Peru: twenty years on from the hostage crisis

Twenty years ago, the four-month ordeal of 72 hostages held captive at the residence of the Japanese ambassador to Peru came to an end. For the ICRC, it meant deploying its humanitarian resources to best effect, which involved acting as a neutral intermediary. The ICRC did its utmost to encourage dialogue between the parties, ensure that the hostages were allowed to communicate with their families and provide food, sanitation and medical assistance.

Some of the people who experienced the ordeal recall the role played by the ICRC in the video below. Michel Minnig, head of the ICRC delegation in Peru at the time, Marco Miyashiro, Peru's national police chief, Morihisa Aoki, former Japanese ambassador to Peru, and Akira Nakata from the Japanese Red Cross Society look back at the harrowing experience and explain, with the clarity that comes with the passage of time, how these events changed their lives.