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Clashes in Lima as thousands rally against Peru government

Photo: Juan Carlos Cisneros / AFP

January 20 | By AFP | Carlos Mandujano / Luis Jaime Cisneros |

Thousands marched through Peru’s capital Thursday in a large anti-government rally punctuated by clashes with police, while the death toll from over a month of violent protests climbed in the country’s southern regions.

Some of the Lima protesters, who are demanding the resignation of President Dina Boluarte and fresh elections, threw stones and bottles at officers in the city center, AFP reporters saw.

The police were forced to temporarily retreat before they dug in behind riot shields and began deploying tear gas. At least two people were injured.

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One building near the central Plaza San Martin caught fire, though it was not immediately clear how.

Peru has been rocked by protests since the ouster of Boluarte’s predecessor, Pedro Castillo, in early December — though violent clashes have largely been isolated thus far to the country’s south and east.

In the southern city of Arequipa, some 1,000 protesters tried early Thursday to storm the airport, but were also repelled by police firing tear gas, local television showed.

Peru’s human rights ombudsman later announced that one person had been killed in Arequipa, adding to two other deaths resulting from clashes on Wednesday and raising the nationwide death toll to 45.

The demonstrators in Lima, who are mostly from Andean regions, set off from several points around the capital with the aim of reaching the heavily-guarded presidential palace by the end of Thursday. 

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“Dina listen, the people disown you,” they chanted, while others called for the president to be assassinated. 

“We are here, fighting for our just cause. We want them to close Congress,” villager Ayda Aroni, who came from Ayacucho, 330 kilometers (205 miles) southeast of Lima, told AFP.

“We are marginalized, they say we’re vandals, they call us terrorists, we’re demanding our rights.”

“I am in Lima to defend the country because there is too much corruption. Dina does not represent us. We’re going to stay for a week to continue the demonstrations,” said Demetrio Jimenez, who came from Puno, near the Bolivian border.

Demonstrators also tried to once again take over the airport in Cusco, a popular tourist destination, though it was closed; while there were similar protests in regions such as Puno, Huanuco and Tacna.

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Boluarte called for dialogue late Thursday.

“I will not tire” of seeking peaceful ways to move the country forward, she said on state television — adding that the “acts of violence generated throughout December and now in January will not go unpunished.”

Ready to ‘give my life’

The protesters in Lima are trying to keep up pressure on the government, defying a state of emergency declared to maintain order.

On Thursday, the emergency was extended to three more regions, bringing almost one-third of the country under the order.

“We have 11,800 police officers in the streets to control unrest, we have more than 120 vans and 49 military vehicles, and also the armed forces are participating,” said police chief Victor Zanabria Thursday.

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Protesters are undeterred, though.

“In Lima, the struggle has more weight. When they repress us in our regions, no one mentions it,” said Abdon Felix Flores, a 30-year-old villager from Andahuaylas in the Cusco region.

Flores said he was ready “to give my life” to ensure change.

“We have come in an organized way to take over Lima, to paralyze Lima, to be heard,” said Jesus Gomez, an agricultural engineer from Chumbivilcas, also in the Cusco region.

One of Peru’s biggest labor unions, the General Confederation of Workers, called a strike for Thursday, though there were no visible signs of such a strike in Lima.

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“The Peruvian people’s struggle will not end tomorrow,” Geronimo Lopez, the general secretary of the General Confederation of Workers, said in a press conference late Wednesday night.

“It will continue as long as Mrs Dina Boluarte doesn’t listen to the people,” added Lopez.

‘Traitor’

Peru’s sports institute suspended the start of the national football league this weekend due to the unrest, while almost 100 roadblocks remain across Peru.

Castillo was removed from office and arrested on December 7 after attempting to dissolve the country’s legislature and rule by decree, amid multiple corruption investigations.

The crisis also reflects the huge gap between the capital and the rural provinces, which supported Castillo and saw his election as revenge for Lima’s contempt.

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Boluarte, who was Castillo’s vice president, succeeded him. But despite Boluarte belonging to the same left-wing party, Castillo supporters have rejected her, even accusing her of being a “traitor.”

International

Former President Alberto Fujimori, admitted to a hospital for probable tumor in the tongue

Former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori, 85, was admitted to a clinic in Lima and will be operated on for a probable tumor at the base of the tongue, his daughter Keiko Fujimori reported on Monday.

The former president (1990-2000), who received a humanitarian pardon in 2017 and was released at the end of last year, has received cancer treatment for an injury to the oral area in the past and has had recurrent medical attention for the same reason.

Precisely, his medical record was the reason for former President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski to grant him the pardon before he served 25 years of sentence for crimes against humanity.

Last night, on behalf of his family, his daughter and former presidential candidate reported on his account on the social network X that his father was admitted to the Delgado Clinic in Lima to prepare him and perform a surgical intervention related to his tongue injury.

He added that the medical report literally specifies that Fujimori has “an Ambulatory Presumptive Diagnosis of malignant tumor at the base of the tongue with probable right cervical metastases.”

In this sense, the also leader of the Fuerza Popular party announced that they will carry out an examination under general anesthesia and biopsy in the operating room for their father.

“The objective of this intervention is to perform a biopsy that allows us to confirm the exact nature of that disease. The results of the biopsy will still take several days,” he said.

