From Lima
Demetrius Aroquipa lives in the highland city of Juliaca, in the Puno region, bordering Bolivia. On January 9, he walked out of his house with his wife and his two daughters to go shopping at the market. That day, a massive protest mobilization demanding the resignation of the president In Boluarte it had reached the outskirts of the airport, the only route that leads from the Aroquipa family home to the market. Along the way, they ran into repression. The police were shooting.
“We were going shopping”
“When the four of us were going shopping, my daughter fell to the ground, she had been hit by a bullet. We were two blocks from the airport. We weren’t in the protests, we were getting away from the people, we didn’t think they were going to shoot us,” recalls Demetrio through tears. She picked up her daughter, took her to the medical post, due to the seriousness of the wound caused by a rifle bullet that had entered her abdomen, they had to take her to the hospital, but there was no ambulance. There were long minutes of despair until he was able to take her to the hospital. “Since the bullet fell on her, it took more than an hour until we got to the hospital. My daughter arrived alive, but she died in the hospital.
With the pain marked in each word, each gesture, Demetrio remembers his daughter murdered by the police. “My daughter Jhamileth was 17 years old, she was studying psychology in Cochabamba, Bolivia, because in Puno there is no such degree. It is very painful to see how my daughter died, that cannot be explained with words. How it hurts to go out with your daughter, a girl, on the street, happy, laughing, with hugs, and having to see her return in a coffin. I ask for justice.”
18 muertos
That day there were 18 deaths in Juliaca. Killed by police shots, as confirmed by autopsy results and witness testimony. It was a massacre. According to official figures, the injured were 204, but in reality they were more. Many did not go to a health center for fear of being arrested and did not report being injured. Julia Piccsi was one of the people injured on that tragic day. She lives near the Juliaca airport. She received a pellet impact in the neck.
“I was at home with my daughters -Piccsi recalls-, the helicopters were flying low shooting tear gas canisters. The gas was felt inside the house, my daughters told me that their eyes were burning. I went out into the street, I saw people running away, shouting ‘the police are shooting at point blank range’. People were suffocating from tear gas, asking for water. I went into my house and took out a bucket of water. When I was going back to my house, I felt a pain in my neck. People told me ‘ma’am, blood, blood’. They told me ‘you have to go to the hospital’, but others told me ‘you can’t go to the hospital because they are detaining the wounded’. I went to a private clinic, but they didn’t treat me because I had no money. For fear that they were detaining me, I did not go to the hospital that day”. When Piccsi went to the hospital the next day, with a very swollen neck, she was not treated. They told him there was no head and neck doctor. “They didn’t even want to give me medicine. I saw the wounded brothers on the floor in the corridors of the hospital, which were full”. Only with the help of a teacher of her daughter’s did they receive her at the hospital. She was operated on in Lima, she needs a second intervention.
They demand justice
Relatives of the Juliaca victims and their lawyers have traveled to Lima to demand justice. “Almost two months have passed and the fiscal proceedings on this massacre are not advancing. The Puno Prosecutor’s Office has no will to investigate. The slowness in the investigation is impunity. We demand that the National Prosecutor’s Office create a specialized human rights prosecutor’s office to investigate. Victims and lawyers suffer threats. The free exercise of lawyers to defend the rights of the population is not allowed. Witnesses are being summoned by State Security and they are coerced, frightened,” said the lawyer wilmer quirozat a press conference at the National Human Rights Coordinator.
After the Juliaca massacre, another three people were killed by police shots in other towns in Puno, a historically marginalized region. In all the country, those killed by shots from the police and the army are 48, the wounded more than a thousand. Most of the deaths have occurred in Andean regions. Amnesty International has denounced that the repression has a racist bias against the indigenous population.
Request the presence of the UN
Lawyer Cesar Quispe reported that they have requested the presence of the Rapporteurship for Extrajudicial Executions and the Rapporteurship for Indigenous Peoples of the United Nations. “95 percent of the 1.2 million people who live in the Puno region are Quechua and Aymara,” Quispe said. “We demand an investigation into this massacre, punishment of those responsible, comprehensive reparation for the victims, and guarantees of non-repetition of these events. This massacre cannot go unpunished.”
Raul SamillánMarco Antonio’s brother, recently graduated doctor shot in the back while treating a wounded man at the protest, presides over the Association of Martyrs and Victims of January 9 in Juliaca. “When I went to the hospital to see my brother, there were bodies piled up, as if it were a trench of bleeding bodies, there were a large number of wounded on the ground, treated worse than animals. That hurts. We are humans. The Lima journalists never reported that. We ask for justice. I hope our voices reach the international community.”.