8
provided the guarantee of due process for the alleged victims in the framework of a regular
judicial proceeding,” and
b)
“Even when the lower court judgment (which the petitioners did not challenge) came
out against the petitioners, this in no [way] implied that the judicial process that was underway
had not been carried out in the framework of a regular process and with respect for the
guarantees of due process.”
29.
Therefore, the State “observ[ed] with concern the ‘logical’ standard used by the
Inter-American Commission on assuming that orders that had not been issued by the
Peruvian judicial authorities would be ineffective.”
30.
On this point, the Commission highlighted that in its initial communication with
the State before the Commission, received on October 4, 2001, the State “expressly
indicated that the requirements contemplated in Articles 46(1), clauses a) and b), had
been complied with in this case, without making any distinction with regard to the two
groups of [alleged] victims.” The Commission added that “at that time, the State did not
request [...] that any procedural consideration be granted with regard to the second
group of workers’ failure to apply for an appeal remedy” and that, on the contrary, “the
State did not consider this fact to be a failure to comply with the requirement that
domestic remedies be exhausted.” Therefore, “the Commission consider[ed] that by
virtue of the estoppel principle, the State was not authorized to change the position it
held in its first response to the Commission, even less so when the petitioners could
make certain procedural decisions - like the decision on whether to start a friendly
settlement proceeding - based precisely on that position.” The Commission also indicated
that the State “did not submit specific arguments on the effectiveness of the remedy it
indicates as not exhausted, neither before the Commission nor before the Court,” and
added that “the acknowledgment of the State’s international responsibility for violating
Article 25 of the Convention is based precisely on the lack of effective domestic judicial
procedures available to the [alleged] victims.”
31.
According to the Commission, it declared the application admissible taking into
consideration “the long period of time that had passed since the filing of the request for
amparo and the lower court ruling, and [...] the slim chance that a remedy challenging
the above-mentioned judgment could be effective given the case law upheld by the
Constitutional and Social Law Chamber with regard to the constitutionality of the
retroactive application of Decree 25876.” Therefore, “the Commission consider[ed] that
the [argument] submitted by the State [...] in its brief on the admissibility of the case is,
in addition to being untimely, inadmissible on its substance.”
32.
For his part, the representative indicated that the second group of 48 petitioners
took recourse “to the exception contained in Article 46(2)(c) of the American Convention
for the non-exhaustion” of domestic remedies due to the “significant and unjustified
delay of five (05) years and seven (07) months before the issuing of the [lower] court
ruling, with obviously a much greater delay in store for the final judgment.” The
representative also indicated that “under the [d]ictatorship of former President Fujimori
[...] obtaining an impartial and independent judicial ruling or [o]rder - much less a
[j]udicial [o]rder against the State - was not only highly improbable, but rather
impossible.” Finally, the representative indicated that the State’s arguments with regard
to this point “have not been submitted [...] as a [p]reliminary [o]bjection of lack of
jurisdiction due to an alleged lack of exhaustion of domestic remedies.”
33.
With regard to this, even though the submission of a preliminary objection is not
at issue, the Tribunal notes that in a separate case against Peru, it indicated that:
each act of acknowledgment made by [that State, both domestically and] before the
Commission created estoppel. Therefore, by admitting the legitimacy of the claim asserted
in the proceeding before the Commission through a unilateral juridical act of
acknowledgement, Peru is barred from adopting a contradictory position thereafter. The