Human Rights Violations In Peru

One of the primary reasons for the difficulty in bringing the perpetrators of the human rights violations to account in post-conflict Peru was that there were not one, but two distinct groups who carried out the human rights violations during the period of conflict. These were the guerrilla organisations who operated at the time and the ruling government. The existence of two separate entities committing human rights abuses meant it was more difficult to determine, and bring to justice the people violating the human rights of the Peruvian people. The guerrilla organisations involved in the Peruvian armed struggle were the Marxist-Leninist group - the Tupac Amaru Military Revolution (or MRTA) and the Maoist insurgency group - Sendero Luminoso

The MRTA group became active in Lima in the mid-1980s (Burt, 2009, pp.392-3), and while they were responsible for some of the violations of the human rights of the Peruvian people, it was Sendero Luminoso who were accountable for the majority of human rights abuses committed during that time

However, the report also discovered that the guerrilla groups were not the only perpetrators of human rights violations during that time, and the Peruvian state were responsible for 37% of the human rights violations which took place (Burt, 2009, pp.392-3). The Peruvian governmental forces used violence and abuse to combat the guerrilla organisations’ terrorism, a strategy which ultimately lead to grave violations of the Peruvian people’s human rights (Carey and Mitchell, 2013, p.286). Initially, the state did not have a strong response to the guerrilla terrorism (Reid, 1985, pp.110-1) and ignored Sendero’s first insurgency attempts, such as the burning of electoral ballot boxes in Ayacucho (Feinstein, 2003). However, in late 1981, after a guerrilla attack on a Police post, the state’s counter-insurgency responses began to escalate (Reid, 1985, pp.110-1). In 1982, Peru’s ruling president Fernando Belaunde Terry, intensified the counter-insurgency responses even further, declaring a state of emergency in Peru. This state of emergency gave political authority to the Peruvian military and allowed the government to ignore the unethical, human rights violating counter-insurgency campaign which ensued (Roberts, 1998, p.225). The state, under quasi-military rule, conducted massacres,