Peru’s President Dina Boluarte has enacted a new law granting amnesty to soldiers, police, and civilian militias accused of crimes during the country’s 1980–2000 armed conflict against Maoist insurgents.
The measure, passed by Congress in July, overrides a request from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights to delay its implementation until its impact on victims could be reviewed.
The law covers hundreds of accused individuals and orders the release of those over 70 already serving prison terms for such offences.
It applies to acts committed during the conflict, in which the Shining Path and Tupac Amaru groups led uprisings that left around 70,000 people dead and over 20,000 missing, according to Peru’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC).
The TRC also reported that state forces were responsible for most documented sexual violence cases during this period.
Human rights groups and United Nations experts warned the measure could halt or reverse more than 600 ongoing trials and 156 convictions for abuses such as extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, torture, and sexual violence. Last year.
Peru also introduced a statute of limitations for crimes against humanity before 2002, ending many investigations and benefiting figures such as former president Alberto Fujimori, who was freed in 2023 and died in September 2024.
Separately, former president Martin Vizcarra has been placed in preventive detention for five months over claims he accepted $640,000 in bribes while serving as governor of Moquegua from 2011 to 2014.
He is the fifth ex-president to be jailed in corruption cases.