President Dina Boluarte has blasted the Inter-American Court of Human Rights for its opposition to a recently passed bill that would grant amnesty to soldiers, police officers and other security personnel involved in Peru’s internal conflict from 1985 to 2000.
On Thursday, Boluarte asserted that the international court had overstepped its authority by seeking the law’s suspension.
“We are not anyone’s colony,” she said, posting a snippet of her speech to social media.
“And we will not allow the intervention of the Inter-American Court that intends to suspend a bill that seeks justice for members of our armed forces, our National Police and the self-defence committees that fought, risking their lives, against the insanity of terrorism.”
Since passing Peru’s Congress in July, the amnesty law has been awaiting Boluarte’s approval. She can either sign it into law, allow it to take effect automatically or send it back to Congress for revisions.
But the bill has prompted international outcry, not least because it is seen to shield security forces from accountability for the atrocities that unfolded during Peru’s war.
The legislation would also offer “humanitarian” amnesty to perpetrators over age 70 who have been convicted of wartime crimes.
Some 70,000 people were killed in the internal conflict, the majority of them from rural and Indigenous communities.
Soldiers and police officers were ostensibly tasked with combatting armed uprisings from rebel groups like the Shining Path and the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement. But the conflict became infamous for its human rights abuses and massacres of civilians with no ties to any rebel group.
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