Japan’s Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi is not doing himself or his country a favor when he seeks to protect Alberto Fujimori, the disgraced former president of Peru who, while still in office, fled to Japan and from there sent a fax message, announcing his resignation. Fujimori, whose Japan-born parents had emigrated to Peru where he himself was born, claimed that he had been a Japanese citizen all along. Had this been the case, under the Peruvian Constitution, he would not have been eligible to become the president of his country of birth.
Officials in Tokyo, however, indicate that since he fled to Japan, Fujimori has applied for and been granted Japanese citizenship and therefore cannot be extradited.
This is a bad business. Fujimori has vowed that he would not think of returning to Peru until his name has been cleared, which is an absurdity. If the former president is indeed innocent of the charges against him, which include embezzlement, bribery, illegal arms dealing and complicity in two massacres by government death squads, then the only way that he can establish his innocence is to appear before a Peruvian court.
Fujimori did much for his country, not least in breaking the power of the Shining Path guerrilla movement, which had long threatened Peru’s political stability with its brutal rural terrorism. This achievement earned him considerable popularity. But thereafter, in his ten-year tenure of office, power appears to have gone to his head. His regime’s strongman, feared spy chief, Vladimiro Montesinos, who is now in custody, resorted to bribery to prop up the Fujimori government. Video footage, which Montesinos himself recorded, presumably as material for future blackmail, shows him offering tens of thousands of dollars to opposition politicians to back the administration.
Montesinos, whose evidence could implicate many top Peruvians in the web of corruption, may well reveal the extent to which his president was also involved. If Fujimori was a puppet, manipulated by powerful forces beyond his presidential control, then he may have some sort of defense. But this is for the Peruvian courts to judge and no one else.
By refusing to extradite the man to face his accusers, Koizumi’s government is playing a dangerous game. Though it has no official extradition treaty with Peru, it is a member of Interpol and, as such, is committed to enforcing the international warrant that has been issued for Fujimori’s arrest. World public opinion will ask why a premier so apparently committed to reform in Japan, which will require international support, is prepared to jeopardize that support, by refusing to honor an international obligation.
This has raised questions not only in Peru but in other countries as well: Why would a government be so keen to protect a fugitive from justice? No one believes that it is because Japan protects its own. Japan is fiercely protective of its nationals, as all nations are and should be, but draws the line, as all others do and must, when those nationals are accused, by judicial authorities, of involvement in serious crimes. To act otherwise would be the worst damage any country could do to itself.
Then, was there any nexus between Fujimori and some powerful elements in Japan?
