How do you protest a fraudulent election? The Peruvian way. Three days of massive protests greeted the inauguration of Alberto Fujimori to an unconstitutional third presidential term. On July 26, over 100,000 people marched in Lima in a nonviolent demonstration. They were met by 40,000 riot police armed with tear gas and live ammunition, who cordoned off most of downtown Lima with armored cars. Police fired tear gas canisters directly into the crowd, used water cannons, and fired live bullets into the air. Three protesters were shot and 80 people injured in the melee. In response, demonstrators split into groups and set fire to several government buildings, including the National Elections Board building, the state bank building, and the hated Palace of Justice. One large group surrounded and set fire to the former Education Ministry building, one of the tallest office towers in Lima. Demonstrators fought off police and fire department personnel, chanting "the dictatorship will fall!" A smaller group of demonstrators circled around behind police lines and attacked the National Palace, Fujimori's official residence.

Why the violence? Back in May, international monitors refused to certify the Peruvian elections, saying that media bias, handouts to the poor to buy votes for Fujimori, and suspicious glitches in the computer that counts votes had made the election undemocratic. Fujimori's opponent, Alejandro Toledo, asked only that the May election be delayed for three weeks while the computer problems were fixed, but Fujimori refused. Toledo asked Peruvians to boycott the election, and final returns showed that nearly half the electorate either refused to vote or defaced their ballots in protest. In addition, Toledo received 17% of the vote from Peruvians who did cast ballots. (Many Peruvians are afraid to not vote, since they can be fined $33 if they don't--this is an enormous sum of money in a country where over half the population lives in deep poverty.) While the U.S. government could sanction the dictatorship, it has gone against international opinion and accepted the results of the election. Peru is the second-largest recipient of U.S. aid money in South America, behind Colombia.

In other election news, Robert Mugabe's ZANU-PF party won a narrow majority in Zimbabwe's parliamentary elections in late June. ZANU-PF won 62 seats to the opposition Movement for Democratic Change's 57 seats. MDC has claimed election fraud in 30 of the races, and election observers from the European Union have said that the elections were marred by violence and intimidation. Judicial challenges may overturn some of the seats won by ZANU-PF or force a by-election in some districts. The results have been a blow for Mugabe, whose party previously held 147 of the 150 seats in Parliament. Mugabe's strongest support was in rural areas, where squatters continue to occupy white-owned farms and demand land reform. Urban voters, on the other hand, supported MDC in a show of anger over poor economic conditions caused by punitive IMF and World Bank actions over Zimbabwe's involvement in the Congo war and strikes by white-owned businesses and farms protesting land reform. Mugabe now lacks a majority to push through changes in the constitution to further his land reform proposals. In early July, he attempted to form a coalition government with MDC, but MDC party leader Morgan Tsvangirai responded by forming his own shadow cabinet and calling for Mugabe to be impeached. Mugabe has been forced to name an almost entirely new cabinet, and to cut the number of cabinet ministers in half. Nevertheless, Mugabe's government is still pushing ahead with the transfer of 200 white-owned farms to black peasants.

On July 19, the World Diamond Congress adopted a resolution to ban the sale of conflict diamonds--gems sold to support the civil wars in the Congo, Sierra Leone, and Angola. The World Diamond Congress is made up of two main groups that represent the diamond industry: the World Federation of Diamond Bourses and the International Diamond Manufacturers Association. The resolution calls for a system that would seal diamonds into packets at or near each mining site and provide a certificate of origin for each sealed packet. Diamond buyers have pledged to buy only certified packets, while the WDC has called on the main diamond exporting countries (particularly South Africa, Botswana, and Namibia) to pass laws that would make it a criminal offense for individuals or companies to sell or export uncertified packets.

It's not surprising that the resolution places the burden of enforcement and the costs of certification onto the diamond exporting countries, while removing that burden from the diamond dealers. De Beers, which controls two-thirds of the market in uncut diamonds, is supporting this proposal as the best solution to avoid the bad publicity over conflict gems; it also will reduce the supply of diamonds on the market and therefore drive up the price. Global Witness, a human rights organization that has helped bring the role of conflict diamonds to world attention, is worried about the proposal, and for good reason. A U.N. ban on uncertified diamonds from Angola has done little to stop UNITA from selling gems, because of corruption in the Angolan certification system. In other words, it's easy to forge certificates. Other diamond-exporting countries, such as Russia, are unwilling to implement a certification system, ostensibly because of the cost, but also because it's a double-edged sword. Having witnessed what economic sanctions can do to a country like Iraq, many nations are justifiably wary about controls that can, at the whim of the U.S., make their natural resources easy to ban from world markets.