Fujimori’s legacy stays bitterly contested in Peru, the place he was convicted of corruption and extreme rights abuses.
The federal government of Peru has introduced a three-day interval of nationwide mourning following the loss of life of controversial former President Alberto Fujimori.
President Dina Boluarte signed a decree for a interval of mourning on Thursday, sooner or later after Fujimori, convicted of corruption and human rights abuses throughout his tenure in workplace, died on the dwelling of his daughter, Keiko Fujimori, within the capital Lima.
“This morning, the Nationwide Flag was raised at half-mast within the Legislative Palace as a result of loss of life of the previous president of the republic, Alberto Fujimori,” Diario Oficial El Peruano, the nation’s official each day paper, mentioned on Thursday.
Fujimori’s physique will lay within the Ministry of Tradition in Lima till Saturday, when he will likely be moved to a cemetery south of the capital. The outlet Peru 21 posted pictures on social media exhibiting supporters queuing exterior of the Ministry of Tradition to pay their respects.
Shining Path rebels
In loss of life as in life, Fujimori has polarised Peru, the Andean nation the place his supporters credit score him with righting the economic system by way of a collection of harsh neoliberal reforms and crushing the Maoist guerilla group Sendero Luminoso, or Shining Path, that terrorised the nation for years.
He did so by way of a brutal counterinsurgency marketing campaign that included widespread rights abuses and contributed to Fujimori’s growing authoritarianism, together with a “self-coup” in 1992 that shut down Congress and the judiciary. His financial reforms are additionally criticised for his or her extreme influence on the nation’s poor.
Peru’s civil conflict between the federal government and numerous insurgent teams is estimated to have left a minimum of 70,000 useless.
Fujimori’s authorities additionally oversaw abuses akin to a marketing campaign of forced sterilisations that focused ladies within the nation’s poor and largely Indigenous areas.
Montesinos scandal
Fujimori fled to exile in Japan after his elimination in 2000 following a bribery and corruption scandal that concerned his infamous intelligence chief, Vladimiro Montesinos.
Fujimori was finally detained in Chile throughout a go to to the nation in 2005 and extradited to Peru in September 2007 on fees of involvement in ordering killings and kidnappings throughout his time as chief.
He was tried and convicted in 2009 for crimes linked to the homicide of 25 folks by loss of life squads that focused leftist militants in addition to activists and civilians.
Fujimori was released from prison in December 2023 by a Peruvian court docket, in defiance of an order from the Inter-American Court docket of Human Rights.
On social media, hashtags starting from #FujimoriNuncaMas (Fujimori by no means once more) to #FujimoriPorSiempre (Fujimori perpetually) underscore the schisms that stay current in Peruvian society greater than twenty years after he fled the nation and resigned by way of fax from Japan.
Detractors identified, with tongue in cheek, that Fujimori died on the identical day of the 12 months as Shining Path chief Abimael Guzman, who perished in jail in 2021. His seize by state safety companies in 1992 was a significant victory within the authorities’s efforts to dismantle the much-feared group.
Fujimori’s daughter, Keiko, a former lawmaker and presidential contender herself, mentioned in July that her father would run for president in 2026, although he would have been in his late 80s.