REPORT No. 78/13
CASE 12.794
MERITS
WONG HO WING
PERU
July 18, 2013
I.
SUMMARY
1.
On March 27, 2009, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (hereinafter “the
Inter-American Commission,” “the Commission” or “the IACHR”) received a petition that Luís Lamas
Puccio (hereinafter “the petitioner”) filed on behalf of Wong Ho Wing1 (hereinafter also “the alleged
victim”), in which he asserted that the Republic of Peru (hereinafter “Peru", "the State” or “the
Peruvian State”) had violated rights recognized in the American Convention on Human Rights
(hereinafter “the American Convention” or “the Convention”) in the context of the alleged victim’s
arrest in Peru in October 2008, his detention since that time, and the process pursued to extradite him,
all in response to a request from the People’s Republic of China. The extradition process has continued
to evolve as this petition has moved through the proceedings with the Commission. At the present time
the provisional measures ordered by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights are in effect. Those
measures require that the Peruvian State refrain from extraditing Mr. Wong Ho Wing until such time as
the Inter-American Commission issues its finding on the matter.
2.
On November 1, 2010, the Commission issued admissibility report No. 151/10, in which
it declared the petition admissible with respect to the rights established in articles 4, 5, 7, 8 and 25 of
the American Convention, read in conjunction with the obligations established in Article 1(1) thereof.
3.
The petitioner alleged a number of irregularities in the request seeking Mr. Wong Ho
Wing’s extradition. Even so, the petitioner argued, the Peruvian State did not take prompt action to
demand the guarantees necessary to ensure that the alleged victim would not be executed. He
indicated that the State had failed to comply with the legal requirements with respect to extradition and
asserted that the State’s clear intention was to extradite Mr. Wong Ho Wing to the People’s Republic of
China. According to the petitioner, the process has taken a disproportionate period of time, thereby
converting Mr. Wong Ho Wing’s “provisional arrest” into an arbitrary detention. In more recent
communications, that petitioner underscored the fact that although the Constitutional Court issued a
ruling in Mr. Wong Ho Wing’s favor, the State has employed a variety of tactics to avoid complying with
the Court’s ruling.
4.
The State, for its part, has taken differing positions throughout the history of this case
with the Inter-American Commission. Initially, it maintained that while there were some problems, they
were corrected as a result of the remedies invoked by the petitioner. Subsequently, the State observed
that the Constitutional Court had issued a ruling wherein it ordered the Executive Branch to refrain from
extraditing Mr. Wong Ho Wing. The State therefore requested that the record on the petition be closed
on the grounds that the petition was without purpose and therefore “not properly before the
1
In briefs received from the parties and excerpts from the court records that the IACHR received, the alleged victim is
referred as Wong Ho Wing, “Huang Hai Yong”, “Huang Haiyong”, “Huang He Yong”, “Wong He Yong” and “Wuang He
Yong”.