Lima, July 23 (Prensa Latina) Peru’s National Unified Combat Coordination (CNUL) today condemned police repression against a peaceful march demanding the resignation of President Dina Boluarte, on the fourth day of protests to that end.
The CNUL, a bloc of various social organizations and progressive political forces that is organizing the protests, pointed out that the repression resulted in several injuries and arrests, including the coordinator’s member Franco Lucio, simply for interceding for an unlawfully arrested person who had distributed anti-president leaflets.
“That’s enough! It is unnecessary, insulting and illegal for the National Police to fire tear gas bombs and suppress a completely peaceful mobilization. We have every right to protest in the streets and squares,” declared former progressive presidential candidate Verónika Mendoza, who took part in the mobilization.
According to the Office of the Ombudsman, Plaza San Martín, which was occupied by demonstrators and closed to demonstrations under a municipal regulation, was forcibly cleared during the police action without the police having any authority to do so.
The National Human Rights Coordinator (Cnddhh) also denounced as unjustified the police repression of the population, who entered the aforementioned square to express their opposition to the Boluarte government, to which he reiterated they had a right.
The remainder consisted of an unspecified number of detainees and wounded, including an indigenous woman who was injured after being thrown by a police officer from the raised plinth of the monument to Liberator José de San Martín in the square of the same name.
In this context, the Cnddhh condemned the renewed use of racist violence by the police against tribal women arriving from the southern Andean region of Puno, an area that was a hotbed of the long protests against Boluarte’s rise to the presidency in December 2022.
The Commission’s lawyer, Mar Pérez, denounced that a police station denied its fellow defenders access to the detainees, which constitutes an abuse of office and is prohibited because solitary confinement carries the risk of the detainees being tortured.
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