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While the number of dead and wounded increases after more than six weeks of protests in Peru, the media outlet ‘Ojo Público’ carried out an investigation in which it was concluded that the soldiers were using weapons of war such as bullets, pellets and other projectiles, thrown “indiscriminately” towards the protesters.
Violence in the context of the social outbreak continues unstoppable in Peru. The latest events this weekend raised the death toll to 48 in clashes with the Police. The last was that of Víctor Sebastián, who died on Saturday after receiving a blow to the head with a projectile thrown by the agents.
“We regret the death of Víctor Santisteban Yacsavilca in today’s (Saturday) violent demonstrations,” the Ombudsman’s Office reported on its Twitter account. This is the first death from the protests that has occurred in Lima, after Congress refused to advance the elections for this year as Boluarte had requested on Friday.
On Sunday, a vigil for the memory of Santisteban took place in the center of the capital, Lima. The family of the deceased, aged 55, demands that the authorities identify those responsible for the death. For its part, the Ministry of the Interior has already announced that there is an investigation underway by the Homicide Division of the National Police together with the Prosecutor’s Office.
Precisely this week, President Dina Boluarte had said in a recount to the foreign press that the groups behind the violent protests “seek a death in Lima.” “They say that a death in Lima is worth a hundred in the province,” lamented the president on Tuesday at the Government Palace.
Weapons of war?
In the midst of the escalation of violence, the Peruvian media outlet ‘Ojo Público’ published a journalistic investigation in which it maintains that the security forces used lethal firearms such as HK rifles, an assault weapon, during clashes with protesters .
“A series of autopsies and ballistic reports -obtained by ‘Ojo Público’- that are part of the prosecutor’s investigation for qualified homicide confirm deaths of people -not all of them were protesters- by weapons for military use. It is also recorded that in at least 30 of the civilians killed during the protests, the causative agents were projectiles from single-charge firearms, that is, rifles or pistols; and specialists rule out that they were from pellets or tear gas,” the article reads.
For their part, other organizations in defense of human rights. H H. They also denounced that during the episodes of violence, bullets and pellets have been used “indiscriminately” against the demonstrators by the uniformed officers.
If verified, the Peruvian Police would be committing a crime, since the law expressly prohibits the use of this type of weapon in the management and control of public demonstrations.
The rebel Congress and Boluarte respond
After a session of more than seven hours, Congress rejected an advance of the general elections to 2023 early Saturday morning, as President Boluarte had requested in the face of the worsening situation and in an attempt to find a way out of the serious crisis. social and political crisis that the country has been undergoing for the past seven weeks.
The proposal presented by Fujimori congressman Hernando Guerra García, from the right-wing Fuerza Popular (FP) party, was defeated by 65 votes to 45, therefore the project to hold the general elections in April 2024 is maintained. The proposal even anticipated the elections for October so that the president, congressmen and elective authorities will hand over power in December 2023.
But the left insisted that a referendum on the Constituent Assembly should be included, a proposal rejected by a broad spectrum of Peruvian politics. Other forces denounced an alleged maneuver to gain electoral advantage by Fuerza Popular, the party of former presidential candidate Keiko Fujimori.
Boluarte’s response came on Sunday night through a message to the nation in which he ruled out resigning and made a new proposal for electoral advancement.
The president said that she will propose a reform of the Constitution if the legislators refuse to advance the presidential elections to October 2023. If this does not work either, a “total reform” of the 1993 Constitution will be activated, in the words of Boluarte herself in her speech national.
Video edited by: Marina Sardiña; with information from R.F.I. and local media.
