Despite the state of emergency, meetings continue
Former President Pedro Castillo is awaiting a decision by the Peruvian judiciary on Thursday to extend his detention.
Several police and members of the armed forces are seen in central Lima on Thursday, December 15, 2022.
AFP
Thousands of supporters of Pedro Castillo gathered in a rally in central Lima on Thursday afternoon as the ousted former president awaited a court decision on extending his detention, AFP noted.
Millions of Peruvians across the country have been protesting for days demanding the release of the far-left president, who has been held in pretrial detention since his impeachment in a failed attempt to dissolve parliament on December 7. He was prosecuted for “sedition” and “conspiracy”.
The Ministry of Health has announced that the eighth person has died since Sunday. Nearly 200 people were injured. The mobilization has not weakened despite the declaration of a thirty-day state of emergency in the country on Wednesday by new President Tina Poluarte, the former vice president of Pedro Castillo.
“Energy, the Totalitarian Answer”
“We have to fight. President Pedro Castillo,” Milagros Quispe Diaz told AFP, nearing the outskirts of parliament where daily rallies have been held since the president’s impeachment. “I am an ignorant woman who knows her rights. We are not terrorists. The president is being kidnapped. There is no other word. There is no justice,” said the 41-year-old. said cleaner Lucy Carranza.
Several police and members of the armed forces were seen clearing roads in the center of Lima and in the south of the country, AFP noted. “We need a dynamic, authoritarian response” to the violence, Defense Minister Alberto Otterola began, stressing that the move would include “the suspension of freedom of movement and assembly” with “the possibility of a media law”.
Strong protests are taking place in the south of the country, where five airports (Antahuellas, Arequipa, Puno, Cuzco and Ayacucho) are closed. More than a hundred roads were blocked on Thursday as well. Almost 2000 Bolivian cargo trucks are blocked at the border with Bolivia. Hundreds of tourists who wanted to visit Peru’s tourist gem Machu Picchu were also stranded since Tuesday. The train connecting Cusco and the Inca Citadel has been halted due to unrest.
‘No Justice’
On Thursday morning, a court of the Supreme Court examined the request of the Public Prosecutor’s Office for the 18 months of pre-trial detention of former President Pedro Castillo. The trial was suspended and the judge is expected to announce his decision when it resumes at 5:00pm local time (11:00pm Swiss time).
In pre-trial detention from December 7, Pedro Castillo shouted the coup on Tuesday: “I will never give up”. In a letter posted on Twitter on Wednesday, he said he wants to take over the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR). In front of the police barracks where Pedro Castillo is being held, in Até (east of Lima), many of his supporters are camping and demanding his release. His niece, Vilma Vasquez, 42, condemned the lack of “justice” to the press.
“From the first day he took office, during the campaign, we were already terrorists. The day President Castillo took office, we did not let him rule, we were thieves, we were corrupt. There was no justice,” she said.
Election calendar
Opponents of Camp Castillo say the Maoist guerrillas who claimed thousands of lives in Peru in the 1980s and 1990s came from Movadef, the Shining Path’s political wing. They call them “terrorists”. The authorities are trying to enforce the order by force, but are also trying to quell discontent by accepting some of the protesters’ demands.
President Tina Poluarte has announced that she wants to move the election calendar back to “December 2023”. Crystalizing part of the discontent in her person, Tina Poluarte already promised on Sunday not to stop the protests, but to bring them forward from 2026 to April 2024. She herself is affected by the move: her mandate theoretically runs until 2026, with Pedro Castillo elected to a five-year term in 2021.
AFP
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