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IDL-Reporteros via EPA
'Comrade Artemio', leader of the remainder of the Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) group, speaking with the press in the Huallaga river valley, Peru, on Dec. 1, 2011.
Journalists working with Peru's Legal Defense Institute (IDL) and The Guardian traveled deep into Peru's Amazon jungle to conduct a rare interview with 'Comrade Artemio', the most senior leader of the notorious Shining Path guerrilla group to remain at large.
The Guardian's Dan Collyns, who describes Artemio as "a folk legend: loathed and respected in equal measure," says that this is the first time that Artemio has agreed to allow his face to be shown.
The U.S. State Department is offering a $5 million reward for information leading to his arrest or capture.
IDL-Reporteros via Reuters
'Comrade Artemio', left, one of the top leaders of Peru's Shining Path guerrilla movement, talks to his troops at a camp in the Huallaga valley in the Amazon jungle of Peru on Dec. 2, 2011.
The Associated Press reports from LIMA, Peru:
One of two remaining leaders of the Shining Path guerrilla group in Peru said his troops will cease attacks and is calling for a truce to start peace negotiations with the government.
Known as Comrade Artemio, Jose Flores Hala told journalists Friday in his jungle hideout that he "isn't going to deny" that the government won.
Flores said his roughly 150 guerrillas wouldn't demobilize without a "process of frank and real negotiations." But, he told reporters, "We have no intention to brandish arms of war in armed struggle."
The Shining Path has shrunk since its 1980s heyday when it controlled large swaths of the Peruvian countryside. Troops captured leader Abimael Guzman in 1992 and his successor Comrade Feliciano in 1999. Read the full story.
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I believe in revolutions that remove dictatorships, oligarchies, one party rule and other controlling political, religious, and financial blocs that dominate and control society. This goes for most of the middle east rulers who have been overthrown. It goes for the Russian Oligarchy back in 1917. It goes for the Taliban who ruled Afghanisatan before we kicked them out. BUT groups like the Shining Path are just like Castro and the Cuban revolution, or North Korea, and the communists who fought the Japanese, or maybe the Muslim Brotherhood. The Shining Path was a ruthless group who, if won control, would have imposed a commusist government who would have elimated all freedom of press, religion, movement. I do NOT feel sorry for this man or his men. As bad as things have been in South America, the Shing Path was more of the same except worse. Pinochet finally got his ass kicked out. He should have been thrown in a dungeon and tortured like his troops did to innocent people. The Shining Path offered nothing but armed struggle leading to total enslavement.
Bill-4012182 Right, like there was not Japanese occupation in Korea when Kim Il Sung and the communists were the only ones fighting them with a guerrilla movement, there was no Batista dictatorship in Cuba either, before Castro decided to fight him and there was not a corrupted oligarchy with great disregard for the farmers and the poor in Peru before Shinning Path.
Don't compare Castro to the Shining Path.You have no idea what you're talking about.