Peru's anti-riot tactics unmatched in lethality

[Bacchus4.0]

http://news.yahoo.com/perus-anti-riot-tactics-unmatched-lethality-080023150.html

....LIMA, Peru (AP) —
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Civilian deaths are disturbingly frequent when protesters in provincial Peru confront police, whose standard means of crowd control appear to be live ammunition, typically fired from Kalashnikov or Galil assault rifles.

Since 2006, bullets fired by Peruvian security forces to quell protests have killed 80 people and wounded more than 800, according to the independent National Coordinator for Human Rights watchdog. Human rights activists say that reflects a disregard for human life unmatched in the region and argue that the government's routine use of deadly force against protesters could exacerbate violence.

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By contrast, police have killed 28 protesters in neighboring Bolivia since January 2006, according to its non-governmental Permanent Human Rights Assembly. Police in Colombia, a country plagued by guerrilla and right-wing militia violence, killed just six from 2000 through 2011, according to that country's human rights watchdog CINEP.

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The ombudsman's office counts 245 social conflicts across Peru, most of them disputes over mining in which fears over water contamination predominate. The mining industry accounts for more than 60 percent of export earnings and has been the engine of Peru's economic growth, but it inordinately affects the livelihoods of highlands farmers.

[Peace Patriot]

1. U.S. "free trade for the rich" at its finest. nt