Peru: massacre victims exhumed in Ayacucho [View all]

[Judi Lynn]

Peru: massacre victims exhumed in Ayacucho
Submitted by WW4 Report on Fri, 09/26/2014 - 00:22

Investigators from the Fiscalía, Peru's public prosecutor, exhumed 21 bodies from four mass graves in a remote area of Ayacucho region, the office announced Sept. 15. The find was made at the hamlet of Belen Chapi, in the Paccha area of Chungui district, in a zone of high jungle known as the Oreja de Perro which had been a stronghold of the Shining Path rebels in the 1980s. The bodies are believed to be those a group of peasants summarily executed by security forces on suspicion of being guerilla collaborators on July 14, 1984—although the remains of none more said to have been killed that day remain missing. Authorities will now begin the work of identifying the remains, as well as naming the members of the army and National Police who were responsible for the massacre.

Investigators were led to the spot by Dolores Guzmán, the sole survivor of the massacre. She said she was spared because one of her cousins was a police guide. The day after the killings, she was marched out of the police-occupied hamlet and released. The cost of keeping her life was to prepare a last meal for the condemned. She cooked sweetened pumpkin and personally fed each detainee because their hands were bound behind them. No one begged for mercy, Guzmán told a reporter from the Associated Press. But the silence broke when the killing began, she said. "The children cried the loudest." (AP, Sept. 18; EFE Sept. 15)

http://ww4report.com/node/13569

(Short article, no more at link.)

This massacre was brought to the world courtesy of Peruvian President, Fernando Belaúnde Terry.