ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, December 24, 1996 TAG: 9612240091
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: LIMA, PERU
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
Inside the walls of the occupied ambassador's compound, there is no gun- pointing or threatening. Only a routine set up by hostages to stay sane and fit: lectures and debates, card-playing, exercise sessions, toilet-cleaning duty - and sleep.
``There's conversation, disagreements, discussions. It's a very special environment, a microclimate,'' said Javier Diez Canseco, a Peruvian congressman freed Friday.
Though the two-story house stinks of the unwashed, freed hostages say civilization persists inside its walls, where hostages trade life stories, dreams and jokes.
The Tupac Amaru rebels seized the Japanese ambassador's residence Tuesday during a diplomatic party. They have freed the majority of their hostages since then, winnowing their captives down to a select group of 140 Peruvian and Japanese VIPs.
On Sunday morning, hours before the largest hostage release in the six-day crisis, Catholic priest Juan Julio Wicht said Mass on a stairway inside the compound.
The priest was offered freedom Sunday, but chose to remain.
The roughly 20 young rebels patrol the halls calmly, automatic rifles slung over their backs, politely shooing hostages back into their assigned rooms.
The gunmen take turns napping and, unlike the hostages, always look fresh.
Rebel commander Nestor Cerpa takes every opportunity to preach about the injustice suffered by Peru's poor, and gets lectured back by a brain pool of people who run embassies, universities and international aid programs.
Nobody even thinks about trying to escape, the freed hostages said.
The rebels told hostages early on that they'd mined the rooms, roof and patio where guests at Ambassador Morihisa Aoki's cocktail gala dropped their hors d'oeuvres Tuesday night in the lightning rebel takeover.
``You knew there was no point in any foolishness, or trying to escape,'' Peruvian pollster Alfredo Torres told the El Comercio newspaper. ``We had no proof, but none of us wanted to test this.''
Argentine businessman Julio Soriano, who got out Sunday, at one point encountered a dozing rebel seated on the carpet, his automatic rifle lying in his lap.
``I thought about my son, and I decided not to do anything,'' he told a Buenos Aires radio station.
After the rebels released the women and elderly, the hostages organized themselves. In each crowded room, they elected a governor who delegated the cleaning of bathrooms, the emptying of ashtrays, the collecting and distribution of meals that had to be shared among three to four men.
In some of the plush, carpeted rooms, hostages were assigned a square meter of space after furniture was pushed into corners. In others, they had to sleep in shifts.
One of the three Americans in Andre Deschenes' room ``was an example to us because he taught me how to sleep standing up,'' the Canadian trade official said Monday.
Throughout, Ambassador Aoki was everybody's hero.
``He was a tremendous host through what he called ironically the longest cocktail party he'd ever organized,'' said Hubert Zandstra, director of the International Potato Center.
Aoki tried to cheer up the hostages who fell into depression, and handed out everything from his clothes to his wife's lipstick - which was used for signs diplomats pressed to the grated windows demanding the restoration of water and electricity.
Deschenes said the rebels treated all hostages equally - regardless of nationality. Alejandro Toledo, a former Peruvian presidential candidate, said a police general was told he'd be the first to die unless medicine was delivered Wednesday to mend the leg wound of a female rebel, the only inside casualty of the previous night's siege.
Some hostages said the captors wore explosive-laden backpacks that could be detonated with the pull of a chest cord.
Still, ``At no time did they lose their cool or their resolve,'' Canadian mining executive Kieran Metcalfe said.
The rebels drew such respect from their hostages that some Peruvian press reports suggested they had developed Stockholm syndrome - the unexpected sympathy developed by hostages for their captors.
``I'm not sure if anybody necessarily took sides with the people involved, but I think many people developed some respect for these people,'' Metcalfe said.
About half the 225 hostages released Sunday shook hands with the captors as they left, Metcalfe said.
``And, strange as it may seem, I heard many of them wishing them good luck,'' he added.
LENGTH: Medium: 88 linesby CNB