Dozens of police stormed the University of Lima on Saturday, smashing the gates with an armored car, firing tear gas and arresting more than 200 people who had come to the Peruvian capital to take part in anti-government protests.
Photos show dozens of people lying on the ground at the University of San Marcos after a dramatic police operation. Students told the Guardian that they were kicked, punched and hit with bullets when they were forced out of their dormitories.
The police investigation at the University of San Marcos – the oldest in the Americas – is the latest in a series of incidents that have led to the resignation of President Dina Boluarte after six weeks of riots that have killed 60 people and left at least 580 injured. more than 500 have been arrested.
The protests began in early December in support of former President Pedro Castillo, but have since turned into demands for Boluarte’s resignation, the shutdown of Congress and new elections. Boluarte was Castillo’s vice president and succeeded him after he tried to close the assembly and rule by law on 7 December.
Many of those arrested in Saturday’s attack left southern Peru for the capital to take part in last Thursday’s so-called “occupation of Lima” protests that began peacefully but erupted into clashes between protesters and riot police amid stone-throwing and chaos. tears.
In the sentence on TwitterThe Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights asked the Peruvian authorities to “ensure that Peru is legal and constitutional.” [police] intervention and due process guarantees”. It emphasized the importance of the presence of the opposition, who were absent in the first hours of the shooting.
Students living in the halls of residence said they were violently chased out of their rooms by armed police who broke in the doors and used kicks and kicks to get them out.
Esteban Godofredo, a 20-year-old political science student, was treated for a leg injury. “He hit me with his stick and he knocked me down and started beating me,” Godofredo told the Guardian as he sat on the grass outside the building with a badly injured, bandaged calf.
Footage seen by the Guardian showed confused and panicked students flocking outside their halls, some still in their pyjamas, as riot police shouted orders and curses. The boys were forced to stand against the wall or kneel one after the other.
They pointed a gun at us and said ‘Get out.’ We didn’t even have time to get our certificates,” said Jenny Fuentes, 20, a student teacher. “They forced us to kneel down. Many girls were crying but they told us not to talk.”
He said: “They did not tell us why they kicked us out of our rooms. A group of about 90 students, who stayed at the school during the summer holidays to work and study, were taken to the main square, a 10-minute walk away, where some people were arrested.
A few hours after the attack, they were not allowed to return to their rooms where the police searched them.
“I have been a student in San Marcos [University] and since the 1980s we have not encountered such outrages,” Susel Paredes, congresswoman, told the Guardian when she was stopped from entering the school by police.
“The police entered the university building, the rooms of female students who have nothing to do with the protests. They threatened them and took them out of their rooms while they were sleeping.”
Paredes said it was a reminder of regular police and military raids on public universities in the 1980s and 90s, when the school was seen as a hotbed of violence during the government’s crackdown on the Mao-inspired Shining Path.
“We were not in that era, we should live under a democratic government that should respect human rights,” said Paredes.
Amid protests and roadblocks that disrupted a large part of the country, Peruvian authorities on Saturday ordered the closure “until further notice” of the Inca citadel of Machu Picchu and the Inca trail that leads to the world-famous archaeological site – a major tourist attraction. in Peru who bring. of over 1 million visitors a year.
