Peru paid a moving final tribute on Saturday, September 14, to Alberto Fujimori, the former iron-fisted president convicted of corruption and crimes against humanity, who deeply divided the Andean country.
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The former head of state (1990-2000), who marked the recent history of Peru by fighting Maoist guerrillas and boosting the country’s economic growth with his ultra-liberal policies, was given a state funeral after dying on Wednesday, September 11, at the age of 86 in his Lima home from cancer.
After three days of national mourning, his remains were given state honours at the presidential palace in an official ceremony led in silence by the president Dina Boluarte.
At nightfall, Alberto Fujimori was buried in the Huachipa cemetery, in eastern Lima, surrounded by his family and loved ones.
Tribute from his daughter Keiko
Earlier, a religious ceremony was held at the Grand National Theater in Lima, adjacent to the Ministry of Culture, where thousands of sympathizers have filed past his coffin since Thursday. In the packed hall, only members of Alberto Fujimori’s family and close friends were present, facing an altar surrounded by wreaths of white roses and a portrait of the former president.
” Chinese, Chinese! “, chanted the room, taking up the nickname of the one who was born in Japan. You are finally free from hatred and vengeance (…) you are free from these sixteen years of unjust imprisonment (…) the Peruvian people have absolved you from so much persecution ” said his daughter Keiko.
After spending sixteen years in prison, the former right-wing leader was released in December by order of the Constitutional Court. for humanitarian reasons “, despite the opposition of the Inter-American justice system.
Outside the theater, hundreds of well-wishers watched the ceremony on a giant screen, holding up pictures of the former leader.
” We will perpetuate his legacy, because Fujimorism never dies, it will remain in history. ” said Edgar Grados, a 43-year-old merchant who said he had traveled more than 100 km to pay his last respects.
Sentenced to 25 years in prison
After the victory of the former president over the Shining Path and the arrest of its leader Abimael Guzman, the American magazine Time named him “South American Personality of the Year” in 1993. Others, however, remember him mainly for the corruption scandals that affected him and his authoritarian methods.
The former leader was sentenced in 2009 to 25 years in prison for crimes against humanity, including two massacres of civilians committed by an army squadron as part of the fight against the Shining Path in the early 1990s: one in the Barrios Altos neighborhood (fifteen dead including a child) and the other at the University of La Cantuta (ten dead).
Alberto Fujimori was also prosecuted for the 1992 murder by soldiers of six peasants suspected of being linked to the Shining Path.
The internal conflict of the 1980s and 1990s left some 69,000 dead and 21,000 missing in Peru, most of them civilians, according to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
Also readPeru: Alberto Fujimori, from austerity shock to repression and prison