Huamanga, Peru (AFP) – The capital of the Ayacucho region on Friday became the deadliest area of Peru’s protests calling for general elections, and many residents were reminded of yesterday’s bloody past of human rights abuses that occurred in this region.
On the streets of the historic center of Huamanga, bonfires can be seen at different angles on Friday. Numerous groups of demonstrators clashed with police in that city amid a wave of protests across the country, which has so far reached 20 deaths and more than 200 injuries in less than a week.
“We are going back to those painful years,” said Rocío Leandro, leader of the Ayacucho Defense Front, an organization that discloses residents’ demands to the authorities. He was referring to the bloody period from 1980 to 2000 in which Peru’s internal armed conflict broke out, which saw serious human rights abuses and abuses by officers in military uniform.
The demonstrators are also calling for the resignation of President Dina Boulwart and Parliament, the most unpopular state entity in the country, according to all opinion polls.
“We will not allow them to shut our mouths and lock us in our homes,” Leandro warned.
Polwart, who replaced Pedro Castillo, issued an emergency decree for 30 days on Wednesday, suspending public rights and liberties in an effort to contain protests that have shut down communication routes, affecting commerce and tourism.
Thursday’s clashes in Huamanga, in which the army intervened, left eight dead and 52 injured when some demonstrators tried to enter Ayacucho airport. All the victims were shot: seven were shot in the chest and one was shot in the head, according to data from the prosecutor’s office. One of them was a student of the National University of San Cristobal de Huamanga: his name was Climir Rojas García, a 23-year-old folklorist-dancer.
It is followed by nearby Apurimac in terms of lethality, where six people died, most of them teenagers, many still in high school.
The Ayacucho regional government blamed Boulwart for the deaths and asked him to resign along with his defense and interior ministers. He also demanded the cessation of the use of firearms and the dismissal of the current board of directors of the discredited parliament, to form a transitional government that should be handled by the newly elected president of Congress.
And unlike the day before, no soldiers were seen or killed in the clashes on Friday. In the afternoon, an Associated Press reporter observed police entering Huamanga’s ground procession and throwing tear gas, after a small group of protesters set fire to the Ayacucho Bar and Judiciary, in the vicinity of the plaza. Another group of protesters burned an office of the Spanish company Telefónica.
Earlier, hundreds of students from the University of San Cristobal de Huamanga marched around the main square singing “La flor de retama”, a historical song about a massacre of students in this area in 1969.
“We live in a dictatorship that wants to prove itself in blood and fire. They killed our people,” Leandro declared. They regard us as beings of the third or fourth category.
For its part, Amnesty International said, on Friday, that since the declaration of a state of emergency in Peru, it has continued to receive “numerous complaints about human rights violations at the hands of the army and police in social protests, ranging from excessive use of force to deprivation of liberty without respecting legal procedures.” Even torture.”
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Franklin Briceno is on Twitter as: @franklinbriceno
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