Ombudsman's report says 33 people died in Amazon violence

July 6, 2009

Police break up indigenous protests in northern Peru, June 5. © Thomas Quirynen

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A report just published by Peru’s Ombudsman states that thirty-three people died in the recent violence in the Peruvian Amazon.

According to the report, twenty-three of the deceased were policemen, five ‘civilians’, and five ‘Indigenous’. Two hundred people were wounded and eighty-three were arrested.   

Although doubts remain about the whereabouts of twelve people, the report states that it cannot find evidence of anyone who has ‘disappeared’. Every Indigenous community visited by the Ombudsman’s researchers had all persons accounted for.

The report names all thirty-three people who died. It also includes a list of how people were wounded: eighty-two from firearms, forty-one from ‘contusion and multi-contusion injuries’, twenty-two from ‘poisoning, abrasions and burns caused by teargas’, nineteen from ‘injuries caused by sharp objects’, sixteen from ‘injuries by shots of heat’, and twenty from other causes.

Read Survival's eyewitness report on the violence.

Watch Survival's film featuring interviews with the eyewitnesses.

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