Speech by the Committee to Defend the Life of Chairman Gonzalo (Paris) at the International Conference in Paris, September 27, 2003

On the defense of the life of Chairman Gonzalo and the Peruvian revolution

Revolution is the most human of tasks, there is no doubt about it; the abolition of the current state of affairs, where nine tenths of the world population live in conditions that are not in accordance with the immense wealth created, nor with the level of progress attained, and in which a tenth of the world population lives in insulting abundance. Imperialism, this monster that devours the peoples, has unleashed two world wars and is threatening us with the third; it is plunging the entire planet Earth in interminable wars of aggression and of conquest, true immense slaughters, to date provoking tens of millions of dead, not counting the millions dead of hunger, disease and other ills that this system has caused and will continue to cause as long as we do not bury it once and for all. There is no doubt: nobody needs such a system! Nobody needs these plagues! The peoples do not want to continue living as they do now!

The most prominent of all those who today struggle for the abolition of such a state of affairs is Chairman Gonzalo. Chairman Gonzalo (born Abimael Guzmán Reynoso) is the one who, after long years of being politically active in the Party and of having waged struggle in the domains of revolutionary theory and praxis, has defined Maoism as the third, new and superior stage of Marxism and applied it to the specific conditions of Peruvian reality, thus producing Gonzalo Thought. He is the Great Leader of the Communist Party of Peru (PCP) and of the Peruvian revolution, the most important rebellion in the entire history of Peru, waged to put an end to centuries of exploitation and oppression. Since September 12, 1992, he is in the hands of the enemy, as a prisoner of war, without the enemy having recognized his status as such, deprived of the rights and conditions that rightfully belong to him in accordance with the internationals minimal standards for the treatment of prisoners.

Because of what Chairman Gonzalo represents for all the oppressed, the plan of imperialism – principally that of the United States – and of reaction has been, is and will remain that of assassinating him. The reason why they have not assassinated him immediately after his arrest, and have not done so to date, is that the rebellion (the People’s War initiated on May 17, 1980) has not been defeated, and that it has not stopped even for one single moment. We must recall history, how, after each defeat of a rebellion, its leaders have been executed and an immense slaughter has been carried out against the masses of the defeated rebels. In addition, in full accordance with the continuation of the struggle of the Peruvian people to defend the life of Chairman Gonzalo, the international proletariat and the peoples of the world are since the very first moment after he was arrested, waging a great international campaign to defend Chairman Gonzalo.

Not being able to execute him immediately, Peruvian reaction – under the direct leadership of North American imperialism, via the CIA – decided to condemn Chairman Gonzalo to "life imprisonment", with an absolute and perpetual isolation, in order to kill him progressively, in a slow and secure manner, while fabricating all kinds of hoaxes against him, using the situation in which reaction itself has placed him – that of isolation – and counting on the vile and cunning collaborationism of these traitors of the revisionist and capitulationist right-opportunist line (ROL). Today, they are carrying out a "new trial" against Chairman Gonzalo, made in secret, in order to "legally" validate all that has been done previously by the fascist, genocidal and country-selling Fujimori government. To this end, they have set up their "Truth and Reconciliation Commission", through whose final report, published on August 28, 2003, they are out to condemn him for "crimes against humanity", saying that everyone who rises up against the old order "is violating the human rights of all the others". These miserable and ridiculous reactionaries want to condemn revolution, the new, the most human of the tasks that the peoples of the world have to fulfill – that of liberating themselves and all of mankind from this curse that the current state of affairs represents.