He stated that his father and his family trust that he will be able to “overcome and recover” and thanked the prayers of those who appreciate his father.

In recent weeks, the images shared on social networks show the former president walking through the streets of Lima with people in his care and receiving in a good mood the greetings of his supporters.

Likewise, Fujimori opened a YouTube channel where he reviews his management by the government and in the last of his deliveries, last Friday, he denied that he had transported drugs on the presidential plane, as it emerges from a judicial process that recently expelled his children, and asked his followers not to be “poononed” by his “enemies.”

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International

Police enter La Sorbonne to expel dozens of pro-Palestinian students

The riot police entered the Sorbonne University of Paris, the most emblematic in France, to expel dozens of pro-Palestinian students who had settled in the main courtyard of the building next to the Pantheon to protest the Israeli military action in the Gaza Strip.

The police intervention, which took place without incidents and without the reporting of arrests, at least at first, happened after another blockade on Friday by about 200 university students from another prestigious university center, Sciences Po in Paris, also in protest against what they called “the genocide suffered by the Palestinian people.”

The Sorbonne, created in the 13th century, is an emblem of the university and French culture through which famous figures (Pierre and Marie Curie, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Louis Pasteur or Victor Hugo, among others) have passed as students or professors and was one of the main centers of the revolution of May 1968.

Jacques, a Sciences Po student who went to the Sorbonne on Monday in solidarity with the protest of his colleagues there, told EFE that the mobilization was a response “to the genocide that Israel is committing, with the complicity of (Joe) Biden and (Emmanuel) Macron.”

“We are going to close ranks against repression,” said the university student, alluding to police pressure in the pro-Palestinian demonstrations and the investigation for apology of open terrorism against a prominent left-wing leader, Mathilde Panot, for a controversial statement published after the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.

The young man denied that there is a political manipulation of these mobilizations by Panot’s party, the Unsubmissive France (LFI), the main leftist formation in the Assembly.

“We are the young people who direct the protests. Whoever says otherwise is wrong. The majority are not affiliated with a specific party,” added Jacques, who promised to “continue with the mobilizations,” as at Columbia University, in the United States.

In addition to Panot, the Franco-Palestinian jurist Rima Hassan, a candidate for the European elections, has also been summoned by the police for advocacy of terrorism.

The controversial statement of the head of the LFI in the Assembly described the Hamas action of October 7 as “an offensive by Palestinian forces” and was paralleled with “the intensification of the Israeli occupation policy” in the Palestinian territories.

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International

Desertions in the Russian Army in Ukraine are growing, according to Kiev’s military intelligence

The number of desertions is growing in the ranks of the Russian Army in occupied Ukraine, according to information published on Monday by Ukrainian military intelligence (GUR).

“The desertions increase among the armed formations of the southern military district of the Russian occupation army,” reads the GUR note. “In total, more than 18,000 Russian soldiers have voluntarily left their military units in this district,” the text adds.

The territories occupied by Russia in the Ukrainian regions of Crimea, Lugansk, Donetsk, Zaporiyia and Kherson are included in the Southern Military District of Russia.

According to Kiev’s military intelligence, about 12,000 of these deserters belonged to the 8th Combined Arms Army of the Russian Armed Forces, which participates in hostilities in eastern Ukraine.

Information recently published by the Russian dissident media Mediazona estimated the total number of convictions for desertion handed down by Russian courts at 7,400, since the partial mobilization decreed by the Kremlin in September 2022.

They also alluded to the “record” number of Russians who evade military service and are asking for asylum in Western countries.

Meanwhile, the Ukrainian General Staff today reported massive Russian casualties and losses in the last 24 hours, after a week of Russian advances in Donetsk that has led the Army to recognize that the situation has worsened on the east front.

According to the last military report, Russia suffered more than 1,300 casualties during the last day, a figure substantially higher than those reported in previous days.

In addition, Kiev claims to have destroyed 37 Russian artillery systems in the last 24 hours.

Today, the “most complicated situation” for Ukraine occurs in the areas of Pokrovsk and Kurajiv, northwest and southwest respectively of Avdivka, which was occupied by Russia last February.

Ukrainian troops in this area have delayed their defensive line in the face of constant Russian attacks.

The head of the Army, Oleksandr Sirski, has highlighted the intensity of the fighting in the Khasiv Yar area, a town located about ten kilometers west of the occupied Bajmut, which is, according to Kiev, a Russian priority objective.

Despite these advances, the US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, assured on Monday from Riyadh that the war against Ukraine launched two years ago by Russian President Vladimir Putin is a “strategic debacle” for Russia.

“The last thing I’m going to say about it is that if you take a step back and analyze it, I think this aggression by Russia has been a strategic debacle for Russia,” said the head of American diplomacy at the special session of the World Economic Forum (WEF), which ends today in Riyadh.

For Blinken, “as a whole, Russia is weaker economically. He is weaker militarily, given the destruction of so many of his forces. And it is weaker diplomatically in much of the world, not in everything, but in a large part.”

In this sense, the Secretary of State pointed to China as a country that is not supplying weapons and ammunition to Russia, but is providing “incalculable support” to its defense industry, through the sale of microelectronic products, machine tools and optics.

Blinken acknowledged that the increase in Russia’s production capacities is something that Europe is “deeply concerned about turning against it” once the war in Ukraine is over.

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