LAST week, Amnesty International published an 86-page document regarding the series of human rights violations committed by the Peruvian state during the protests that took place between December 2022 and March 2023.

During this period, when tens of thousands took to the streets in rage against the coup carried out against president Pedro Castillo, more than 50 people died and thousands were injured.

The report alleges that Dina Boluarte, the de facto president of Peru following the coup, as well as other senior state officials, either planned the police and military operations that violated the human rights of thousands of people protesting the coup or deliberately failed to stop the publicly known crimes.

For example, in Andahuaylas city in Apurimac, special forces used tactics that repeatedly violated human rights for several months without any order to cease such actions.

The same special forces chiefs were deployed in Juliaca, where on January 9, 18 people were killed and more than 100 were wounded.

In other words, according to Amnesty International, Boluarte may be implicated in calling for this type of repression or for not having done anything to prevent it.

“Although President Boluarte denied under oath before the Prosecutor’s Office that she had direct contact with the commanders and minimized her role in state repression, the report shows that, during the three months in which protests took place across the country, she met several times with the commanders of the armed forces and police, giving her multiple opportunities to condemn the widespread illegitimate use of force and order a change of tactics on the ground,” the report states.

“However, instead of using her frequent meetings with ministers, police, and military commanders for this purpose, she continued to publicly praise the security forces while vilifying protesters as ‘terrorists’ and ‘criminals,’ without providing evidence of this. Moreover, instead of holding her subordinates accountable, she decided to promote key officials to higher positions, even though they directly oversaw the police and military operations that caused multiple deaths,” Amnesty International wrote.

In addition, the report details that several commanders of the National Police of Peru signed documents stating that the protesters were “terrorists,” thus justifying the special forces’ intervention in the development of the protests through the lethal use of force.

Similarly, the Peruvian police did not sanction any of its officers for the serious acts committed against the protesters. In fact, it has shelved 18 files investigating these incidents.

Moreover, according to Amnesty International, President Boluarte promoted the police general who was behind the planning and execution of the repression of the protesters.

In the face of the serious accusations, the Boluarte government denied any responsibility for the human rights violations that took place during the protests against his government.

Prime Minister Gustavo Adrianzen told the press: “We categorically reject each one of the sections of the report … even more so when it improperly tries to attribute to the president a mediate responsibility in the events that took place during the protests.”

However, Madeleine Penman, Amnesty International’s Latin America researcher, told the newspaper Voz de America that a legal analysis was made “of all the decisions and omissions made by the president during three months, and based on this analysis we have reached the conclusion that confirms that Dina Boluarte could be considered as the perpetrator-by-means (intellectual author) for the serious rights violations committed during the protests.”

In this way, another front of political questioning is opened to Boluarte, after the Peruvian Congress allowed the investigation of the president for an alleged bribery case for having received —from the governor of Ayacucho, Wilfredo Oscorima — Rolex watches and luxury jewellery that she did not declare.

This article appeared at Peoplesdemocracy.org.