 Former Peruvian dictator Alberto Fujimori, who was in jail for 16 years for brutal human rights violations, has been freed. How did this come about? UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has invoked article 99 of the organization's charter to seek a security council discussion on Palestine. What does this mean? This is a really debrief. These are your stories for the day. And before we go any further, if you're watching this on YouTube, please hit that subscribe button. Former Peruvian dictator Alberto Fujimori, who was in jail on a 25-year term for human rights violations, was freed after just 16 years in jail. He was released after a decision by the country's top court, despite disapproval from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. Fujimori, who was in power for 10 years, left a bloody legacy with activists and indigenous people bearing the brunt. The decision is all the more controversial as it came on the eve of the first anniversary of the coup against left-wing president Pedro Castillo, who continues to remain in prison. We go to Zoya Alexander to understand why Fujimori was released and the situation in Peru on the eve of the coup anniversary. Thank you so much for joining us, Zoe. So Alberto Fujimori, a very notorious dictator, very dark human rights record. So how is it that he got released? So today, Peru was shocked to hear the news that former Peruvian dictator Alberto Fujimori was freed from prison on humanitarian grounds. The case of Alberto Fujimori has really been quite controversial in the past several years, with many different pardons being granted by different presidents than courts responding to those pardons. What's important in this is to note that Fujimori, who governed Peru for a decade, was responsible for many, many mass human rights violations. He governed the country while it fought the counterinsurgency operation against the Shining Path guerrilla group. But during this period carried out a policy which labeled sort of anyone who lived in the countryside, indigenous people and peasants as quote unquote terrorists and deemed them, for example, military targets. So we saw many, many massacres occur under his watch, the forcible sterilization of indigenous women. And there was a very long struggle by human rights organizations in the country, really to fight for his conviction against him, sentencing against him, and to make sure that he actually was brought to justice. And again, once he was brought to justice and extradited to Peru on these charges and specifically regarding the slaying of 25 people in a massacre, there was again a constant battle by the far right to call for his pardon. His daughter actually ran for president and was the runner up to in the presidential elections in 2021. And there had previously been a deal negotiated calling for, again, his humanitarian pardon, arguing that he is suffering from illnesses and that he's old. People of Peru, once again, have really rejected this pardon and the fact that he's leaving prison, they find this a huge insult and injustice to the victims, not only of this massacre, but all of the victims of this period where he ruled over Peru in a very way and also under his rule, he changed the constitution of the country in shining what many call this neoliberal constitution, which denies people fundamental rights and has been one of the primary causes of struggle and the rallying of progressive organizations in the country for the past several years. And it's interesting that actually this, the release of Alberto Fujimori takes place on the eve of the one year anniversary of the coup against Pedro Castillo. Right. And this release, like you said, also coming on just ahead of the one year of the anniversary since Pedro Castillo, the former president of Peru, was overthrown. It's been a very brutal year since a lot of repression, a lot of violence against protesters. So could you also take us to what have been the key developments over the past year? So as I said, again, December 7th is the one year anniversary of the coup against Pedro Castillo, who was the democratically elected president of Peru. He was overthrown in a parliamentary coup immediately arrested by the Peruvian National Police. He remains in prison today. He's accused of different things. He was arrested in the context of him trying to avoid a very concerted effort by the right wing in Congress and in the courts and in the attorney general's office to essentially fabricate a case of corruption against him. He had warned that really since he took office that his government would be under constant attack because the ruling elites in the country did not want to see someone like Pedro Castillo take office. And so, again, this is the anniversary of the coup and we know that after the coup took place on December 7th, Dina Bulwarte took office in Peru, and a series of protests were unleashed across the country. And in response to these protests, the Peruvian security forces, the armed forces, unleashed an extremely brutal repression, carrying out atrocious massacres of protesters, specifically in indigenous and peasant communities in the south of Peru where the protests were the strongest. There were highway blockades that lasted weeks. People organized in all sorts of ways in the big cities. Again, in small towns blocking these central routes, it's estimated that anywhere between 60 and 100 people were killed in the repression of these protests. Dozens of people still remain in prison, accused of a variety of different charges, some accused of terrorism, others accused of disturbing the peace, etc. But there has been an extremely harsh and brutal crackdown on people who were participating in these protests. There were attacks on journalists throughout. So this is one of those anniversaries where people remember the great sacrifices made by the Peruvian people to fight for their democracy, to fight for a restoration of this democracy that was taken away by Dina Bulwarte. One of the main demands of the protests was that she resigned and that the Congress, which permitted the coup against Pedro Castillo be dissolved and that a new constitution be drafted. These slogans were extremely strong on the streets for several months after the coup took place. But again, due to the repression and due to the kind of tiring out of people protests dwindled. But they're expected now, especially with the pardon of Alberto Fujimori, to re-intensify, to take up more strength, because again of this, of the anniversary of what it symbolizes, of the fact that one year later, not only is the former dictator Alberto Fujimori released from prison, but all of the demands of the people who were on the streets for so many days, hundreds and thousands of people. None of these demands have been met. And even worse, the demand for justice for the people that were