Aida Aroni, jailed for waving the flag

He carried no stones, no slings, no sticks. Dressed in the traditional clothing of her town, Huancapi, in Ayacucho, she only waved a Peruvian flag. Aida Aroni Chillcce he was not a public threat. But, on the afternoon of Saturday, February 4, five policemen detained her, ripped her flag, trampled on her, and forced her onto a bus, for no reason.

Photos and videos from the press and from witnesses prove that Aida Aroni was not involved in any altercation. “She only asked for mercy,” recalled Aida Aroni, interviewed by La República. The police took her to the Cotabambas police station and then to the PNP Social Affairs Division in Rímac. The transfer was humiliating, unnecessary, abusive. Aroni, 52, was framed with her hands behind her back. She hadn’t committed any crime.

It was not the first time he had attended a demonstration. She had been coming, peacefully, since December 2022. In January she decided that she would go out with skirts, in his town suit, so that his Andean origin would be noticed.

Aida Aroni Chillce is from Huancapi, from the province of Víctor Fajardo, Ayacucho, a town brutally hit during the internal armed conflict. While she awaits the release of her sister outside the Social Affairs Division, Marcelina Aroni Chillcce recounted that Aida’s indignation stems from her past.

“My father was killed by Fujimori. The military killed him when he was leaving work during a curfew. At that time everyone was called terrorists. We have seen how they killed innocents, raped pregnant women, tortured anyone. That injustice is what my sister does not want to see happen again,” Marcelina Aroni said through tears.