News stories by Ángel Páez, page 6

There is more than enough evidence to convict three generals and other army officers in the kidnapping and murder of 37 university students from the highlands city of Huancayo in Peru between 1989 and 1993, Víctor Lizárraga of the National Human Rights Coordinator (CNDDHH) told IPS.

The arrest in Peru of a former Army Intelligence Service (SIE) agent, retired Captain Víctor Penas, may clear up the murder of journalist Melissa Alfaro, and the mutilation of human rights defender Augusto Zúñiga, both victims of letter-bombs in 1991.

A priest who is touring the country in his bid to run for president next year, at the head of a leftist movement, was indefinitely suspended by the Catholic Church for getting involved in politics.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) has asked for precautionary measures in Peru to prevent the extradition to China of Wong Ho Wing, a Chinese national accused of crimes that could carry a death sentence in his country.

Although the technical investigations cleared two of the indigenous demonstrators accused in the murders of 12 policemen during a bloody June 2009 clash between native protesters and the security forces near the northern Amazon jungle town of Bagua, they are still behind bars.

Nine years after the 2001 shootdown of a small airplane carrying U.S. missionaries over the Peruvian jungle, the CIA and the armed forces of this South American country are pointing fingers at each other over who was responsible for the fatal mistake, which cost the lives of two people.

A trial against 41 Peruvian soldiers and officers accused of murdering six men and two women in the highlands village of Pucará in 1989, during the first term of current President Alan García, has reopened.

'The press will change when they cease to report exclusively from a masculine point of view,' Peru's deputy Minister for Women, Norma Añaños, told participants at an international seminar for journalists on 'Women at Work, Women as Leaders', held in the Peruvian capital.

The Peruvian government is once again being called on to bring to justice the perpetrators of the Voluntary Surgical Contraception (VSC) programme carried out by the Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000) regime, under which at least 2,000 women were forcibly sterilised. This time, the demand comes from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR).

Vice President Luis Giampietri, accused of taking a hand in irregular arms deals in the 1990s, has the dubious distinction of being the highest-ranking member of the Peruvian government to face criminal charges for corruption.