In order to leave no room for doubts concerning imperialism’s intentions against Chairman Gonzalo, it is necessary that we recall the following facts and expressions: 1) After Chairman Gonzalo’s arrest, what was being plotted against him at the very highest levels of the Yankee government reached the US Senate. A committee of this Senate was thus in charge of examining the question of what would be the best measure to take against Chairman Gonzalo, to the benefit of imperialism’s global interests? In order better to advise themselves, they invited a series of authorities and "experts"; one of them was the well-known enemy of the Communist Party of Peru and pro-Yankee Peruvian journalist, Gustavo Gorriti, who through the chairman of this Committee was asked: What would be most appropriate measure in order to cause lasting harm to the Shining Path: the execution of Guzmán (Chairman Gonzalo – our note) or something along the lines of life imprisonment? Shortly thereafter, on October 5, 1992, as part of session 18 of the German parliament’s Subcommittee for Human Rights and Humanitarian Aid, in the public hearing on the issue "Peru", to which he was invited as a specialist, the same Gorriti was interrogated by the MP Irmer as follows: "I would like to cross-examine mister Gorriti on what he has said, that an execution (of Guzmán – our note) would be a less hard blow to the Shining Path than a sentencing to life imprisonment. Do you think that it is to be feared, that, in the former case, they would be given a martyr, whose life and death would become a legend that terrorism would profit from in order to grow?"

On both occasions, Gorriti went to the essence of the question, pointing out: "Concerning the eventual utility of such an execution, it can be said that the historical experience is not entire clear, taking into consideration what happens when revolution movements loose their leaders. There have been cases where the loss of the supreme leader, especially concerning Maoist movements, also has signified the end of the movement. But there are also other cases, principally in the fundamentalist movements (and Gorriti considers the Communist Party of Peru, the PCP, as being fundamentalist – our note); in these cases the loss of the leader leads to these movements only then finding the opportunity they have been waiting for. In these cases, it is the myth of the lost leader that transforms itself into the principal factor for the strength of the movement". The questions and answers lead us, without any other logical possibility, to determine that all what the enemy does against Chairman Gonzalo is in order destroy the image of the Great Leader, "of the myth", "so that he does not become a legend" that serves as "a factor for the strength of the movement", as the center of unification that he is, and that they, through the hoaxes against him, aim to transform him into an element of division, in order to once this has been achieved, seek the opportune moment for executing him.

2) After the arrest, the CIA and its agent in Peru, Montesinos, know that this is not going to stop the People’s War. This is why they have their plan ready to defame Chairman Gonzalo, seeking to foment a split within the PCP ranks. Montesinos has, with his own words, expressed how the CIA conceived the plan for the hoax, saying: "Abimael Guzmán [...] has a fortune here in Peru and we have to take advantage of this fortune, and he [Fujimori] says to me: we have to take advantage of this fortune". As is obvious, Montesinos and Fujimori are with these words trying to present themselves as the authors of this plan, in order to cover up their big bosses of the CIA, but these are revealing words; they reveal the criminal practice of using the prisoner against his will in order to obtain military objectives, in order to divide the forces of the other belligerent force, in order to defeat its resistance, harming the combat moral of those who struggle for a better motherland.

This evil plan in essence develops as follows: Chairman Gonzalo is placed in absolute isolate, in order to – once that he is in this situation, without any possibility whatsoever to express himself, to communicate with the world and defend himself against the infamy placed "in his mouth" – by word of Fujimori announce to the world, that Guzmán has written the "peace letters", publishing a series of pamphlets, "presenting grounds" against the political thought of the prisoner, in order to subsequently say that these pamphlets have been written or dictated by him. And to guarantee that he will not be able to denounce all these criminals – the CIA, the Peruvian authorities and the traitors of the ROL – they make sure that this isolation will be perpetual.

The services of these collaborationists of the revisionist and capitulationist ROL were decisive in order to arrest Chairman Gonzalo; his arrest was not the result of a pure police activity (by the DINCOTE) under the leadership of this or that watchdog of reaction (Vidal o Jiménez), as they try to present it. The arrest was the result of a covert operation of the CIA, which provided the training, the financing, the arms and the equipment for the countersubversive forces that centered on arresting the Great Leader of the revolution. Yankee imperialism operated directly in Peru, via the CIA, with its own officers, of different ranks and specialties, and it lead all the intelligence services of the old Peruvian state: the GEIN, the DINCOTE itself, the taskforces of the reactionary armed forces (one of which acted under the name "Commando group Colina"), etc. But the enemy had not obtained its goal without the action of revisionism, of the traitors who later structured themselves in the prisons as ROL.

