Alberto Fujimori, descendant of a Japanese man nicknamed “Chino”

For his oriental features he received the nickname “Chino”, despite the fact that he was a descendant JapaneseBorn in 1938, he ran Peru’s tough government from 1990 to 2000.

The first time he defeated writer Mario Vargas Llosa as an anti-establishment candidate and was elected re-elected two more times amid allegations of fraud.

He staged a coup d’etat

On April 5, 1992, Fujimori gave coup d’etat with the support of the Armed Forces which led him to assume all the powers of the state after the closure of Congress and to interfere with the judicial system and the Court of Constitutional Guarantees.

Under pressure from countries and international organizations such as the Organization of American States (OAS), the ruler convened a Constituent Congress, which in 1993 promulgated a new Political Constitution, which is still in force today.

In 1994, he divorced Susana Higuchi after a domestic dispute that included informing on him wife before Congress what it was was tortured by security servicesand led her eldest daughter Keiko to become the country’s first lady when she was just 19 years old.

Higuchi died in December 2021 at the age of 71 from lung cancer, which he had been suffering from in recent years.

Fujimori’s supporters admire him for defeating the Sendero Luminoso and MRTA terrorist groups during his rule, and for stopping the “hyperinflation” he inherited from the first government of Alan Garcia (1985-1990).

Serious human rights violations under the Fujimori government

However, during his term, serious human rights violations were also committed and the largest corruption network in Peruvian history was created, headed by his “shadow” adviser Vladimiro Montesinos, who is also in prison.

After a videotape was released in September 2000 showing Montesinos giving money to an opposition congressman, he was forced to announce that he was going to call new elections, which he said he would not attend.

Two months later, he fled the country and resigned as president via fax sent from Japan, where he remained until 2005, when he went to Chile, which extradited him to Peru in 2007.

Fujimori in the “golden prison”

The former ruler had been serving his sentence since 2009 in a Lima police prison that had been set up exclusively for him and which, according to him, opponents, it was a “golden prison” This could not compare with the conditions of the rest of the prisoner country, where he constantly received his family and supporters.

In this prison he gradually acquired cellmates.

For months he shared this with Alejandro Toledo, his main opponent at the end of his mandate, and Pedro Castillo, whose message about the coup reminded many of Fujimori’s message in 1992.

Over the past few years, “El Chino” has undergone six surgeries to treat a precancerous tongue condition known as leukoplakia, and has also suffered from stomach, vascular, blood pressure and lung problems.

Pedro Pablo Kuczynski pardons Fujimori

In 2017, then-President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski pardoned him on the grounds that a medical commission had found that he suffered from a “progressive, degenerative and incurable disease” and that the conditions of detention posed a serious threat to his life.

A later investigation revealed that the pardon was granted as a result of apparent political agreement with the former president’s youngest sonthen-lawmaker Kenji Fujimori to prevent impeachment over corruption allegations against Kuczynski, who finally resigned in March 2018.

The presidential pardon was later overturned by a judge, and Fujimori was forced to return to prison after Kuczynski left office and Kenji was removed by Congress amid a bitter political confrontation with his sister Keiko.

In October 2021, he underwent cardiac catheterization at an exclusive Lima clinic to clear a blocked artery, and was hospitalized again in November due to complications from pulmonary fibrosis.

To these diseases he added a new malignant tumor, discovered in May last year.

Fujimori to be tried in Pativilka case

At the legal level, the Peruvian justice system confirmed in January 2020 that Fujimori should be tried in the “Pativilca case,” in which Colina’s group is accused of killing six community leaders from that city in the northern Lima region.

The controversy surrounding his figure has affected two of his four children, considered his political heirs: three-time presidential candidate Keiko, who is on trial for money laundering, and former lawmaker Kenji, who was sentenced to 54 months in prison for human trafficking.

Last December, his figure last caused controversy.

The Constitutional Court ordered his release, despite rulings by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IDC), the latest example of the influence he wielded over power until the last minute and the ability to divide society. EFE