Tulane University

Dr. Jo-Marie Burt, Associate Professor of Politics and Director of Latin American Studies at George Mason University, will give a talk entitled “Guilty as Charged: The Trial of Former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori for Human Rights Violations.”

On April 7, 2009, a Peruvian court found former president Alberto Fujimori guilty of grave human rights violations, sentencing him to 25 years in prison. The conviction was hailed as a decisive blow against impunity and a major step forward in consolidating efforts in Latin America to prosecute grave human rights crimes in domestic, rather than international, courts. Drawing on her experiences as an international observer to the Fujimori trial and her extensive writing human rights trials in Peru, Dr. Jo-Marie Burt will discuss the factors that made the Fujimori trial possible, and how it has affected Peru’s ongoing struggle against impunity.

Dr. Jo-Marie Burt is Associate Professor of Politics and Director of Latin American Studies at George Mason University. She was a research consultant for the Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission and has been an international observer to the human rights trials of former presidents in Peru and Guatemala. Dr. Burt is the author of Silencing Civil Society: Political Violence and the Authoritarian State in Peru (Palgrave, 2007), and she has published widely on political violence, human rights and transitional justice in Latin America. She is currently completing a book on human rights prosecutions in Latin America. Dr. Burt holds a Ph.D. in political science from Columbia University.

Sponsored by the Stone Center for Latin American Studies and the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Tulane University.

Free and open to the public. For more information please contact Rebecca Atencio (ratencio@tulane.edu).