Peru closed the Inca citadel of Machu Picchu on Saturday amid persistent anti-government protests, stranding hundreds of tourists for hours, as authorities expelled protesters from a Lima university where they have been holed up as part of the crisis engulfing the divided country.
Protests demanding the resignation of Peruvian President Dina Boluarte have been ongoing since early last month, leaving 46 people dead and prompting the government to impose a state of emergency in violence-hit areas.
This crisis triggered by the ouster of leftist indigenous Peruvian president Pedro Castillo last month stems largely from a gaping inequity between Peru’s urban elite and poor rural indigenous people in the Andean region who saw him as one of their own and working to make their lives better.
Photo: AFP
Authorities on Saturday said yet another protester had died following demonstrations on Friday in the town of Ilave in that Andean region in the south.
Video footage from Ilave that went viral on social media shows police shooting right at a crowd of indigenous demonstrators in the town square.
Enraged protesters responded by setting fire to a police station, local media reported.
Clashes between police and the crowd in that town near Lake Titicaca and the border with Bolivia left 10 people injured, hospital officials said.
Prior to the closing of Machu Picchu, rail services to the site had already been suspended due to damage to the track by demonstrators. The only way to get up to the popular tourist site is by train.
At least 400 people, including 300 foreigners, were stranded at the foot of the site, in the town of Aguas Calientes, and pleading to be evacuated.
Rescue teams later evacuated 418 tourists, the Peruvian Ministry of Foreign Trade and Tourism said in a Twitter post accompanied by pictures of a train and seated travelers.
“The closure of the Inca trails network and the Machu Picchu citadel has been ordered due to the social situation and to preserve the safety of visitors,” the Peruvian Ministry of Culture said in a statement.
Tourism is vital for Peru’s economy, representing 3 to 4 percent of the country’s GDP.
In Lima, where two days of mass mobilization by demonstrators from the country’s poor Andean region had seemingly concluded, the situation remained tense on Saturday.
As night fell, hundreds more protesters gathered in the city, mainly around the Congress building.
During the day, security forces used an armored vehicle to breach the gate of the University of San Marcos in the city’s downtown, in an attempt to expel protesters who have been sleeping there.
A large contingent of police searched occupants, sometimes forcing them to lie on the ground, Agence France-Presse journalists reported.
Peruvian Minister of the Interior Vicente Romero told Canal N television that police intervened after university authorities said some of the squatters were committing crimes.
He did not specify what these were.
About 200 people were arrested, said Alfonso Barrenechea, a spokesman for the prosecutors’ office.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘POINT OF NO RETURN’: The Caribbean nation needs increased international funding and support for a multinational force to help police tackle expanding gang violence The top UN official in Haiti on Monday sounded an alarm to the UN Security Council that escalating gang violence is liable to lead the Caribbean nation to “a point of no return.” Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Haiti Maria Isabel Salvador said that “Haiti could face total chaos” without increased funding and support for the operation of the Kenya-led multinational force helping Haiti’s police to tackle the gangs’ expanding violence into areas beyond the capital, Port-Au-Prince. Most recently, gangs seized the city of Mirebalais in central Haiti, and during the attack more than 500 prisoners were freed, she said.
DEMONSTRATIONS: A protester said although she would normally sit back and wait for the next election, she cannot do it this time, adding that ‘we’ve lost too much already’ Thousands of protesters rallied on Saturday in New York, Washington and other cities across the US for a second major round of demonstrations against US President Donald Trump and his hard-line policies. In New York, people gathered outside the city’s main library carrying signs targeting the US president with slogans such as: “No Kings in America” and “Resist Tyranny.” Many took aim at Trump’s deportations of undocumented migrants, chanting: “No ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement], no fear, immigrants are welcome here.” In Washington, protesters voiced concern that Trump was threatening long-respected constitutional norms, including the right to due process. The
RSS