LIMA: Peru bid an emotional farewell to its embattled ex-president Alberto Fujimori on Saturday after three days of national mourning marked by expressions of nostalgia for his iron rule. Fujimori was revered by many in Peru for crushing a bloody leftist insurgency and helping to boost the economy when he was in office from 1990 to 2000. “He had the courage to fight terrorism,” said Edgar Grados, a 43-year-old businessman who traveled more than 100 kilometers for the funeral. “Fujimorism never dies,” he told AFP. But to others, Fujimori was a power-hungry autocrat who committed gross human rights abuses, for which he spent 16 years in prison. The 86-year-old man died on Wednesday after a long battle with cancer. “Finally you are freed from hatred and revenge,” his daughter Keiko told a packed funeral Mass at the 1,500-capacity National Theater in Lima, denouncing “16 years of unjust imprisonment.” Mourners clapped and chanted “Chino, Chino”, Fujimori’s nickname, a nod to his Asian heritage, although his family was originally from Japan. A large portrait of the late leader wearing a presidential sash stood on the altar next to his casket, which was draped in a Peruvian flag. Outside, hundreds of people, many carrying Fujimori dolls and pictures, watched the action on a giant screen. After the funeral, his casket was received with state honors at the presidential palace in a ceremony presided over by President Dina Boluarte. He was then buried in a Huachipa ceremony east of Lima. While it has been nearly a quarter of a century since he dramatically faxed his resignation from Japan amid a corruption scandal, Fujimori loomed large in public life in Peru until his death. Thousands of people lined up on Thursday and Friday to see him lie in state in an open casket at the Ministry of Culture. “We are very nostalgic,” 30-year-old Jesus Neyra told AFP Friday night as he waited in line. “The president who brought peace, economic stability, freedom and democracy to the country is gone. He left a great legacy.” But relatives of victims of army massacres carried out on his watch lamented that he went to the grave without showing remorse for their deaths. “He left without asking for their family’s forgiveness, he made a mockery of us,” Gladys Rubina, the sister of one of the civilian victims, told AFP.
