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Japan Bulldozes Peru Embassy Site, Closing Book On Hostage Crisis

By Andrew Cawthorne, Reuters



     LIMA (October 14, 1997) - Japan on Tuesday began demolishing
its bombed-out and gutted diplomatic residence in Peru, empty
since the violent culmination there in April of Latin America's
longest hostage crisis.
     Bulldozers and dump-trucks squeezed through the elegant
white-washed mansion's wooden gates to begin shifting debris and
knocking down walls from mid-morning.
     The demolition, expected to last three days, is the
postscript to an international crisis that tormented the
governments of Lima and Tokyo for 126 days.
     "We are erasing the last remains of this nightmare," said a
special policeman on guard outside the residence where he also
stood for most of the 126 days Marxist rebels held the building.
"Today it's a little bit more relaxed after all that tension."
     The colonnaded home, built as a mockup of the antebellum
home in "Gone with the Wind", has been a shell since crack
Peruvian troops burst in April 22 to rescue alive all but one of
the 72 VIP captives.
     The mansion's walls are pockmarked with bullets and damaged
by the bombs that exploded from tunnels underneath, while its
crater-laden interior is blackened by fire.
     "The (Japanese) embassy wants to demolish the building as
soon as possible because it houses a bad memory of those events
on December 17," said Gaston Barua, the mayor of San Isidro, the
middle-class district of Lima where the residence lies.
     The mansion was thrust into the international spotlight on
that date in 1996 when heavily armed rebels from the Tupac Amaru
Revolutionary Movement (MRTA) blew their way through a back wall
into a high-society banquet.
     They took more than 500 hostages, releasing most in the
early days of the crisis, but holding 72 inside the sweltering
and increasingly dirty and rat-infested mansion -- where
telephone, electricity, and water services were cut off -- until
Peru's government sent in troops.
     In a burst of explosions and gunfire, 140 troops, many
emerging from tunnels, swarmed into the residence to rescue all
but one of the hostages. A captive judge, two soldiers, and all
14 rebels died in the battle.
     The imminent disappearance of the building, which became
familiar worldwide, has stirred emotions here.
     "It brings up many deep feelings, thinking of that place
where we lived through so many things, locked up inside," Jesuit
priest Juan Julio Wicht, a former hostage, told local media.
     "Peru and the world knew the house and the marquee outside
.. but I especially remember the circular staircase where I held
half-way up the first mass we had on December 22 .. the same
place where four months later (MRTA leader Nestor) Cerpa and
(second-in-command Rolly) Rojas died."
     San Isidro authorities want to turn the land into a peace
park as a testimony to Peru's desire to put behind it 17 years of
guerrilla conflict, and to its close ties with Japan. But Tokyo
has not yet said what it will do with the 6,000 square meter
site, estimated to be worth $4 million and $5 million.
     Neighbors greeted Tuesday's demolition with poignant relief.
"On the one hand, it's sad to have to destroy such a beautiful
house. But now it's a desolate place, with sad memories, so I am
happy it is coming down," said Bertha de Moya, watching the work
from her house a few meters across the road where she watched the
crisis.
     Japan's new ambassador to Peru, Yoshizo Konushi, is in a
Lima hotel while a replacement for the home of his predecessor,
Morihisa Aoki, is sought.

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