Morote and other of these traitors provided the information and the collaboration that lead the enemy to the arrest of Chairman Gonzalo. They hand him over. After his arrest, they collaborate with the enemy for the hoaxes: the hoax on the "peace letters"; the one on the "capitulation of Feliciano"; the hoax of "the hunger strike of Abimael and Feliciano"; the one on the "political solution…"; the one saying that "Monsignor Bambarén has prayed for peace with Guzmán and Feliciano" and other nonsense that the enemy itself knows is incredible. All the documents that the enemy has presented as being elaborated by Abimael Guzmán (Chairman Gonzalo) have been elaborated by Montesinos (until mid-2000) and thereafter by the Marine, counting on the collaboration of the ROL traitors, such as Pantoja, Morote, etc. – all under the supervision of the CIA. This traitor Morote is, together with others, a direct accomplice to the assassination of more than 30 prisoners of the Communist Party of Peru (PCP) in May 1992. Fujimori and the reactionary armed forces committed this genocide in the prison Canto Grande in order to prepare the ground for the structuring of the ROL and for the plans that the enemy was to apply in the case that they would be able to arrest Chairman Gonzalo.

The newspaper La República of September 24, 2003 gives account of the revelations made by one of the heads of these operative commando groups or taskforces of the reactionary armed forces, Santiago Martin Rivas, to the journalist Umberto Jara; these revelations confirm what the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Peru has pointed out, basing itself on irrefutable facts. In the article of this newspaper, you can read: "On Saturday May 9, 1992 – tells Martin Rivas – on the orders of Fujimori and Montesinos, the members of the leading group of the Shining Path were subjected to extrajudicial executions... Fourteen (leaders – our note) were in prison... One remained alive... In the final meeting before carrying out the complete plan – confesses Martin Rivas – two decisions were taken. One was to let Osmán Morote live. He was the enemy of Abimael... He was thus going to be very useful to us... Leaving him alive had a sense."

This is an experience that teaches many lessons to the liberation movements, and the first thing to do in view of this, is to repudiate, reject and stigmatize the acts, the crimes and the hoaxes of the enemy. In view of this situation, there is no room for any "investigatory" attitude, or for maintaining relation with these traitors under the pretext of "investigating", for this only serves the plans of imperialism, reaction and revisionism. What should be done in view of this, is to, without any reservations, defend him whom one in this vile and cowardly manner is trying to denigrate and heckle as a capitulator, as a revisionist, as a traitor, as in this case, where the enemy arrests Chairman Gonzalo, confines him in a subterranean cell, isolates him in an absolute and perpetual manner and thereafter spreads all kinds of lies attributed to someone whom we have not been able to see or hear for eleven years. These lies go against his political thought, against the theory and praxis of a whole life, which is that of a Great Leader whose personal characteristic is that of firmly and faithfully uniting his words and his deeds.

The absolute isolation of Chairman Gonzalo is zealously maintained by the enemy, without any kind of concessions or interruptions

The governments of Fujimori, the one of Paniagua and the current one of Toledo have declared that the isolation of Chairman Gonzalo is a "matter of national security". On September 26, 1992, Chairman Gonzalo was, together with the other ones arrested, transferred from the isolation in one-person cells of the National Leadership of the Antiterrorist Police (DINCOTE) – where Chairman Gonzalo was held since September 12, 1992, the date of his arrest – to the penal institution of the Naval Station of San Lorenzo (an island in the Pacific, facing Callao) and interned in one-person cells under a regimen of absolute isolation. On April 3, 1993, Chairman Gonzalo was transferred from this island to the Special Operations Marine Base on the mainland – Callao – where a subterranean concentration camp was built. According to what has been indicted in the media, it is known that it is situated at 12 meters below sea level and that the entrance is a narrow conduit; that the cells are for one person, with an area of four square meters and two meters tall, lacking ventilation, without natural light, without electricity, without water. The "prison" has been built in an extremely humid area, as it is situated near the sea and the estuary of the river Rímac, in a minefield; it has no contact whatsoever with the exterior world. As Fujimori declared on the occasion of Chairman Gonzalo’s transfer to this "prison," Chairman "is assured a slow and certain death". Chairman Gonzalo remains in this place and in these conditions ever since. But the authorities of the Peruvian state are, via the media, also circulating "news", "fibs" and all kinds of contradictory rumors on his true situation. This is a perverse practice that serves to consummate their plan.

