LIMA, Peru
(AP) -- Sixteen-year-old Cesar Medina was returning home from an Internet cafe,
his mother says, and got caught up in a crowd of demonstrators when police and
soldiers opened fire. A bullet tore into his head, killing him instantly.
 |
| AP Photo/Miguel Vizcarra |
The youth
was among five civilians killed in this month's outbreak of violence over
Peru's biggest mining project, and while authorities have not said who fired
the deadly shots, local journalists say it was security forces.
Civilian
deaths are disturbingly frequent when protesters in provincial Peru confront
police, whose standard means of crowd control appear to be live ammunition,
typically fired from Kalashnikov or Galil assault rifles.
Since 2006,
bullets fired by Peruvian security forces to quell protests have killed 80
people and wounded more than 800, according to the independent National
Coordinator for Human Rights watchdog. Human rights activists say that reflects
a disregard for human life unmatched in the region and argue that the
government's routine use of deadly force against protesters could exacerbate
violence.
"These
numbers would be a scandal abroad. And I'm not talking about a comparison with
Europe, but with Bolivia, Ecuador, Chile, where there are protests but not so
many deaths," said Jorge Mansilla, investigator for Peru's national
ombudsman's office.
By
contrast, police have killed 28 protesters in neighboring Bolivia since January
2006, according to its non-governmental Permanent Human Rights Assembly. Police
in Colombia, a country plagued by guerrilla and right-wing militia violence,
killed just six from 2000 through 2011, according to that country's human
rights watchdog CINEP.
After the
July 3 clash in the Cajamarca region in which Medina died, national police
chief Raul Salazar commented tersely on the deaths, telling reporters that his
officers' job is to "maintain order with the lowest social cost."
The
protesters were pelting police with rocks and fireworks as they rallied against
the $4.8 billion Conga gold mining project, which is majority-owned by Newmont
Mining Co. of the United States.
The
ombudsman's office counts 245 social conflicts across Peru, most of them
disputes over mining in which fears over water contamination predominate. The
mining industry accounts for more than 60 percent of export earnings and has
been the engine of Peru's economic growth, but it inordinately affects the
livelihoods of highlands farmers.
A
congressman and former national police chief, Octavio Salazar, said security
forces have no choice sometimes but to use live ammunition when protesters
become unruly and endanger police.
"When
these hordes attack and police are at a disadvantage, then, in those extreme
cases, firearms are used," he said.
Government
critics say not enough is done to avoid such situations.
Peruvian
forces regularly employ tear gas and plastic pellets fired from shotguns
against protesters, but a March report by the ombudsman's office called police
training in nonlethal crowd control inadequate and said officers don't have
sufficient nonlethal weapons. It cited interviews with riot police commanders
in four major cities.
The
Interior Ministry declined to provide details on the police arsenal, either to
the ombudsman or The Associated Press. Ministry spokesman Angel Castillo said
supplies of tear gas and rubber bullets are adequate: "There are always
stocks to cover the needs."
Corruption
has been a factor in the shortage of nonlethal equipment. In June, Interior
Minister Wilver Calle canceled a $5 million contract for shields, helmets, gas
masks and other equipment after determining the contractor was not going to
deliver U.S. made goods as promised but Chinese-made items instead.
Officials
in the Interior Ministry did not respond to AP requests for an explanation of
why so many protesters are killed by gunfire in confrontations with police.
Castillo asked that the AP's questions be submitted by email, but never
answered.
The
ombudsman's study, meanwhile, questioned why not a single police officer has
been investigated for killing a protester and why no one wounded by police
gunfire has been compensated by the government.
Rights
groups including Amnesty International also have expressed concern about a bill
introduced by Salazar, the former police chief now in Congress, that they say
would rubber-stamp police use of lethal force against protesters by specifying
that it is justified in self-defense.
Spanish
human rights lawyer Mar Perez said the bill sends the message: "You can be
at ease killing because nothing will happen to you."
Cashiered
police Gen. Alberto Jordan says that's already true.
He was
fired in 2008 for disobeying instructions to order his troops to fire on
protesters who were blocking a bridge in the Moquegua region of southern Peru
to demand higher royalties from local copper mining.
Sixty
police officers were hurt in the struggle but no one died, Jordan said, who
complained that police are poorly equipped to manage unrest.
"They
send you to different parts of the country and when you open up the closets
where tear gas is supposed to be stored you find them empty," he said.
So police
use the only weapons they have, which are typically Kalashnikovs, weapons of
war that fire 7.62-mm bullets.
The
Americas director for Human Rights Watch, Jose Miguel Vivanco, said allegations
of police abuses in the use of lethal force are "not properly investigated
or sanctioned" in Peru.
He cited,
by comparison, the case in which Chile's government fired nine police officers,
including a general, in 2011 after a 16-year-old was killed in Santiago by a police
bullet during protests demanding educational reforms.
The
director of the Institute for Non-Lethal Defense Technologies at Pennsylvania
State University, retired Marine Col. Andy Mazzara, said no country can justify
using live ammunition to put down protests these days.
"The
use of lethal munitions in such situations is born out of ignorance and a lack
of political will and an almost criminal disregard for the value of human
life," he said.
Modern
nonlethal weapons such as sonic "cannons" that hurl pain-inducing
tones can be expensive, but low-tech options are available. Rubberized
"stingballs" and beanbags fired from shotguns and pepper spray are
among options, Mazzara said.
In
neighboring Chile, riot police regularly use water cannons to quell demonstrations.
The
deadliest recent case of Peruvian police firing on protesters came during a
2009 protest against mining and oil development in the Amazon. Thirty-four
people were killed near the city of Bagua, including 24 officers who were slain
by Indians in retaliation for the initial police fusillade.
Three
police generals were fired for dereliction of duty, which was the extent of all
sanctions for the deaths and also for the wounding of more than 200 people in
the incident.
Among those
hurt was 63-year-old Filomeno Sanchez. He has spent more than $80,000 on three
operations. But a bullet remains in his head and he still can't walk.
Elmer
Campos, 30, was injured by police bullets in the spleen and right kidney and
paralyzed from the waist down while among 3,000 people protesting the Conga
project in November.
"I
don't know how I'm going to work. Look how they've left me. I can't even
move," the father of two said before he was released from a Lima hospital
last week.
After three
operations, doctors had done all they could for the farmer, who gave up civil
engineering studies for lack of funds.
Campos is
staying with an older sister in Lima, who now does his diaper-changing.
He is
distraught over his inability to provide for his wife and children, who can't
afford the $30 per person one-way bus fare to visit from Cajamarca.
"I
don't understand how life can be so unjust," Campos said. "It would
have been better if they had killed me."
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