Peru Orders Anti-Sendero Effort in U.S.

President Alberto Fujimori has ordered a propaganda campaign against groups in Europe and the United States that support Peru’s Sendero Luminoso, the ruthless Shining Path guerrillas.

On Wednesday, Lima newspapers published an official list of organizations and “terrorist delinquents” accused by Fujimori of representing Sendero in nine foreign countries. The official campaign follows Saturday’s arrest of Maoist zealot Abimael Guzman, 57, Sendero’s founder and chief.

The capture was the biggest government coup against Sendero in 12 years of bloody political warfare, in which more than 26,000 Peruvians have died. Taking advantage of international interest in the fall of Guzman, the government is now moving against Sendero’s propaganda and support network abroad, even as its police and security forces continue daily to round up Sendero suspects at home.

The Peruvian ministers of interior and justice were in Spain this week on a European tour aimed at calling attention to the network’s activities. Gen. Juan Briones, the interior minister, accused pro-Sendero groups of defending a “genocidal terrorist” organization and said Peruvian officials are “talking to the governments of friendly countries to see how this can be controlled.”

Sendero’s terrorist actions have included massacres of peasants who resist their domination, assassinations of community leaders in Lima slums and car bombings on city streets.

Alleged Sendero supporters on the list published Wednesday included five organizations and two individuals in the United States.

The organizations are Comite de Apoyo a la Revolucion en Peru (Committee to Support the Revolution in Peru), Centro Cultural Jose Carlos Mariategui (Jose Carlos Mariategui Cultural Center), Centro Cultural Jose Maria Arguedas (Jose Maria Arguedas Cultural Center), Grupo Solidaridad con Peru (Solidarity with Peru Group) and Latin Americans in Solidarity with the Peruvian Revolution.

Jose Carlos Mariategui was the founder of Peru’s Communist Party, from which the Sendero Luminoso splintered in the 1960s. Jose Maria Arguedas was a Peruvian novelist.

Government officials gave no addresses for any of the organizations listed, but other sources said Latin Americans in Solidarity with the Peruvian Revolution is based in Washington.

The list named Alberto Valdivia and Samuel Guia, presumably Peruvians, as “terrorist delinquents” and as officials of the Committee to Support the Revolution in Peru, which has affiliates in several U.S. cities.

Simon Strong, author of a book on Sendero published recently in Britain, wrote in the May 24 issue of the New York Times Magazine that the committee was formed in 1985 by Maoist groups in the United States, including the San Francisco Bay Area branch of the Revolutionary Communist Party.

That party, which is separate from the Communist Party of the U.S.A., distributes Maoist literature in Revolution Books stores around the country and publishes a weekly paper, Revolutionary Worker.

In Los Angeles, the Revolutionary Communist Party has long been known to police, most recently for its anti-police rhetoric and slogans during the riots last spring. Observers believe it has only a few dozen active members in the Los Angeles area.

A U.S. official said that the listed groups and people in the United States were not regarded as a problem by U.S. authorities because “as far as we know they haven’t broken any laws.”

In a press conference Tuesday, Fujimori called Guzman’s followers overseas “ambassadors of terror.”

“We are not going to be naive and think that behind a front, these people are innocent,” Fujimori said. “There is clear proof and evidence of their participation in Sendero.”

He did not make it clear whether the government would request the extradition of the people on the list, but he suggested that their Peruvian citizenship could be taken away. “That way they will be left without a Peruvian passport,” he said. “Nonetheless, it should be made clear that this is a long process.”

There are no legal charges on file in Peru against most of the groups and individuals listed.

Those listed include Luis Arce Borja, a Peruvian resident of Brussels and editor of El Diario International, a pro-Sendero periodical.