“The police kill me“said the banner of a young woman in Lima who participated on Saturday in the march for 25N, Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women: Victims’ lawyers point out that in police stations the police have established practices, without any legal basis, to prevent the timely reporting of violence or disappearance, and to intimidate the complainants by warning them of a possible response from their attackers.
The obstacles to reporting and providing protection measures date back more than a decade, according to police station supervision reports. Ombudsman’s Officebut also the relatives of victims of feminicide and disappearance consulted by Public They warn that the indifference or complicity of the Police with the violence – which they experienced in previous years – still exists.
“In the end this entire ecosystem to defend women ends up being more violent than primal violence why he went to the police station,” explains the lawyer Ana Maria Vidalwho defends victims of gender violence. The defender describes underlying problems in all police stations, such as access. “If you don’t have ID, the police won’t let you in to file a complaint.. This happens in the most central police stations and in the most remote ones. It is absurd because many times at the moment of the attack they run away and forget to take their document: The agents say that the DNI is needed, but they contravene the law by requiring it“says Vidal.
The lawyer points out that the police only allow victims to enter a police station accompanied by a lawyer, but not by a support person such as a relative or a psychologist. “They don’t want anyone with the victim, they make her sit alone and say it is according to a directive, but no rule establishes it.” “Also require the victim to report the current attackthe police are not instructed to record previous episodes of violence; and by collecting only the last fact, the Prosecutor’s Office does the same. The investigation should have a gender focus but they leave the statement to the Gesell chamber to expand: the problem is that Prosecutors use this to shelve the investigation when they don’t want to collide with powerful aggressors,” adds Vidal.
The case of Sheyla Cóndor
Peru has once again been shaken by a case of femicide in which the Police did not want to receive the disappearance report in a timely manner. The same thing happened in 2016 with the university student Solsiret Rodríguezwhose mother Rosario Aybar They did not accept his complaint at the police station, alleging that perhaps he had gone with another couple.
Sheyla Condor26 years old, disappeared on Wednesday the 13th in Lima and her mother Elsa Torres He wanted to report the incident the next day. At the nearest police station they did not accept the procedure, they told her to go to another one in the district where her daughter had supposedly disappeared, in Comas, but they also questioned the search: they added that the young woman could have gone with her lover and to wait.
Torres had seen his daughter’s WhatsApp conversation with the aggressor on a laptop, Darwin Condoria police officer reported for group rape in January 2023 in his apartment in Lima.
At the second police station they told her that if her daughter appeared, Condori could sue her for defamation, and they did not want to accompany her when she showed the address of her daughter’s possible whereabouts: a group of buildings in Comas, in Lima Norte. She also knew that The agents notified Condori that they were looking for him.
On Saturday the 16th, the Police were alerted to suspicious odors in the agent’s apartment, and the victim’s mother went to the building. Torres and the Police found the remains of the young woman in a suitcase. Condori was found dead three days later in a hostel in another district of the capital: the agents who found him transferred the body in the absence of a prosecutor and altered the crime scene, violating criminalistics protocols.
“Eight years have passed and it has been repeated: we are still doing the same thing,” Solsiret Rodríguez’s mother denounced on Wednesday. “There has been so much violence from the policewhich is a public entity, the same thing happened with my daughter,” Aybar claimed, alluding to the case of Sheyla Cóndor.
Vidal also agreed: “The responses that the Police have given to Sheyla Cóndor’s mother They don’t surprise me because I’ve seen them in other cases.”
The police omission
Edward Alvarado wanted to report the disappearance of his sister Karin, 39, on September 3, 2019 at a police station in Lima and The police responded that he could not do it, but the parents could.. She went shopping for a children’s party and did not return. “I was at the Canto Rey police station for three hours and I didn’t leave, but I had to call 114 from the Ministry of the Interior and fight for them to help me reluctantly. The technician did not know what he had to write and that complaint had deficiencies and errors“, he told by phone Public.
Days later, the Criminal Investigation Division prepared another document “because the police station did not lift a fingerthey waited for us to start investigating by checking my sister’s cell phone and social networks,” he recalls.
Alvarado, who out of solidarity spreads the word on social networks and attends marches by relatives of other missing women, highlights that given the indifference of the Police in these cases, relatives are forced to investigate, as has happened with Sheyla Cóndor’s mother. .
He provided police with the name of the last person who saw his sister before she disappeared in 2019, but they never questioned him. The tax investigation into his sister’s disappearance began in January 2020, but then moved to another office, in another district, in April of the same year. “There they let the investigation die: they archived it“, he indicates.
At the end of 2022, Alvarado obtained legal support from the feminist NGO Flora Tristán and the investigation has been reopened in October: “I have faith that my sister’s case can advance“he notes.
“Police stations are like small barracks where only those in uniform can enter and that makes them feel with greater power than the average citizen. These constant practices to prevent reporting obstruct the path to Justice”warns lawyer Vidal.
Since the last decade, the Ombudsman’s Office has also revealed other serious problems in police attention to victims, such as the delay in giving or executing protection measures due to lack of personnel or vehicles, or the lack of access to the national registry of protective measures. In supervising police stations he also found that The agents do not have training on the regulations on gender violence.
Police perpetrators
The lawyer Gabriela Palizadirector of the María Trinidad Enriquez Community Legal Center, drew attention to the lack of progress in the tax investigation of police officer Condori for gang rape of unconscious women in January 2023. The agent spent 15 days in preliminary detention, and after six months of suspension he rejoined the service.
Paliza is also a lawyer the NGO Promsexwhich defends victims of emblematic cases of gender violence. In 2008, Blue Red Marin He identified as a homosexual man – currently as a woman. She was returning home one night and three police officers chased her and violently put her into a patrol car. In a police station she was a victim of torture and sexual rape.
The Prosecutor’s Office did not want to investigate the case as torture and in 2009 The investigation for aggravated sexual violation and abuse of authority was archived. For this reason, the citizen went to the inter-American justice system. Eleven years later, in 2020, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruled against the Peruvian State for violating the rights of Rojas Marín.
In Tacna, a region bordering Chile, a police officer in charge of investigating disappearance complaints was convicted in March 2023 for the feminicide of a young woman and a teenager previously reported missing. The sentence was initially life imprisonment for kidnapping and femicide, but months later the judges reduced the sentence to 35 years in prison.
Increase in femicides
According to official figures, In Peru there were 146 femicides in 2023, and so far this year, 133. He October monthly newsletter about Equality and non-violence, prepared by the Ombudsman’s Office, reports that between January and October the Police have issued 5,518 alert notes about missing women, of which the majority are minors. The figure already exceeds last year’s total of alerts: 5,184.
A statement titled Machismo and authoritarianism are killing us, prepared by human rights NGOs and feminist groups, expressed this weekend her indignation at “the weakening of gender violence as a priority on the public agenda“.
This year, the authoritarian regime of Dina Boluarte recognized that they were preparing the merger of the Ministry of Women with the Ministry of Development and Social Inclusion, and repealed the norm of inclusive language in public documents and school textbooks. In addition, a congressional committee approved a bill that eliminates the position of gender equality officer in public institutions.
The statement also demands “urgent reforms in the police system to guarantee adequate attention to survivors and family members who report. The culture of impunity and the pact of silence of corporations must come to an end“.
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