Fujimori's funeral draws supporters and detractors as debate over his legacy continues to roil the country.
Peru is holding a state funeral for former President Alberto Fujimori, capping three days of national mourning for the leader who died this week and spent time in prison for corruption and human rights abuses during his rule.
The funeral began Saturday at the National Theater in the capital, Lima, before an audience chanting the former president's nickname, “Chino,” given affectionately because of his Japanese ancestry.
His daughter Keiko Fujimori spoke in front of a large photo of her father.
Many Peruvians credit Fujimori with stabilising the economy through a programme of economic shock therapy and dismantling the fearsome Maoist rebel group Shining Path during his rule throughout the 1990s.
But others see him as a corrupt and authoritarian figure whose abuses have scarred and weakened the country's democracy ever since.
“It's a shame because they are recognizing someone who was convicted and sentenced by the state itself for serious crimes,” Gisela Ortiz, sister of a student killed during the Fujimori era, told local radio station Exitosa.
Fujimori was convicted in 2009 on charges related to the killing of 25 people by government death squads during his tenure.
He was released by a Peruvian court because of his age in December, defying an order by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.
In 1992 he staged a self-coup that shut down the legislature and judiciary, and his government oversaw a campaign of forced sterilization targeting women in the country's poor, largely indigenous rural areas.
A government Truth Commission has estimated that nearly 70,000 people were killed during the fight against the Shining Path, a period of conflict that has left lasting scars in Peru.
Still, the violence spread by the armed group, known as the Shining Path, was such that many Peruvians were willing to forgive the government's own repressive tactics.
“Thanks to him, terrorism is over,” Felicita Ruiz, who came from the Andean region of Ayacucho to pay her respects to Fujimori in Lima, told Reuters news agency.
Running as a modest political outsider against national literary hero Mario Vargas Llosa, Fujimori's victory in the 1990 presidential election shocked the country.
His fall was as dramatic as his rise, with corruption scandals and massacres by government death squads tarnishing his reputation.
He fled Peru after images emerged of his spy chief, Vladimiro Montesinos, distributing cash to government officials, and faxed his resignation from Japan in 2000.