murdered and brutally massacred by the police and by the armed forces is an even worse state. There has been really no sense of justice for these families that lost their loved ones in these protests. People remain in prison. Meanwhile, Dina Volvarte and members of her cabinet are of course are roaming freely and have complete impunity in this situation. So it's going to be an anniversary of struggle. There's going to be massive protests expected once again. And perhaps when we will see a resumption of protests given this release of Fujimori, maybe once again on this anniversary, we'll see people in the streets demanding resignation of Volvarte and again demanding a new constitution for Peru, a constitution which would grant and guarantee rights for the people, justice for the people, access to their own natural resources and a dismantling of the neoliberal economic order, which has caused so much suffering on the people of Peru. And Secretary General Antonio Guterres invoked Article 99 of the UN Charter calling attention to the situation in Gaza. By invoking this article, he has asked the Security Council to discuss the matter, but it has not mandated a resolution or the enforcement of already existing resolutions. Meanwhile, the death toll in Gaza has crossed 17,000 and the humanitarian condition worsens by the day. We go to Abdul for more details. Abdul, thank you so much for joining us. So Secretary General invoking Article 99 of the UN Charter, the first time he's doing so in his tenure and first time in quite a lot of years, really speaks to the gravity of the situation. But what does this actually mean? What is Article 99 and what are its grounds for doing so? Well, Article 99 just says that United Nations Secretary General can invoke and call for a special meeting of Security Council and bring to their notice the issue which he thinks or she thinks will kind of impact the global security. Nothing more is mentioned in that article and it does not, as it is rightly pointed out in media, that it does not basically mean that it basically Security Council is forced to take a decision. It is only that when the Security Council is not meeting because of various reasons, because of the political reasons or because of the technical reasons, it basically asks them to meet urgently and take the decision. Whether they will take the decision or not basically depends on the, of course, the members of the Security Council, primarily the five permanent members with the V2PAR. Even if they take the decision under this meeting call under this article, Article 99, that does not mean that the penalty measures which are prescribed in Chapter 7 of the United Nations Charter, which basically gives them the Security Council to basically punish the countries which violate its resolutions through sanctions or even through active war, will be taken. Because ultimately it depends on how the political calculations work, works out among those five permanent members in the Council. So just to kind of sum it up, the article only basically gives the Secretary General a prerogative to call for a meeting when the members of the Security Council are not able to meet for some reasons. Right, so in this context it's important to note that the Security Council has met on this issue in the past but has really sort of not been able to address the issue at hand, which is really the genocidal attacks on Palestinians. So what has been happening on that front over the past two months just for the benefit of viewers? Exactly, so the United Nations Security Council has met several times in the last more than two months since the war began. But in most of those occasions except for once when they decided to vote on a resolution which basically asked for a pause, not for humanitarian, not even humanitarian ceasefire. Primarily because the US and the other European allies which have the veto power like UK and France have basically refused to back any resolution which basically even hints that Israel has to comply with certain international laws and that basically is related to the politics under which the world politics, under which the relationship between the US and Israel operates. So whatever resolutions, the only resolution which was taken but also there was no attempt to back it up with any attempt to kind of ask Israel kind of put, maintain Israel's accountability while even saying that there will be repercussions if you do not follow the resolution. So nothing has been taken up beyond that the fact that there once they agreed together to kind of ask Israel for a pause. Israel completely refused to follow even that resolution and on other occasions of course there has been no agreement as I said before primarily because US does not want to pressurize Israel to go into any ceasefire at this moment. So I think that is the part of their understanding and they do not want to kind of any action from the international body on Israeli war in Gaza. Right Abdelsoh also two months since Operation Alexa flood in two months since Israeli attack began we are getting reports almost every day from UN agencies from other organizations detailing the extent of the devastation on Gaza. So maybe could you also take us through what is happening on the ground right now? Well, the overall number of Palestinians killed since October 7. It itself is basically a sign that what is the situation more than 16,200 Palestinians have been killed. As for the last report, there are around 44,000 Palestinians who have been injured. And there are thousands of others who are missing under the debris created by the bombings indiscriminate bombing which Israel has been carrying out for almost more than two months now. The overall as Secretary General in his letter asking for the immediate meeting of the Security Council has said that the immediate humanitarian situation in Gaza is completely worse than any imagination we can have. Hospitals are not able to function and there is an immediate kind of danger of overall complete breakdown of any order in that reason. And that is primarily because no action has been taken by the international community. Even the aid which was flowing in which flowed not of course up to the desired amount, but even during the six, seven days of the pause, the amount of humanitarian aid which reached Gaza, even that amount is no more available. And that basically means that millions of Palestinians are basically completely on the verge of all kinds of you can say starvation, lack of medical aid, lack of sanitation, lack of drinking water, electricity, even telecommunication is often not working these days. So all these things are there and more than almost two million people now are displaced because of the bombing so that you can understand the overall situation is quite bad and it is going to be even worse if no immediate action is taken. Thank you.