A human rights commission has stated that the Peruvian government committed abuses as it cracked down on widespread unrest following the arrest of former President Pedro Castillo in December.
In a report released on Wednesday, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) said that the state’s response to nationwide protests could be classified as a “massacre.” “There were serious human rights violations that must be investigated with due diligence and an ethnic-racial approach,” IACHR President Margarette May Macaulay said in a report. “The deaths could constitute extrajudicial executions.”
A previous report by the human rights group Amnesty International called the government’s crackdown “systemically racist” for disproportionately targeting Indigenous populations that have already endured a history of neglect, disenfranchisement, and state violence. In January, Peru’s attorney general launched a series of inquiries into protest-related deaths. Demonstrators continue to call for Boluarte’s resignation and early elections. However, such calls have yet to translate into accountability or a path out of the country’s political crisis.
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