September-October 1999

 

Condemn the Arrest of Com. Feliciano

 

On the morning of July 14 the puppet Fujimori regime of Peru arrested Com. Feliciano (Oscar Ramirez Durand), the leader of the Communist Party of Peru (PCP). Com. Feliciano had taken up responsibility of the Central Committee of the PCP after the arrest of Com. Gonzalo, the Chairman of the PCP, in September 1992. Though it is yet another blow to the Maoist forces of Peru, it cannot alter the course of the ongoing people’s war in Peru which continues under the new leadership of Com. Artimieo who has taken the place of Com. Feliciano.

The PCP has a glorious history, first under the stewardship of Comrade Mariategui in the 1920s and 1930s and then under its present Chairman, Com. Gonzalo, in the post-1960 period. In the past few years after the arrest of Com. Gonzalo and some other CC members, the puppet Fujimori regime and its US sponsors went out of their way to propagate that ‘the PCP is finished’, that there is no leadership for the PCP and so on. They concocted the hoax of the ‘Peace Accords’ that called for the withdrawal of the armed struggle and claimed that the author of the ‘peace accords’ was Comrade Gonzalo himself. The ruling classes of Peru, under the tutelage of the Yankee imperialists, thus unleashed a systematic conspiratorial campaign to shatter the image of the PCP leadership, particularly its Chairman, Gonzalo in order to bring about demoralisation among the ranks of the party and the oppressed masses in general. The sheer fact that in all these seven years the Fujimori regime has not dared to produce Comrade Gonzalo in person to back this false claim is enough proof to show that it is only a police plot to defame the leader and sow confusion among the revolutionary ranks in Peru and all over the world. In fact, the only time when Com. Gonzalo was produced in the court immediately after his arrest, he spoke of the arrests as only "a bend in the road." The Fujimori regime continues to prop up the ROL (Right Opportunist Line) of a large number of PCP leaders who turned renegades in the jails and who are frequently shown over the TV and projected in the press giving them freedom to propagate the demand for withdrawal of the people’s war and participation in peace negotiations.

But the rank and file of the PCP and Peruvian masses have not been fooled by all these tricks of the Fujimori regime and their genocidal armed forces. After the "bend in the road" following the arrest of Com. Gonzalo and other leaders, the party, under the leadership of Com. Feliciano, had reorganised itself and stepped up its attacks against the enemy forces since end- 1995. It continues to make significant advances in the revolutionary movement in face of the brutal attacks unleashed by the fascist Fujimori puppet regime in collusion with Yankee imperialism.

"People’s March" strongly condemns the arrest of Com. Feliciano and demands his immediate release along with Comrade Gonzalo and all other political prisoners in Peru.

 

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