Pardon of Former Peruvian President Fujimori Deals Blow to Fight Against Gender Violence
By Mariela Jara
LIMA, Jan 15 2018 (IPS) - The political crisis triggered in Peru by the presidential pardon of former president Alberto Fujimori granted on Christmas Eve casts a shadow of doubt over what actions will be taken to curb violence against women in this country, where 116 femicides were registered in 2017, and which ranks eighth with respect to gender-related murders in Latin America and the Caribbean.
The pardon devalues the actions that the government may undertake to achieve a life without violence, because it has released one of the worst violators of the human rights of women, said Liz Meléndez, director of the non-governmental Flora Tristán Womens Centre.
Meléndez pointed out that in the 1990s, Fujimori was responsible for a public policy that forcibly sterilised more than 200,000 Andean indigenous peasant women, a crime for which he will not be investigated or penalised since he was granted a presidential pardon.
This impunity is outrageous, she said, since due to problems of access to justice, poverty and discrimination, it was only possible to put together a file of 2,074 cases.
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