Peru’s new president, Jose Jeri, is refusing to resign amid Gen Z antigovernment protests, inflamed by the death of a popular rapper, as crime grips the nation.
The government said late on Thursday that a state of emergency would be declared in the capital, Lima, as the prosecutor’s office announced it was investigating the previous day’s killing of 32-year-old protester and hip-hop singer Eduardo Ruiz in a mass demonstration.
Peru’s police chief, General Oscar Arriola, said that Luis Magallanes, a member of the force, was believed to have fired the bullet and had subsequently been detained and dismissed from his job. Arriola added that Magallanes was being treated in hospital after being physically assaulted.
Ruiz was the first person to die in the protests, which began a month ago with calls for better pensions and wages for young people and later became a lightning rod for broader frustrations with crime and corruption, culminating in the ouster of former President Dina Boluarte last week.
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On Wednesday, thousands massed around the country, with hundreds clashing with police outside Congress in Lima, as they called on recently appointed Jeri, the seventh president in less than a decade, to resign.
“My responsibility is to maintain the stability of the country; that is my responsibility and my commitment,” Jeri told the local media after visiting Peru’s parliament, where he said he would request powers to combat crime.
Jeri expressed regret over Ruiz’s death in a post on X, saying the death would be “objectively” investigated. He blamed violence on “delinquents who infiltrated a peaceful demonstration to sow chaos”.
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“The full force of the law will be on them,” he wrote.
Reporting from Lima, Al Jazeera’s Mariana Sanchez said that Ruiz’s death had “added another layer to the ongoing political crisis” in the country and had “angered even more Peruvians who are frustrated with the corruption, with the insecurity in the country”.
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“He was peacefully hanging out with his friends. Unfortunately, the bullet hit his chest. We want justice for him,” activist Milagros Samillan told Al Jazeera.
The prosecutor’s office wrote on X that it had ordered the removal of Ruíz’s body from a Lima hospital and the “collection of audiovisual and ballistic evidence in the area where the incident occurred, in the context of serious human rights violations”.
Newly appointed interior minister, Vicente Tiburcio, said that 89 police and 22 civilians had been injured during Wednesday’s protest and 11 people were detained.
