Prisoners hung posters of their demands and boldly flew red flags during the uprising on February 8. 300 heavily armored government troops surrounded Yanamayo during the uprising. Tens of thousands have been massacred, disappeared or executed by government forces. In 1992, the president of Peru, Alberto Fujimori, escalated the repression by staging a coup, dismissing congress and the courts to assume dictatorial rule. With US assistance, a system of secret trials with hooded judges was established with no due process.
Political prisoners continue to be railroaded into Peru's jails.
Yanamayo prison, which holds around 400 prisoners, is one of the most notorious and deadly on earth. It is located on an isolated highland near Peru's border with Bolivia 12,700 feet high in the Andes. By holding two dozen guards hostage for two days, the heroic prisoners forced Fujimori, and the international press, to speak to their just demands. According to Peruvian press accounts, the rebellion was ignited by guards murdering a prisoner when 60 to 70 police, armed with shotguns and tear gas, stormed into Pavilion 4. During a similar attack on November 23 the prison warden Colonel Oscar Altamirano Flores had stormed Pavilion 4 with 50 troops, shooting into the air and firing tear gas.