(Lima) The demonstrations, which do not weaken in Peru despite the announcement of the new president Dina Boluarte to want to advance the general elections from 2026 to April 2024, left five new dead on Monday, bringing the number of deaths to seven in two days.
Among these seven victims are three teenagers aged 15 and 16.
Four people, two in Chincheros and two in Andahuaylas, were killed on Monday in the Apurimac region, Boluarte’s birthplace and where two protesters died on Sunday.
The other death on Monday occurred in Arequipa (south), Peru’s second largest city, when police intervened to chase hundreds of protesters from the airport who had set up burning barricades on the runway.
FREELANCE PHOTOGRAPHER, REUTERS
Thousands of people mobilized in the streets of Cajamarca, Arequipa, Tacna, Andahuaylas, Cusco and Puno, according to images broadcast by local television channels.
During the night, M.me Boluarte – who was vice-president until her inauguration on December 7 after the dismissal of President Pedro Castillo – had tried to reduce the pressure by announcing that she would negotiate “an agreement […] to advance the general elections to April 2024”, after the crisis caused by the failed attempt of Mr. Castillo to dissolve the Parliament.
It also declared a state of emergency in the areas most affected by the demonstrations.
But the announcement did not stem the discontent: new dams blocked roads on Monday morning in the region of La Libertad (north) and around the towns of Trujillo (north-west) or Cusco (south-east) where the famous Machu Picchu.
In Arequipa (south), capital of the region of the same name and second city in the country, some 2,000 demonstrators entered the runways of the airport, suspending traffic, before being dislodged by the police.
The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights said it was “concerned that the situation could worsen further” and called on “all those concerned to exercise restraint”.
And the leftist governments of Mexico, Argentina, Colombia and Bolivia have lent their support to the deposed president, believing that he has been the victim since the start of his mandate in 2021 of a “hostile and anti-democratic.
“political prisoner”
In Lima, the lawyers of former President Pedro Castillo were able to speak with their client in his prison on the eastern outskirts of Lima before the appeal hearing on Tuesday morning.
Me Ronald Atencio, the former president’s lead lawyer, said he hoped to obtain the “immediate release” of his client, arrested on Wednesday and in pre-trial detention since Thursday for seven days. “It is his right. It is hoped that the judiciary will rise to the occasion […] The court must be a landmark, the decision (which it will take) will be read for years, it will be studied in law schools”.
“The position of the president is that he is a political prisoner and he told the prosecutor,” added the lawyer to the press.
PHOTO SEBASTIAN CASTANEDA, REUTERS
The new Peruvian President, Dina Boluarte, and the new Prime Minister, Pedro Angulo
Haranguing the few supporters of the former president present, he assured that the “president was not well” and that he had requested “the intervention of the Red Cross”. However, several relatives of Mr. Castillo were reassuring about his state of health.
Saturday, M.me Boluarte had formed a government with an independent and technical profile, with a former prosecutor, Pedro Angulo, as prime minister. But that did not ease the tensions.
Unrest increased over the weekend, particularly in the north of the country and regions along the Andes to demand, in addition to new elections and the resignation of Mme Boluarte, the release of the former head of state.
Agrarian unions and peasant and indigenous social organizations have called for an “unlimited strike” from Tuesday.
Lima has always turned its back on Mr. Castillo, a rural teacher and union leader disconnected from the elites, supported by the Andean regions since the elections won in mid-2021.
On December 7, the 53-year-old left-wing president ordered the dissolution of parliament, hours before it was to meet to discuss impeachment proceedings against him, the third since he came to power in July 2021. .
But the Peruvian army, once involved in coups or having supported authoritarian regimes, did not flinch. Parliament voted shortly after, by a large majority, for his dismissal for “moral incapacity”.
Pedro Castillo was arrested a few hours later by his bodyguard on his way to the Mexican embassy to seek political asylum. He is being prosecuted by the prosecution for “rebellion” and “conspiracy.