Castañeda calls on Lima mayor candidates to make realistic promises

Lima Mayor Luis Castañeda has called on candidates campaigning to replace him to refrain from making unrealistic promises, particularly with regards to crime, state news agency Andina reported.

Elections for the mayor of Lima are to be held in October. Candidates for the position have focused their campaigns largely on problems related to crime and transportation in the Peruvian capital.

Castañeda, who is a front runner for Peru’s presidential elections in 2011, said that many of the solutions proposed simply won’t work.

“What I fundamentally want is for them to not make promises that don’t respond to reality,” he said. “What they should do, and I’m free to say so because I’m not a candidate, is to talk about what they are going to do in the city that is concrete.” Read more…

Flores declares “war on crime” during first debate for Lima’s mayor

The leader of Peru’s PPC party, Lourdes Flores, said she will declare a war on crime in Lima if she is elected the mayor of the Peruvian capital, state news agency Andina reported.

Flores said she would install 3,000 cameras on Lima’s streets and 10,000 more police officers to improve security.

“I declare a war on crime and we are going to win,” Flores said during a debate. Read more…

Shining Path newlyweds may qualify for conjugal visits

Abimael Guzman, the imprisoned leader of the bloody Shining Path insurgency, and his new wife, Elena Iparraguirre, may be able to have conjugal visits, daily El Comercio reported the president of Peru’s judicial branch, Javier Villa, as saying.

Visits between Guzman and Iparraguirre “will depend on various factors,” Villa said, adding: “the wedding responds to a humanitarian right.” Read more…

Peru sees an average of 442 crimes, 8 homicides daily, former police colonel says

An average of 442 crimes and eight homicides are committed every day in Peru, according to retired national police Col. Juan Briceño.

Briceño told Radioprogramas that the nation’s daily crimes include 168 robberies. The country’s murder rate has jumped to 10 per 100,000 population so far this year, up from 4 per 100,000 population in 2002.

In 2008, Briceño co-authored the book “The police that Lima needs” with Gino Costa, a former interior minister, and human rights scholar Carlos Romero.

Despite more officers and resources for the National Police, the increase of crime in Peru is a result of authorities failing to address the root cause of social inclusion, according to Alfonso Gushikén, a public health expert.

Between 2002 and 2007, Peru experienced one of the largest increases in prison population rates in the Americas, according to the 2010 International Statistics on Crime and Justice Report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

Peru’s prison rate population has jumped by almost 40 percent in the five-year period, behind Ecuador, Guyana, Haiti, Brazil and El Salvador.

However despite these figures, Peru still has some of the lowest crime rates in the region.

In terms of homicide rates, Peru’s is the lowest among Andean nations. Criminal justice data from the UNODC shows that Ecuador’s homicide rate reaches almost 20 per 100,000 population, followed by Bolivia at approximately 30 and Colombia at about 35. Venezuela’s homicide rate is above 50, making it one of the highest in the Western Hemisphere along with El Salvador, Guatemala, Trinidad and Tobago and Jamaica.

Three-year-old Peruvian girl shot and paralyzed during failed robbery

A 3-year-old girl has suffered irreversible paralysis after being shot in the neck and arm on Sunday in Lima during a botched hold up targeting her grandparents.

“The damage is irreversible. What we don’t know very well is what her possibilities will be in the future,” daily El Comercio reported the director of Peru’s National Children’s Institute, Roberto Shimabuku, as saying. “We can’t know that until we specify the exact details of the extent of the damage produced.” Read more…

Canada to provide US$490,000 for combating human trafficking in Peru

Canada’s government will contribute Cdn$500,000 (US$490,000) to two projects in Peru aimed at combating human trafficking, the Canadian Ambassador to Peru, Richard Lecoq, said in a press release in Lima.

The projects are part of a 2007-2013 national plan which includes the objectives of training police and government officials and improving the skills of immigration agents in Peru’s border regions to thwart human trafficking, the release said. Read more…

Slaying of Ancash leader a result of robbery, police say

The motive behind the highway ambush that lead to the slaying of the acting president of northern Peru’s Ancash region was robbery, according to the head of the criminal investigation office in Trujillo, police colonel José Honores.

“We’ve ruled out that it was an assassination,” Honores was quoted saying in daily El Comercio. Read more…

García administration should end offensive against British missionary

Editorial:

Where is the middle ground for the impoverished inhabitants of Peru’s Amazon region to stand up against the threats encroaching in on them? What is their best option for action in Peru’s fragile democracy? Who do they turn to?

Cocaine traffickers offer them a pittance, which they accept at the barrel of a gun, to cultivate coca. In the bargain, their land is decimated by erosion and their water poisoned with acetone, kerosene and sulfuric acid that leaches from clandestine maceration pits.

The administration of President Alan García, while impotent in its efforts to put a meaningful dent in Peru’s growing cocaine trade, opens the Amazon to unprecedented mining and oil exploration and drilling — eroding the land and poisoning the water with lead, cadmium and hundreds of barrels of raw crude dumped directly into the rivers. Read more…

Prison wedding request denied; Shining Path founder and his second-in-command lover told to seek stand-ins for ceremony

The National Penitentiary Institute (INPE) has denied a formal request by imprisoned Shining Path leader, Abimael Guzman, to be transferred to Santa Monica womens prison to marry his partner and former number two of the terrorist group, Elena Iparraguirre.

In a televised meeting of the council that administers the Callao Naval Base, where Guzman is serving a life sentence, the head of INPE, Ruben Rodriguez, said either the groom or bride would have to choose a proxy to stand in for them at the ceremony.

“To move one of the two from the prisons where they are held — from Callao to Chorrillos or Chorrillos to Callao — would mean a major shift of staff, jeopardizing their safety,” he said.

“We have communicated this determination in writing and we are now waiting for their decision or for them to name stand-ins in order to allow for civil marriage ceremony to take place,” he added. Read more…

Authorities confiscate 11 tonnes of coca during first half of year in Cuzco department

During the first six months of 2010, police in southern Peru’s Cuzco region have seized more than 11 tonnes of coca leaf, the raw material used to make cocaine, state news agency Andina reported.

Police in Cuzco had set up stations to seize coca on highways leaving Cuzco’s La Convención, Paucartambo and Calca provinces, Officer Fidel Pisfil said. Read more…

Next Page »