The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Hugo de Zela Martínezreported that it will appear next Wednesday, December 3, before the Organization of American States (OAS) to support the Peruvian State’s proposal to modify the 1954 Caracas Convention on diplomatic asylum.
The same chancellor made the announcement this afternoon after specifying that his participation is scheduled at the headquarters of the international organization in Washington starting at 10 in the morning.
It was in the Government Palace where he was consulted about the recent sentence of 11 years, 5 months and 15 days against former Prime Minister Betssy Chávez for the coup d’état of December 7, 2022 perpetrated by Pedro Castillo. She, as is known, has been holed up in the residence of the Mexican embassy in our country since last November 3.
“The fact that Betssy Chávez has already been convicted does not alter her situation in any way. The situation remains exactly the same; she is an asylum seeker at the Mexican embassy and we have a position already publicly adopted on the issue in the sense that we are going to make a submission to the Organization of American States about the incorrect application of the Asylum Convention,” he responded briefly.
As recalled, after Chávez’s request for asylum in Mexico, the Peruvian Foreign Ministry reported that it had analyzed the request from Claudia Sheinbaum’s government to grant safe passage to the former Castilian premier.
“A first conclusion of this process of legal-political analysis is that, since the adoption of the Caracas Convention of 1954 within the framework of the Organization of American States (OAS), there has been a negative evolution in its international practice. It has been confirmed, in different cases – not only linked to Peru – that in recent years an improper use of this norm has been made, classifying common crimes as cases of political persecution. The Government of Peru considers that this practice denatures the essence of the Convention, designed to protect nationals of the Member States of the Inter-American System from political persecution. In no case should it be used to evade the application of national laws so that people who have committed crimes can free themselves from judicial decisions,” he then stated in a statement.
Along these lines, he also anticipated that “a proposal to modify the 1954 Caracas Convention would be presented to the OAS member countries, to prevent this distortion of its essence from continuing to occur.”
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