Peru’s Boluarte: No impunity in deaths of demonstrators

Lima, Dec 29 (EFE).- Peruvian President Dina Boluarte said Thursday that the Attorney General’s Office and the judicial branch will investigate the deaths of demonstrators in the protests that erupted after the failed self-coup of her predecessor, Pedro Castillo, adding that impunity for the perpetrators will not be allowed.

“We’re not going to allow impunity. The facts will be investigated, individually, and the Attorney General’s Office and the judicial branch will be assuming the appropriate roles,” she said at a press conference with the Foreign Press Association of Peru (APEP).

Later, she added that “nobody will have any impunity.”

At least 28 people have died in the demonstrations, many of them by gunfire, and participating in suppressing the protests have been the armed forces in support of the National Police (PNP) after the declaration of a state of emergency by the Boluarte government.

“When I assumed the office of president in that constitutional assumption of power, after an attempted coup d’etat by former President Pedro Castillo, I didn’t think that there would be this tremendous violence on the national level,” Boluarte said.

In that regard, she said that the security forces had had “to take the necessary measures to safeguard the lives and tranquility of Peru’s 33 million people.”

“In the Council of Ministers, it wasn’t easy to declare the state of national emergency. The police and the army went out to defend the lives and tranquility” of the public,” the president said.

In addition, she said that she was pained “to my very soul” regarding the resulting deaths, but she emphasized that the Attorney General’s Office has “all the capabilities … (and) is carrying out its work as per its authority.”

“On its own initiative, this government invited the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) to come to Peru and be able to do its investigatory work,” Boluarte said.

On that matter, she said that in January the IACHR commission will return “to provide its conclusions.’

Finally, she emphasized that her administration “has not caused the violence” and stressed that hers will be a goverment “of dialogue and tolerance,” adding however that she had come into office after a period of “tremendous polarization.”

EFE gdl/bp