judge Urbano Marin’s order that Fujimori be once again placed under house arrest was expected to take effect later Friday. The court was notifying Fujimori of the ruling.

On Thursday, a Supreme Court prosecutor issued a report that recommended the former Peruvian leader be extradited to his homeland to face the charges. The nonbinding recommendation must still be ruled on by the judge, a process that could take several months.

But a lawyer representing Peru in Chile warned the report might cause Fujimori to try to flee Chile.

Fujimori has maintained his innocence and denies he is a flight risk.

The Hindu

Tags: Fujimoru, War Criminal, Chile, Human Rights

Shining Path Founder to wed

A cellblock wedding is reportedly in the works for the founder of Peru’s Shining Path guerrilla movement.

Abimael Guzman proposed marriage last fall and will wed his second-in-command Elena Iparraguirre on an unknown date, Iparraguirre told Caretas magazine this week. The longtime lovers are serving life sentences for terrorism in separate prisons.

Throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, Guzman, 72, inspired a cult-like obedience among his Maoist guerrilla insurgency which grew to 10,000 armed fighters.

Iparraguirre, 59, who used the nom de guerre Commander Miriam, expressed no regret about launching an armed struggle aimed at seizing power from the white elite.

“We made errors, but the revolution was worth it because the Peruvian state was garbage,” she said.

The Shining Path faded after Guzman’s capture in 1992. But rebel factions continue to operate in the coca-growing jungle region.

Iparraguirre did not say when the two might wed, though apparently Peruvian law does not prohibit the marriage and would, according to Caretas, allow them six conjugal visits a year.

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Peruvian police forces capture Shining Path Leader

(JP-wb) — Peruvian anti-terrorism agents in the northern Peruvian city of Chiclayo on Tuesday captured Armando Crisanto Asencio (37), a long-time member of the maoist insurgency group Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path). Judicial authorities accuse him of participating in a series of attacks, among them an ambush of a police patrol near Piura in 1993 in which 19 police officers and one civilian were killed.

Journalperu