The US dishes out lofty "democratic" principles but only when it is politically expedient, writes Mumia Abu-Jamal* With the news that the United States government is insisting that the Oslo-born Palestinian Authority now adapt to a democratic electoral process and restructure its executive, judicial and security systems in order to pass the US-Israeli muster and be supported in its drive for nationhood, one is forced to examine how the US has behaved in other aspects of the international arena. Have the principles of "democracy", "human rights", and an absence of corruption in government been the guiding principles of US foreign relations, or has something else been at stake? Let us examine therefore, the US role in the events that occurred to the country's southern neighbour, Peru. Were we to look at Peru in the last two decades, would we see that the US has been on the side of "democracy", "human rights", and the enemy of state corruption? During the Fujimori years, the president engaged in many controversial and questionable acts but he is perhaps best-known, at least in Peruvian eyes, for what they have termed the autogolpe (or self-coup) of 5 April 1992. Then, Alberto Fujimori suspended the constitution and dissolved the Peruvian congress. When Fujimori did this, it was in the name of fighting "terrorism", the name the government and its media assigned to the indigenous Indian-led insurgency emblemised by the Shining Path's Sendero Luminoso. At the time, the bourgeois press lauded Fujimori and American corporate, political and military leaders sang his praises. Today, the president -- now a fugitive from Peruvian justice -- his top adviser, Vladimiro Montesinos, and some 50 other top government and military leaders from the Fujimori regime are referred to by present government leaders as a "mafia" who used the Western financial trend towards "privatisation" and "globalisation" to enrich themselves while impoverishing the Peruvian working and middle classes. Peruvian government investigator Oscar Ugarteche, speaking in an interview published in the January-February 2002 North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA) report, outlined the target of his investigation -- Fujimori and Montesinos were an integral part of a mafia that acted together to commit crimes. They protected themselves by passing unconstitutional laws and obscured their actions by using the language of modernisation favoured by international agencies. Their actions led to the dismantling of a fragile state for the benefit of just a few economic actors. The possibility that a criminal mafia was created and a "narcostate" maintained is also being examined though it is premature to say that definitively. Ugarteche claims that over $1.8 billion of that privatisation money was funnelled back to Montesinos, as well as to the former minister of the economy and various generals, as part of a vast kickback scheme. Peru has set up the Investigative Commission on Economic Crimes to look into the scandal. But what about the role of the US? Does Ugarteche think the Americans knew about such widespread corruption? "North American officials must have known about the corruption that was happening because we Peruvians knew about it. We knew that the 5 April 1992 coup was linked to drug trafficking and arms trafficking. We all knew about Montesinos's past links with this kind of thing. We all knew, besides, about his relations with the CIA dating back to 1974. If the State Department did not know about it, it is because they did not ask the CIA about it the moment the coup happened," Ugarteche rightly pointed out. This gives the impression that they did know about it and that it did not matter to them because Fujimori and Montesinos were going to stop inflation and terrorism and because they were, in the words of a US president speaking of a 1930s dictator, "our sons of bitches" -- as were Manuel Noriega, Saddam Hussein and so many others who eventually ended up being enemies of the US. In the name of "fighting terrorism", and in the interests of "global modernisation", Peru was dealt a severe blow, not so much from the "terrorists" as from the government itself. The cancer of corruption has tainted every sector of the state, all the way to the very highest levels. Tens of thousands of innocent people were cast into the nation's dungeons by hooded judges, military tribunals and a suspension of the nation's constitution -- with the approval of many in the merchant, and media class. Doubtless, many thousands of innocents remain there today. The very media that once lauded Fujimori's "bold" reforms now denounce him as part of a "mafia" that ravished the nation. And during that dark, tortured period in the life of a nation, where did the US stand? In defence of democracy, for the rule of law, for the human rights of all Peruvians -- even against its own government? Or in defence of a dictator? This government's approval and applause during Fujimori's ascent should make one pause for thought, even as it continues to pose as the defender of human rights, open government, and democracy when it comes to Palestine. Indeed, in light of the harrowing similarities, it should make us all more than just pause for thought. * The writer is one of America's most famous death row inmates.
