Thousands of people lined up outside the Ministry of Culture on Thursday and Friday to pay their last respects to Alberto Fujimori, the autocrat who led the country from 1990 to 2000, who died on Wednesday at the age of 86. Around the coffin on display in the Nazca room of the huge brutalist concrete building, his son Kenji, in tears, leaned on his sister Keiko. “Chinese!” Chinese! » – nickname of the former president, called that way despite his Japanese origin – the crowd shouted several times.
Head of State Dina Boluarte (right) declared three days of national mourning. Flags were flown at half-mast on public buildings. “May God keep him in his glory and may he rest in peace.”published the official account of the presidency, before the leader, wearing a white jacket and black skirt, attended the wake.
The decision to declare national mourning outraged some Peruvians when Alberto Fujimori was sentenced in 2009 to twenty-five years in prison for corruption and for his responsibility in the Barrios Altos and La Cantuta massacres, which left 25 civilians dead in the early 1990s; events that constitute “crimes against humanity”the president of the court had established.
Serious human rights violations
Released in 2023 by a controversial decision of the Constitutional Court on grounds “humanitarian” – for many years he said he was so sick that he was living his last moments – Despite opposition from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, Alberto Fujimori was entitled to the honors he was entitled to. “to the current President of the Republic”.
The former president continues to deeply divide Peruvian society into two irreconcilable camps. For some, he is the one who fought against terrorism and dismantled the Maoist organization Shining Path – which plunged Peru into terror during the 1980s and 1990s – and saved the country from economic disaster, with inflation rates of around 5,000% per year when he came to power.
For others, he is the autocrat who staged a coup in 1992 by dissolving parliament and ruling by decree for months, who committed serious human rights violations in his fight against terrorism, and who is eliminating public services and causing poverty to explode with his neoliberal austerity plan: the “Fujichoc”.
Not a word for the victims
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