From the very moment of Chairman Gonzalo’s arrest (September 12, 1992), the representatives of the old Peruvian state have acted with profound disrespect for the life, health and rights of the prisoners. His lawyer, and the one of the other prisoners arrested with him, were harassed and deprived of information; the lawyers were denigrated via the press and subsequently – on the order of Fujimori – they proceeded to arrest, prosecute and condemn all the lawyers who assumed the defense of the prisoners to "life imprisonment", without their having been set free to date.

The entire process, sentence and lifetime confinement with absolute and perpetual isolation have been realized with extreme cruelty, effrontery and cynicism by the Fujimori regime. This practice has continued with the so-called transition governments of Paniagua and Toledo, malformed creatures of Yankee imperialism via the OAS roundtable of agreement; the "new trials" follow the same logic, with some formal differences and many only in name, as wee will see further on; they specifically pursue the objective of condemning Chairman Gonzalo anew, this time also for "crimes against humanity". All the decrees and dispositions made by the authorities reveal that their intentions are not merely to await the "natural" death of the prisoner – due to the harsh conditions of his imprisonment – but to accelerate the plans to assassinate him. For, as long as he is alive, the possibility of obtaining his public presentation always exists, something that would reduce all the hoaxes against him to smithereens. This presentation would be a political, military and moral victory for all those who struggle for a new Peru, as part of a new world, and to the entire progressive mankind this would be of great significance in the current national and international situation; for all the forces who are against the necessary historical changes, on the contrary, the consequences would be serious and unforeseeable. This is why all these retarding forces act jointly and with all means at their disposal to maintain this situation of absolute and perpetual isolation; this is why positions like those of the "investigators" are playing into the hands of the enemy, trying to make the campaign to defend the life of Chairman Gonzalo, and thus the one for his public presentation, fail.

Chairman Gonzalo is a prisoner of war, and furthermore, he is the most important of them all

The confinement of Chairman Gonzalo and of the thousands of political prisoners and prisoners of war is an administrative confinement, according to the legal order of the Peruvian state itself, This character is rooted in the fact that they have never been subjected to a valid legal process; nor could such a process ever take place in future, for all the legal conditions have been vitiated and all the material foundations have been perverted. The interference of the political power and the lack of judiciary independence and impartiality are proven by the acts and the very own words of the highest authorities of the old state (which have to be taken as confessions by the accused), on the occasion of the "old trials" (1992) as well as of the "new trials" (2003).

1) On the previous occasion, on September 15, 1992, when Chairman Gonzalo and other prisoners were detained in the dungeons of the DINCOTE, the Joint Command of the Armed Forces and the Supreme Council for Military Justice – following the political decision adopted by Fujimori – announced the date when the ruling was to be pronounced to the national and international media, indicating that the penalty to be imposed would be "life imprisonment" for "treason", and that it was to be served at the Naval Base of the Marine (San Lorenzo island). The "judge" materialized this decision, dictating the sentence on October 7, 1992; this proves the interference of the political power and the lack of competence, independence and impartiality of the military jurisdiction. This technically makes up the administrative detention, that is, the status of being prisoners due to the mandate of a political or military authority; i.e., they are deprived of their liberty due to the exercise of political or military authority, without any intention of submitting them to a valid trial.

