BTN News: On Thursday, the Peruvian government strongly rejected a report by Amnesty International suggesting that President Dina Boluarte should be investigated as a potential intellectual author behind severe human rights violations that resulted in the deaths of 50 civilians during protests from 2022 to 2023. Prime Minister Gustavo Adrianzén dismissed the report, emphasizing that the state interacts directly with international bodies rather than non-governmental organizations. He firmly denied any indirect responsibility attributed to Boluarte for the events that occurred during the protests, which erupted following the ousting of then-President Pedro Castillo.
The protests in Peru began on December 7, 2022, after Congress removed Pedro Castillo from office. Castillo had attempted to dissolve the Parliament but lacked support from security forces. Dina Boluarte, who was the vice president at the time, assumed the presidency. The protesters, mainly indigenous people from the southern Andes who had overwhelmingly supported Castillo, demanded Boluarte’s resignation. Boluarte had previously pledged to step down if Castillo were removed by Congress. Ultimately, Castillo was imprisoned and received a three-year preventive detention order while being investigated for rebellion and corruption charges.
Amnesty International’s South America researcher, Madeleine Penman, stated in a press conference that a legal analysis of Boluarte’s actions and omissions over three months led them to conclude that she could be considered an intellectual author of the severe human rights violations committed during the protests. Amnesty’s analysis drew upon concepts from a 2009 Peruvian Supreme Court ruling that sentenced former President Alberto Fujimori to 25 years in prison as an indirect author of murders committed by a military group during his tenure from 1990 to 2000.
Penman highlighted that Boluarte ignored intelligence reports from the outset of the protests, which indicated that the demonstrators had no terrorist or criminal ties and that their numbers did not justify deploying the armed forces. Despite this, Boluarte called for a state of emergency and military deployment. This disregard for intelligence, according to Penman, aligns with the criteria for indirect authorship set by the Peruvian Supreme Court.
In a related development, Congress archived a constitutional complaint filed by the prosecutor’s office at the end of 2023, which sought to prosecute Boluarte for the qualified homicide of five protesters and the serious injury of another, upon the conclusion of her term in 2026. The protests resulted in 50 civilian deaths and 716 injuries, as reported by the prosecutor’s office. Additionally, six soldiers and one police officer died. The majority of fatalities (88%) and injuries (59.1%) occurred in the predominantly indigenous southern Andes region, where Quechua is widely spoken.
Reports from the United Nations and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights have previously confirmed that security forces violated human rights, used firearms, and engaged in torture during the protests, which lasted until March 2023.
President Boluarte currently holds a 5% approval rating and a 90% disapproval rating, with 5% of the population abstaining from expressing an opinion, according to a national survey by the Institute of Peruvian Studies.
