This link goes to a story published in today's edition of Peru's daily, La Republica. It tells of how locals were treated by a platoon of Peruvian soldiers on the hunt for Sendero Luminoso terrorists last month. Not in 1987, but in September 2008.
The world needs to wake up and protest these blatant abuses of human rights by the supposed good guys before they turn into the bad guys. If you don't learn from history you are condemned to repeat it, and by the looks of things the Peruvian army hasn't learned a thing from the terrors of the 1980's and 1990's. Don't they understand that if they beat crap out of the people they're supposed to be protecting they'll simply drive them into the arms of the extremists?
THIS MUST STOP NOW. Here below are the direct quotations from the Republica story, as spoken by the rural dwellers abused by soldiers from their own national army.
The world needs to wake up and protest these blatant abuses of human rights by the supposed good guys before they turn into the bad guys. If you don't learn from history you are condemned to repeat it, and by the looks of things the Peruvian army hasn't learned a thing from the terrors of the 1980's and 1990's. Don't they understand that if they beat crap out of the people they're supposed to be protecting they'll simply drive them into the arms of the extremists?
THIS MUST STOP NOW. Here below are the direct quotations from the Republica story, as spoken by the rural dwellers abused by soldiers from their own national army.
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Dionisio Huayanay Carbajal: "There are many displaced people. They (the Peruvian army) forced us out of our homes with death threats and burned our houses. 80% of the houses have been destroyed. We need urgent help because we're left without food or clothes."
Rómulo Jerí Quinta: "They (the Peruvian army) detained five of us. They pistol-whipped us and asked us "Where are the terrorists?" Then they made us dig a grave, and they even made us lie down and measure our own bodies to dig the correct depth of grave so that all five of us would be buried."
Nilda Sánchez Romero: "They (the Peruvian army) kept us without giving us any food, and under the threat of death if we didn't reveal othem where the terrorists were. "We don't know", we told them, and when we finally convinced them we were simple rural dwellers they let us go. Now we are refugees in Canayre."