2) During all these years of "execution of the ‘sentence’" dictated by the military jurisdiction, Chairman Gonzalo is held in absolute isolation without the rights that rightfully belong to any prisoner in the world, and having Fujimori, Hermoza Ríos, Montesinos, etc. as the "judges" for penal execution, in his case as well as in that of the thousands of political prisoners and prisoners of war. These miserable ones mentioned invested themselves with the faculties for exercising the "jurisdictional function" without having any legal title to exercise it in accordance with their own legal order, their state structure and their division of functions. Even though this "jurisdictional function" belongs to this state of landlord-bureaucrat dictatorship, they can only exercise it in accordance with the norms and by judiciary authorities predetermined by their Constitution and their laws. Traditionally criminal penalties have thus been imposed and executed using administrative methods, that is, outside of any judiciary control.

3) What has been the development of this situation since the so-called transition government and to date? This situation did not change at all after the departure of Fujimori; his continuers, the so-called "transition governments" of Paniagua and Toledo, tried to give themselves "legitimacy" by defining themselves as the negation of the "dictatorship" of Fujimori and Montesinos, which was to be clearly manifested by the effective validity of the fundamental rights and the democratic institutions, as well as of the principles for legal security and for the State Ruled by Law; this would supposedly would render the arbitrary exercising of state power impossible. But these very governments have since the very beginning defined themselves as the legal continuity of the said "dictatorship", recognizing the "validity" of all its acts, from the first to the last, and among these, of the "illegitimate legislation", in name of the legal security and the State Ruled by Law. They are in this way trying to give the acts of the Fujimori regime the most wide and total legitimization as the ruling principle for the legal order currently in force. Even more so, they have always declared and shown their fidelity to everything that the Fujimori regime has done "to give a new impetus to bureaucrat capitalism, to restructure the state and to annihilate the People’s War", tasks whose fulfillment is a historical and political impossibility for every government of the old and rotten Peruvian state. These "transition democrats" say that "it is necessary to recognize the successes of Fujimori" (concerning the tasks mentioned), but that "what was bad was that he was dictatorial and that he stooped into corruption". Thus, the governments that have followed since November 2000 (the one of Paniagua and the current one of Toledo) they themselves claim to be the continuation of the Fujimori government, and, because of the very same reason, the situation for Chairman Gonzalo and for the other prisoners remains the same to date, without any major changes whatsoever.

In its ruling of January 3, 2003*, the Constitutional Court (TC) – presided over by the perpetrator of genocide, Javier Alva Orlandini, who as head of the Political Committee of Acción Popular, the party in government from July 1980 to July 1985, together with the former president Belaúnde, shares the responsibility of being one of the principal persons responsible for the barbaric genocides of these years –as you say, "in passing" and so that "nobody would notice", declares the validity of the 1993 Constitution and of all the acts and of the legislation dictated by Fujimori against what is established in the 1979 Constitution, which in its Article 307 establishes that: "this Constitution does not loose its effect, nor does it cease to be observed, by any act of force or if it is repealed by any means other than those stipulated by the Constitution itself. In such a contingency, every citizen, invested with authority or not, has the duty of collaborating for the reestablishment of its being effectively in force". Thereafter, this TC "declared the unconstitutionality of the penal type concerning the crime treason" and of the sentencing in the military jurisdiction; it further stipulated the possible realization of "new trials" in accordance with what the Congress of the Republic would establish, in order to thereafter ban the prisoners, having no valid process or sentence, from exercising the "Habeas Corpus" lawsuit to put an end to their arbitrary detention.** Exercising the faculties delegated by Congress, the Executive dictated these "new norms" through each of the Legislative Decrees that regulate the "new trials." In accordance with this, the judiciary organ (the Special Courts and the Special Antiterrorist Tribunal with hand-picked judges) announced the overturning of the sentences and opened new trials against the prisoners, in every way violating the principle of penal legality and of due process.

