News stories by Ángel Páez, page 7

The Peruvian government has moved to protect the armed forces and police against investigations for crimes committed in the line of duty, especially in areas convulsed by social protests or where remnants of the Maoist Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) guerrillas are still active.

'Did I have a feather on my head and kill the policemen myself?' Mercedes Cabanillas responded when journalists asked her if, as interior minister of Peru, she assumed responsibility for the operation that led to the deaths of 24 members of the police and at least nine indigenous protesters near the Amazon jungle town of Bagua.

'One way of ensuring the future of journalism is to improve content quality, and this means investigating what is deliberately hidden, like corruption,' said Gerardo Reyes, a reporter for the Miami newspaper El Nuevo Herald, on a visit to the Peruvian capital.

Former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori was sentenced to 7.5 years in prison Monday for giving 15 million dollars in public funds to his security chief Vladimiro Montesinos in the last few weeks of his government.

Former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000) admitted that he paid 15 million dollars to his former security chief Vladimiro Montesinos on Sept. 22, 2000, just a few hours before the adviser fled to Panama.

Wednesday was the second day of a three-day strike declared by trade unions and social movements in Peru to protest the economic policies of President Alan García.

Peru’s Interior Minister Mercedes Cabanillas attempted to promote 11 police officials for their performance in the brutal Jun. 5 crackdown on native protests against government decrees that opened up indigenous land in the Amazon jungle to oil, mining, logging and agribusiness companies.

The Peruvian Congress repealed Thursday two of the most controversial decrees that sparked protests by indigenous groups which ended in bloodshed early this month.

At the initiative of the opposition parties, the Peruvian parliament approved the creation of a committee to investigate the clash early this month between indigenous protesters and the police near the town of Bagua in the northern province of Amazonas, which according to official reports left a death toll of 34.

Keiko Sofía Fujimori, who is planning to run for president of Peru in 2011, is having difficulty proving that her father, who governed this country from 1990 to 2000, did not make illicit use of public funds to pay for her studies and those of her brothers and sister at universities in the United States.