This declaration, available here with signatories and in Spanish, was published December 15th, 2022 in response to the ongoing repression and state of emergency imposed in Peru by the Congress and Dina Boluarte. At time of publications more than 21 people had been killed and scores wounded, and an emergency declaration rescinding fundamental constitutional and civil rights imposed.
Against state police repression and the violation of human rights, we, the community of writers, editors, indigenous intellectuals, translators, and reading facilitators, declare:
1. We denounce the violence perpetrated by the Peruvian state, and carried out by the Policía Nacional del Perú and the FFAA against the citizens who are exercising their right to protest. The government, headed today by Dina Boluarte, is responsible for the death of eight [tr. note: this number has increased to at least 21 by time of translation] Peruvians in the regions of Ayacucho, Junín, Apurímac, Arequipa and La Libertad, in addition to having caused tens of critical injuries in a number of places throughout the country. The Policía Nacional del Perú (PNP) , the institution that has exercised the same repressive protocols against civilians since the 1980s, acts with impunity—as we saw manifest in the Baguazo of 2009, Conga and Espinar in 2012, Valle de Tambo in 2011, 2015, and 2019, through the marches in Lima and the Agricultural Strike in Ica and Virú in 2020—against fundamental rights, with particular cruelty against protestors from vulnerable sectors, the Andes and the Amazon. We therefore demand both justice for victims of the state violence of recent days and true institutional police reform that includes penal and administrative prosecution of those responsible for these deaths and injuries.
2. We reject the imposition of the state of emergency, announced by the Executive Branch, which is at the service of an illegitimate Congress of the Republic. We likewise reject the granting of exceptional power that, on one hand, allow for the use of force by the PNP and the Armed Forces, and on the other suspend constitutional rights. The Peruvian State has, through repression and death, given a clear answer to the demands of Peruvian society which wants an immediate solution to the crisis. We deplore the completely absent will to convene a national dialogue that addresses these claims. The State together with corporate and media powers actively ignore the demands of campesino communities, indigenous territorial governments, regional governments, and social organizations and collectives across the country, instead seeking to impose reprehensible racism, classism, and centralism by force.
3. We support the demands on display at protests at the national level, which are a response to being exhausted with historical inequalities and which have been raised against a political class that governs with contempt for its own people. We are in solidarity with all those injured and detained. We are in the struggle with our brothers and sisters. As such, we reject the criminalization of protest on the part of the Executive and the Congress. The discourse that the Peruvian State upholds through its power demonstrates once more the little political will to resolve this crisis, reducing national protest to vandalism, terrorism or crime. Conveniently, the consolidated means of communication cast the Peruvian extreme right as their spokespeople, resorting to the "terruqueo" [fearmongering] so as to constrain social mobilization in the provinces.
4. Finally, from our locations, we join in the National March, called by diverse sectors of Peruvian society, for this Thursday, December 15, 2022. We adhere to the demands raised today and those to come: the resignation of Dina Boluarte, the shuttering of the parliamentary dictatorship of the Congreso de la República and the advancing to elections, in addition to the calling of a Constitutional Assembly, the democratic mechanism par excellence and the path to the creation of a new social, economic, and political pact.
Perú, 15th December, 2022.