4) At present, on the occasion of the montage of the "new trials", during the period so far during year 2003, all the highest authorities of the state (Toledo, the MPs, judges, militaries, government and "opposition" politicians) and the entire press at their service have in unison declared that "no terrorist will leave prison", that "no convicted terrorist will leave prison", that "the overturning of sentences only is a question of adjusting them to what has been established by the Inter-American Court and Commission of Human Rights". Even more so, they have declared that the "evidence" and the greater part of the acts established, such as the police attestations elaborated in violation of the rights of the prisoners "will preserve their full validity for the new trials". Thus, in the present situation, with the current Toledo government, with these "new trials", there is a repetition of the "tradition" of Fujimori in 1992, that is, the interference by the political power that has ordered that the prisoners be diverted from the jurisdiction of the "natural judge" to special judges and tribunals, who will try them with special laws and therefore with a total lack of independence and impartiality of the civil jurisdiction.

The government has dictated "new" Legislative Decrees to "adapt" the Decree-laws made by Fujimori after the coup on April 5, 1992, in order to try to validate them. But the former would, in accordance with the principle of legality, only be valid for the events posterior to their coming into force, that is, which have taken place after February or March of the present year, 2003. Further, they only contain cosmetic changes. What this is really all about, is an attempt to validate what has been done in the "previous trials" in order for this to serve for the "new sentences" foreseen, from the police investigation up to the sentence before the military jurisdiction, giving value of proof to the police attestation and the other pieces of evidence elaborated in violation of the procedural rights of the prisoners. According to this "adaptation" and according to the declarations made by the authorities, all the prisoners have already been sentenced; it is only a question of formalizing this "sentence" – in the case of Chairman Gonzalo, via a secret trial. And, as a totally tragicomic complement to this hoax of the "new trial", once the "new sentence" has been announced – this time by a servile civil court – Chairman Gonzalo and the other prisoners will be subjected to a "new period" of absolute isolation in accordance with what is established in the new Supreme Decree No. 015-2003-JUS, which has come into force on September 12, 2003***.

On the basis of all of what we have stated, we demand:

1. The respect of the life, health and integrity of Chairman Gonzalo;

2. The respect of the rights that rightfully belong to Chairman Gonzalo, in his status of prisoner of war;

3. The public presentation of Chairman Gonzalo before the national and international press, in person and live, and that he be allowed to speak.

WE CALL ALL PERSONS AND ORGANIZATIONS, COMMITTED TO THE STRUGGLE OF THE PEOPLES AGAINST IMPERIALISM AND WORLD REACTION AND FOR THE DEFENSE OF THE REVOLUTIONARY POLITICAL PRISONERS AND PRISONERS OF WAR OF THE WORLD, TO GIVE A GREAT IMPETUS TO THE CAMPAIGN: DEFEND THE LIFE OF CHAIRMAN GONZALO AND, JOINTLY WITH THIS, THAT OF COMRADE FELICIANO, AS PART OF THE DEFENSE OF THE LIFE AND THE RIGHTS OF THE PRISONERS OF WAR AND POLITICAL PRISONERS OF PERU AND OF THE WORLD!

Notes for the printed edition:

* Before the January 3, 2003 "ruling" of the Constitutional Court (TC), its presiding judge Alva Orlandini declared to the newspaper La República (December 1, 2002) that it is "exact, there would be no norms" (he was talking of valid "antiterrorist" norms – our note). And in reply to the question posed by the reporter of the said newspaper: "If there are no antiterrorist norms, could the subversives leave prison?", Alva declared: "Hypothetically they could leave prison, but the Constitutional Court is fortunately studying... in order to avoid a situation where there would be no penal legislation, and that there, thus, would be no penalties". When the same reporter asked: "How?", Alva Orlandini replied: "by making manipulatory rulings (on behalf of the TC itself – our note)... that give the laws a correct meaning, in order for them to be adjusted in accordance with the text of the Constitution". This is a legal impossibility, as the norms that are to be "adjusted", just like the decree-laws that we have mentioned previously, have been dictated by the Fujimori government, after it violated the ruling Constitutional order by way of the so-called self-coup on April 5, 1992 and declared "the 1979 Constitution suspended".

