Fujimori’s Heavy Hand

Caught up in a desperate effort to serve a legally unprecedented third term, Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori has demonstrated once again that he does not take opposition lightly. Baruch Ivcher, the owner of a Lima TV station, is just his latest victim.

Ivcher, an Israeli who became a citizen in 1984, was stripped of his Peruvian nationality recently in retaliation for a report broadcast by his Frecuencia Latina station that documented how Fujimori’s government had secretly recorded telephone conversations of several prominent Peruvians. Before this case broke, Frecuencia Latina did a series of stories detailing rampant corruption and human rights abuses perpetrated by Fujimori’s security forces.

Clearly it was all too much for the president, now in his second term and struggling to open the door to succeed himself again. Now a small group of Frecuencia Latina shareholders with connections to Fujimori are plotting to take over the station. After all, they said, Peruvian law does not allow foreigners to hold local media ownership, and Ivcher has just become a noncitizen. Death threats and fear of persecution have driven the broadcaster to seek refuge in Miami.

The respected Human Rights Watch/Americas has expressed its concern over these developments and others that affect freedom of the press in Peru. It was only last May that Fujimori’s party maneuvered in Congress to dismiss three judges who had ruled he could not seek a third term. The president risks political isolation of his country if he persists in this campaign, whatever his craving for retaining power.