The Public Ministry reported yesterday the release of eight people after it was reported that they were kidnapped and tortured for 12 days by the peasant rounds from the district of Chillia, province of Pataz, in La Libertad. The victims – seven women and one man – were accused of practicing witchcraft. The prosecution opened a preliminary investigation into these unfortunate acts of physical and psychological aggression practiced with impunity, as if we were in the 16th century.
José Luis Agüero, head of the Defense Office of La Libertad, specified that the release of the aggrieved occurred yesterday at 4:10 am, within the framework of an assembly that brought together 500 ronderos, in which the participation of the authorities. Only 20 police officers had arrived in the area.
Agüero commented that the officials of the Public Ministry did not appear at the scene of the events because “they received threats that if they went they would have to sign a document to file the complaint.” However, he assured that the corresponding procedures would be carried out in the coming days to advance in this investigation.
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BARBARISM
Of the eight people released, only Octavia Campos (60) decided to continue with the complaint and submit to the inspection of a forensic doctor. The others would have been forced by the ronderos to remain in their houses under threat.
“They tortured my mother by accusing her of witchcraft. They have beaten her, they have kicked her, they have done everything to her. They hung her from her feet accusing her of being a sorceress, ”Aida de la Cruz, Campos’ daughter, told RPP.
His mother suffers from multiple bruises all over her body and difficulty breathing. In addition, she denounces that her patrolmen gave her injections to, apparently, reduce the swelling of the bruises.
The testimony details different humiliations that the victims endured during the kidnapping. They were forced to enter a well until they admitted that they practiced black magic.
On another occasion, they hung them from the ceiling, as was seen in a video broadcast on social networks. They were also bathed in ice water at six in the morning.
Despite the evidence and testimonies, Manuel Quijano, president of the Chillia district peasant patrols, denied any act of torture and argued that it was not a kidnapping, but an “intervention.”
“It has been totally denied in the assembly, where the ladies have publicly stated that they have not been victims of torture and have not been the ones that apparently appear in the videos,” he said.
When asked by Peru21 On the reasons that led the community to believe that the victims practiced witchcraft, he pointed out that one person died after having drunk a concoction prepared by the accused persons, while another is bedridden. In addition, he told her, there would be two other people who “lost their speech and cannot walk.”
He added that the peasant patrols “do not trust ordinary justice” and that “they act on the basis of customary law and often based on the legal pluralism of the peasant communities to which they are affiliated.”
For the anthropologist Alex Huerta, accusing people of witchcraft would respond to a psychosocial scenario. In addition, he emphasized that cultural relativism is not necessarily a moral idea and while it can explain these acts that violate human rights, it can never justify them.
The feminist lawyer Brenda Álvarez considered that these abuses are also a product of machismo. “Women who, with their healing practice, protect ancestral knowledge are sanctioned,” she commented.
For his part, former Interior Minister Walter Albán stressed that the Constitution is very clear about the limit to the powers of the peasant patrols, which is respect for fundamental rights. “Here there must be an educational task so that what happens here makes it clear to all the rounds what the limit is,” he pointed out.
KEEP IN MIND
- The victims of the kidnapping in Pataz, a case that is now under investigation, were between 45 and 62 years old.
- The Chillia ronderos detained the eight people accused of witchcraft since June 29.
- This case in La Libertad occurs five days after the Prosecutor’s Office opened another investigation against ronderos from Cajamarca for the kidnapping of two journalists from América TV.