** The ruling of the TC "declared the unconstitutionality of the penal type relative to the crime treason, defined and regulated by Decree-Law No. 25659, as well as of the authorization it provides for ventilating the corresponding legal process under the military jurisdiction". Nevertheless, in the same ruling (Foundations No. 229-230), "…it has stipulated that the eventual realization of new trials for those accused of the crime treason, are to be carried out in accordance with the rules to this effect that the Congress of the Republic will dictate, within a reasonable period." And it ruled: "In consequence, the initiation of the new trials, resulting from the overturning of the unconstitutional proceedings, is conditioned by the rules mentioned, awaited from Congress, coming into force, or, these lacking, by the expiry of the reasonable period mentioned". And this same TC ruled "that the declaration of the unconstitutionality of the penal type envisaged in Decree-Law No. 25659 does not prevent those condemned as authors of the same crime for been put on trial again, this time for the crime terrorism envisaged in Decree-Law No. 25475 (likewise made by Fujimori after April 5, 1992 – our note), whenever... the same factual suppositions are regulated in Decree-Law No. 25475, the penal type of which has been declared constitutional (by this TC – our note)!". This establishes – in spite of the nonexistence of valid material and procedural norms and thus in spite of the nonexistence "de jure" of orders to open the process as well as of mandates of detention and processing of Chairman Gonzalo and other prisoners – the "inadmissibility of release from prison" and the prohibition of the "Habeas Corpus" lawsuit (see the January 8, 2003 ruling of the same TC), preventing the prisoners from taking legal action against their arbitrary detention. In order to surprise the unaware, in this ruling of January 8, 2003, which forbids the exercise of the "Habeas Corpus", the TC starts from the premise of using the term "accused" for those persons who, according to its own ruling of January 3, 2003, which we have been discussing, do not have this status. In a strict sense, they neither have the status of "condemned", as the trials before military judges and the law on the basis of which they were sentenced are null and void, the declaration of this nullity being suspended since there are no norms or rules to process them. Neither is there any preexisting criminal law that typifies the crime that one is trying to accuse them of, nor is there, in accordance with the principle of legality ("Nullum crimen sine lege", "nulla poena sine lege"), any penalty that could be imposed against them. And they cannot be called "accused", since there to this date is no order, valid or otherwise, to open investigation against Chairman Gonzalo, nor against any of the thousands of political prisoners and prisoners of war. Their status is technically that of "administratively detained", they are subjected to arbitrary detention, in accordance with reaction’s own internal or national law. This is why the prohibition of exercising this lawsuit for personal liberty is the worst of legal aberrations, something not even the Nazis dared to do. The corresponding action would – from this strictly legal perspective – be to order the competent jurisdictional organ to immediately release the detained, without making any "extralegal" considerations. Because of all these reasons, no linguistic balancing act, no legal trick or hoax, such as their so-called "law on vacation", can hide the arbitrary character of this detention, of this massive detention, as we have said, without any legal control, which makes their status as prisoners of war, in accordance with article 3 of the Additional Protocol of the Geneva Convention, i.e., in accordance with the international law of war, more patent than ever.

*** As was discussed at the Conference in Paris, the system of isolation cells or of absolute isolation is intended to break the resistance of the prisoner; this is why it goes hand in hand with and is linked to a system of "awards" and punishments, which in the new Supreme Decree are considered as being different degrees of isolation, through which the prisoner is to be able to arrive at being in an open system. All this aims to destroy the identity of the prisoner and the organization of the prisoner; if the prisoner renounces from this ideas, principles, organization, etc., he can have a "normal" life within prison (i.e., one like the other prisoners); if he remains firm on his principles, he will be kept on the level of isolation determined by the authority. This is genocide in accordance with the very own norms of national and international law, for it aims to, by all means possible, exterminate the members, sympathizers, supporters, etc. of in this case the PCP. That is why we denounce this new Supreme Decree No. 015-2003-JUS as having this genocidal character.