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REPORTS: PERU |
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One
Killed and Several Missing in Crackdown
on Strikes
Abraham
Lama
LIMA, (IPS) - At least one demonstrator
has been killed and 70 injured in the
harsh military crackdown on nationwide
strikes and protests this week in Peru,
but there are reports that several
people wounded after troops fired on the
crowds are missing.
President Alejandro Toledo declared a
30-day state of emergency on Wednesday
and ordered the armed forces to restore
law and order throughout the country, to
squash a wave of strikes, protests,
roadblocks and looting.
The unions of judiciary and public
health employees suspended their
strikes, in which they were demanding
pay hikes, after the president announced
the state of emergency.
But the teachers union, which represents
130,000 public school teachers, has not
only continued its work stoppage, but
has openly challenged the state of
emergency by holding street protests in
Peru's main cities.
Edi Quilca, a 22-year-old student, was
killed while taking part in a
demonstration of solidarity with
striking teachers in the southeastern
city of Puno. His friends said soldiers
also killed at least three other young
people and hauled their bodies away to a
military garrison.
A top authority of the Lima region,
Miguel Angel Mufarech, said that when
the army prevented looting in the town
of Barranca, 100 kms from Lima, 27
people were shot and injured in the
process, including ''six who have gone
missing and who might be dead.''
Defence Minister Aurelio Loret, summoned
by Congress to provide explanations,
said the armed forces only opened fire
on demonstrators in Puno, and that they
did so in self-defence.
According to Loret, members of the
largely dismantled Maoist guerrilla
movement Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path)
have infiltrated the teachers' street
protests as agents provocateur,
''carrying sharp weapons like knives, as
well as molotov cocktails.''
But statements by local authorities and
TV news reports contradicted the defence
minister, and showed that people also
sustained gunshot wounds in Barranca and
Supe, another coastal city near Lima.
Mufarech showed the press photos of 17
patients who are being treated for
bullet wounds in the Barranca hospital,
and said several other injured persons
had disappeared.
In Puno, the Cable Canal de Noticias
cable news channel filmed the moment
when a lone protester who was lobbing
stones at soldiers 80 metres away was
hit in the leg by a bullet.
The government offered teachers -- who
earn an average monthly wage of 200
dollars -- a pay raise of 29 dollars,
but they went on strike earlier this
month demanding that the pay hike be
doubled.
Economy Minister Javier Silva Ruete said
the funds that would be needed to meet
the striking public employees' demands
simply do not exist, and stated that he
would not issue currency ''because the
country has made a commitment to the
International Monetary Fund and World
Bank to maintain fiscal discipline.''
Most regional peasant farmer and rural
organisations complied with their
leaders' orders to suspend the protests
as long as the state of emergency is in
force. But one faction has continued to
stage demonstrations in several cities,
marked by isolated looting, although it
stopped blocking traffic.
A potentially even more serious
political problem is now looming: the
demand for a raise, and for the payment
of back wages, by 70,000 police
officers.
In a communique released Friday, the
Interior Ministry denied that its
employees were getting ready to strke.
But in political circles, there is talk
about middle-ranking police officials
setting up clandestine committees.
Opinion polls indicate that many of
Peru's 27 million people, more than half
of whom live below the poverty line,
support the strikes, and Toledo's
approval ratings are at a low 14
percent.
Analyst Humberto Panessi, a sociologist
at the Catholic University of Lima, said
Toledo's decision to call out the armed
forces to put an end to the social and
labour crisis will move him further to
the right and closer to conservative
sectors.
The violent clashes between protesters
and the military and the likely
repercussions will affect the entire
political map, by pushing the social
democrats into playing a more radical
role in the opposition, he predicted.
Analysts like Panessi say it is likely
that the government's shift to the
right, as indicated by the tactics used
to quell the unrest, will lead to a
rupture with some of the current members
of Toledo's Peru Posible party, which is
ideologically diverse, and win him new
allies among other political forces.
Toledo ''called out the armed forces as
his first step in subduing the social
crisis, while it should have been a last
resort,'' said former socialist Senator
Enrique Bernales, a member of the Andean
Commission of Jurists, who added that
''the country's governability has been
gravely affected.''
''The state has the national police and
the justice system to deal with unarmed
civil violence,'' said Bernales, who
urged the government ''to consider the
immediate lifting of the state of
emergency, in order to keep from
aggravating the political situation.''
But presidential adviser Juan Sheput
said the popular reaction against the
state of emergency was merely
''emotional'' and ''will change as the
majority of the population comes to
realise that the aim is to protect and
safeguard citizen interests.''
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