Human rights groups and families of victims of Peru’s two-decade internal armed conflict have expressed outrage after the country’s government granted a blanket amnesty for all military and police officers accused of human rights crimes from 1980 to 2000.
The Peruvian president, Dina Boluarte, signed the amnesty – which was approved by the country’s congress last month – into law on Wednesday, to the applause of military top brass and ministers at Lima’s government palace.
The legislation prevents the criminal prosecution and conviction of former soldiers, police officers and self-defence committee fighters accused of serious human rights violations in the country’s fight against leftist insurgents of the Mao-inspired Shining Path and other groups.
Gisela Ortiz, the sister of one of the victims of a 1992 death squad massacre, said on X: “A government that violates human rights enacts an amnesty law for those who support it: police and military personnel who murdered, disappeared and raped between 1980 and 2000.”
Juanita Goebertus, Americas director at Human Rights Watch, described the law as a betrayal of Peruvian victims. “It undermines decades of efforts to ensure accountability for atrocities and weakens the country’s rule of law even further,” she said.
The brutal and protracted conflict was marked by atrocities committed by both sides. Between 1980 and 2000, nearly 70,000 people were killed and 20,000 disappeared, according to the findings of Peru’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission; Shining Path fighters were responsible for about 54% of the deaths and the military for the rest.
Boluarte said: “With the enactment of this amnesty law, the Peruvian government and congress recognise the sacrifice of members of the armed forces, the police and self-defence groups in the fight against terrorism.”
She added: “We’re giving them back the dignity that should never have been questioned.”
There has been widespread concern about backsliding on human rights under Boluarte’s government. In 2023, the former president Alberto Fujimori was released from prison, where he was serving a 25-year term for human rights crimes, despite a request from the regional inter-American court of human rights to delay his release. Last year, Peru’s congress approved a bill establishing a statute of limitations for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed before 2003.
The UN Human Rights Commission expressed alarm about the amnesty bill in July, warning Peru that it had a “duty to investigate, prosecute, and punish serious human rights violations” and that “international standards prohibit amnesties or pardons for such serious crimes”.
Peruvian courts have secured more than 150 convictions, and an estimated 600 investigations are under way, according to the National Human Rights Coordinator, a coalition of Peruvian human rights organisations.
“This amnesty law is a law that consecrates impunity,” said Jo-Marie Burt, a Peru expert and senior fellow at the Washington Office on Latin America. “Peru is now a pariah state from the point of view of international law. It puts Peru on the same level as Venezuela and Nicaragua for their outright disregard for the rulings of the inter-American court and of international law more generally.”
She expressed disappointment at what she called a “cynical move”, especially as Peru “for many years did make meaningful efforts to bring perpetrators of serious human rights violations to justice”.
