In autopsy after autopsy, Peruvian anti-government protesters share the same cause of death: “firearm projectile.”
Christian Armando Mamani, a 22-year-old musician, was walking by the protest in a southern city when a bullet entered the left side of his torso and pierced both of his lungs.
The same January day, Roger Rolando Cayo, a 25-year-old protester, died when a shot ripped through his eye and destroyed his brain.
Human rights groups — including the United Nations — have called on the Peruvian government to investigate claims of excessive force used by police and soldiers during recent protests that have left 49 civilians dead, and the autopsies provide some evidence of the alleged use of lethal ammunition.
Thirty of the 32 forensic reports obtained by The Associated Press list gunfire as the cause of death. Some of the reports detail bullet calibers similar to those used by security forces in Peru, which experts believe indicates that police and soldiers violated their own operations manuals prohibiting shooting directly toward protesters unless there’s a serious risk to their life.
The findings come as Peru struggles to recover from the political crisis that hit the country late last year. In December, then-President Pedro Castillo, who was facing several corruption investigations, attempted to dissolve Congress but was instead impeached, arrested and replaced by the vice president. Demonstrations stretched out to February, mostly in southern Peru where the former leader has had more support, triggering the worst political violence the country has seen in more than two decades.
In the southern city of Juliaca, protesters clashed with police outside the airport on Jan. 9 in what would be the deadliest demonstration. Autopsies confirmed that 18 people died from gunfire that day. Among the dead were a 16-year-old student whose left lung was perforated by a 7.62 mm bullet that lodged in his abdomen and a 17-year-old university student who died from a 9 mm bullet wound.
The AP obtained a copy of a document from the federal prosecutor’s office that listed the weapons used by police in Juliaca in December, including 7.62 mm AKM assault rifles and 9 mm Beretta and Sauer handguns.
In Peru, civilians are only permitted to own guns with low calibers. High-caliber guns — including the 7.62 and 5.56 mm types mentioned in the forensic reports — are exclusively for the use of security forces.
Carmen Rosa Cardoza, a Peruvian forensic anthropologist, told the AP that the autopsies show a pattern of a “disproportionate use of force.”
“In the injuries by the firearm projectiles, there’s a pattern linked to human rights violations,” she said, noting that most of the fatal wounds are on the head, neck, thorax and abdomen. The shooters, she said, “are targeting those regions.”
Protesters are still staging roadblocks in some parts of the country and calling for the resignation of the new president, Dina Boluarte, whom they blame for the deaths of dozens of demonstrators in areas inhabited largely by Indigenous people.
The attorney general’s office has launched an investigation that hasn’t led to any arrests.
“These numbers turn Peru into a champion of repression, when compared to other democracies in Latin America” said Jo-Marie Burt, a Peru expert at the Washington Office on Latin America, a human rights group. “Only openly authoritarian nations like Venezuela and Nicaragua” have had more deaths during recent protests, she said.
Peruvian government officials have said they did not give police orders to shoot at protesters after massive demonstrations broke out in the south, where Castillo’s removal angered people frustrated with the nation’s Congress, which has contributed to the political instability by impeaching three presidents in the past six years and has become one of the nation’s least trusted institutions. FRANKLIN BRICEÑO, LIMA, MDT/AP
