The Peruvian prosecutor’s office summoned President Dina Boluarte for questioning on May 31 for her alleged responsibility in the repression of the protests that followed the removal of her predecessor, the imprisoned former president Pedro Castillo, which left just over 50 dead.
Text: RFI / AFP
“We express our vocation for collaboration to close this chapter that makes no sense,” his lawyer Joseph Campos told the press on Wednesday after confirming the summons.
The president will go to testify in the investigation for the alleged crimes of “genocide, qualified homicide and serious injuries” against her and her government officials. In March she was questioned for the first time.
The case was opened in January for “the deaths of citizens during social mobilizations between December 2022 and January 2023.”
The prosecutor’s office is trying to determine Boluarte’s responsibility in the repression of anti-government demonstrations in the Apurímac, La Libertad, Puno, Junín, Arequipa and Ayacucho regions.
However, in the event of an accusation, the president may not be brought to trial until 2026 when her term ends, as established by the Constitution.
In the protests, 54 people died, including six soldiers who drowned in a river while trying to flee from peasants who attacked them with stones in Puno, the epicenter of the protests.
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The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) denounced in May the eventual execution and massacre of protesters during the repression.
The OAS agency pointed out in a report to State agents for their alleged responsibility in “multiple” deaths of civilians and asks the Peruvian justice system to “investigate, prosecute and punish” those responsible.
The victims received “impacts from firearms, including pellets, in the upper part of the body,” the IACHR stressed.
Rural teacher and union leader, Castillo, 53, is serving pretrial detention in a mini-prison for ex-presidents within the headquarters of the Special Operations Directorate of the Police, in Lima.
His fall unleashed the violent mobilizations that demanded the resignation of the government, the closure of Congress and the advancement of elections to 2023.
Boluarte is the sixth person to hold the presidency in five years and the first woman to govern Peru, a country in permanent political crisis peppered with allegations of corruption.
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