Normalizing Justice

Several news agencies have reported that former Peruvian head of state Alberto Fujimori now faces extradition to Peru on human rights abuse charges. Based on evidence of a direct link between Fujimori and death squads that murdered and disappeared Peruvian students and other citizens during the early 1990s, Chile’s Supreme Court has ruled to extradite the former head of state.

In legal terms, the diplomatic immunity of a head of state (for actions taken while in office) has been considered sacrosanct until recently. Great Britain’s decision to extradite former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet to Spain, where he faced human rights abuse charges, was the landmark case that opened this door in a more meaningful way than the international community had ever seen. More recent cases of head of state extradition (also on charges of crimes against humanity) include the extradition of Sierra Leone’s Charles Taylor, and Serbia’s Slobodan Milosevic.

Unlike those precedent-setting cases, the extradition of Fujimori sets a new kind of standard: one for the increased normalization and de-politicization of such extradition requests. Fujimori’s case was submitted through domestic channels, not through international mediators; he is also being handed over to Peru’s own court system and not to an international criminal tribunal or the Hague. Whether this will become the preferred mode of conduct for those seeking justice for such human rights abuses remains to be seen. In broad terms, the scope of these cases varies fairly significantly (although the Geneva Conventions do not set statistical thresholds for these kinds of crimes). The cases linked to Fuijimori’s administration are in the dozens, whereas Milosevic and Taylor’s actions affected thousands of lives and significantly destabilized their regions. Pinochet’s acts were also more wide-reaching throughout his regime, and arguably more notorious.

Another factor to be considered is Peru’s relative stability and its active pursuit of justice for the murders committed by the death squads. This goes much further than other governments in the region have attempted (such as El Salvador’s). It may also be more than the governments of Sierra Leone or Serbia were ever willing or able to attempt - one can witness this more dysfunctional dynamic in Sudan today, where the International Criminal Court has brought charges against two senior officials from Khartoum. So while Peru’s actions are laudable, they do not necessarily disprove the need for an international court system to adjudicate cases of human rights violations that states are incapable or unwilling to prosecute.