‘Dramatic setback’: Will Peru’s new amnesty law put justice out of reach?

First came the rattle of a loud explosion. Then, the patter of gunfire reached 14-year-old Francisco Ochoa's ears.

Ochoa and his father had been up since the crack of dawn on August 14, 1985, preparing to sow seeds in the corn fields outside Accomarca, a small village nestled in the rugged Andean mountains of south-central Peru.

But the unexpected sounds coming from their hometown forced them to rush back.

It was late morning by the time they reached the houses, but the village was eerily quiet.

"The first thing I remember from that day is the smell when we arrived," Ochoa, now 54, recalled. "It smelled like smouldering flesh, and there was no one around."

They had stumbled upon one of the most infamous massacres of Peru's two-decade-long armed conflict, one that marks its 40th anniversary this year.

From 1980 to 2000, the country's military and security forces led a campaign against the Shining Path and Tupac Amaru rebel groups, which sought to overthrow the government.

But in the process, soldiers and police officers committed gross human rights violations, killing dissidents, Indigenous people and other civilians.

As many as 70,000 people were slaughtered. Many families have yet to find justice for their lost loved ones.

But the horrors of 1985 come back to Ochoa anew when he thinks about a bill the Peruvian Congress approved this month, granting amnesty to members of the armed forces and law enforcement accused of crimes during that period.

The bill now awaits action from President Dina Boluarte, who can choose to let it become law — or send it back to Congress.

Survivors and human rights advocates are urging Boluarte to bar it from taking effect.

"This is a dramatic setback," said Jo-Marie Burt, a professor at George Mason University who has written about the violence during the war.

Up to this point, Burt said, Peru has been a leader in seeking accountability for human rights concerns.

"Peru is among a handful of countries in Latin America that has successfully brought to trial some of the most emblematic cases of grave violations of human rights that were committed during its armed conflict," she explained.

Surviving Accomarca

The pending amnesty law could erase approximately 156 convictions and more than 600 ongoing investigations, according to human rights organisations.

Not only would it protect military members and police from prosecution, but it would also grant "humanitarian" amnesty to already convicted officials over the age of 70.

For many survivors of Peru's armed conflict, the bill reopens old wounds.

Rural and Indigenous communities were especially hard-hit, and they continue to struggle with marginalisation and inequality.

An estimated 79 percent of the victims from 1985 to 2000 lived in rural areas, and 75 percent spoke an Indigenous language as their mother tongue, like Quechua.

Ochoa himself now leads a group that represents the families of those killed in Accomarca. He said its members feel "outraged and betrayed" by Congress's actions.

His life was derailed by the events of 1985. He credits the trauma he endured with impeding his studies. What happened the morning he was farming outside the village lingers with him to this day.

"The military had arrived and asked people to gather for a town assembly," Ochoa explained, punctuating his thoughts with long pauses.

"Once they were all gathered, they separated the women from the men and put them inside one of the villagers’ huts. The women were assaulted, the men were tortured, and the hut was fired upon and burned with everyone inside."

Upon discovering the bloodshed, a terrified Ochoa and his father fled the area. The military was continuing to conduct raids in the area, and they were not safe.

He now lives in the capital Lima with his partner and works in construction.

Peru's Truth and Reconciliation Commission would later determine that 62 victims were killed in the massacre at Accomarca, including women, the elderly and children.

They included Ochoa's mother, 8-year-old brother and 6-year-old sister. He also lost aunts and cousins in the gunfire.

The executions in Accomarca were part of a military operation called Operation Huancayoc, which was designed to target suspected Shining Path members.

But despite finding no evidence linking the villagers to the rebel group, a military unit led by Second Lieutenant Telmo Hurtado Hurtado carried out their executions. Hurtado even used a grenade to help kill the villagers.

High-ranking army officers in the nearby city of Ayacucho also planned and approved the operation.

"The order was to kill everyone," Ochoa recalled. The military killed seven witnesses in the days that followed, according to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

The commission concluded that massacres like what happened in Accomarca were consistent with the military's overall tactics.

"The extrajudicial executions, forced disappearances, and tortures were not the result of individual initiatives but rather the execution of a strategy," the commission said in its report.

A long road to justice

Even after the internal conflict came to an end, Ochoa said that justice took decades to achieve.

Many of the bodies in Accomarca were charred beyond recognition, and the survivors struggled to identify the dead. The victims were ultimately buried together in a single grave mere metres away from the house where they had been massacred.

Only in recent decades have the remains been exhumed. Authorities relied on family members and DNA testing to help identify the victims, and in 2022, a formal burial was held with white coffins for each of the dead.

Some contained only bone fragments. Others, clothes. In cases where nothing could be recovered, an empty coffin was buried instead.

Ochoa said the remains of 18 victims have yet to be found, and there are not enough resources to continue with the DNA analysis.

But identifying the dead is only half the battle. The survivors and victims' families also sought accountability from the soldiers who had carried out the killings and the officers who gave the orders.

For many years, however, justice was out of reach — in part, because of a previous amnesty law.

Towards the end of the conflict, in 1995, then-President Alberto Fujimori approved a law that shielded security forces from prosecution.

Only after its repeal in 2001 could effective judicial investigations begin.

Fujimori himself was convicted of human rights abuses in 2009, though he was controversially pardoned and released from prison in 2023, shortly before his death nine months later.

In the case of Accomarca, military leaders like Hurtado were put on trial and sentenced in 2017 to prison terms of more than 20 years.

Gloria Cano, a lawyer representing the Accomarca families and the director of the Pro-Human Rights Association (APRODEH), said the latest amnesty law could derail the progress that has already been made.

"First, the fugitives must serve their prison terms. Second, the civil reparations ordered by the courts in 2017 must be paid. This hasn’t been fulfilled yet," she said.

"They also want to know what happened to some missing remains — bodies that were taken from the common grave."

An uncomfortable past

Cano believes that the new amnesty law is unconstitutional and violates Peru's human rights obligations.

That sentiment has been echoed by human rights experts at the United Nations.

In a joint statement issued on July 17, nine experts called the amnesty bill a "clear breach" of Peru's legal obligations.

"Peru has a duty to investigate, prosecute and punish gross human rights violations and crimes under international law committed during the conflict," they wrote.

"International standards prohibit amnesties or pardons for such grave crimes."

Protests this week to mark Peru's Independence Day likewise sought to pressure President Boluarte to nix the bill.

Since the start of the week, for instance, families of the victims have rallied in a series of protests in downtown Lima.

But not everyone is opposed to the amnesty law. Congressman Fernando Rospigliosi is a prominent supporter of the bill, and he argued that the military helped "save" Peru from "the clutches of terrorism".

"Today, we would not be here — there would be no parliament, there would be no independent press — if those soldiers and police had not risked their lives," he told reporters.

Rospigliosi said the amnesty law would protect former law enforcement from "endless persecution". He is a member of the Fuerza Popular, a right-wing party led by the late Fujimori's daughter, Keiko Fujimori.

Lurgio Gavilán, an anthropology professor at the National University of San Cristóbal de Huamanga, has researched the complex dynamics that led to the atrocities of the war.

Gavilán himself witnessed the horrors of the conflict firsthand. At age 12, he joined the Shining Path but was later recruited by the army to fight against the rebels.

"The military have also suffered. Not all of them committed atrocities," Gavilán said.

He shared his story in an autobiography, which was recently adapted into a 2024 movie called Tattoos in Memory.

Gavilán explained that he encourages the public to seek to understand the different sides of the conflict. The soldiers and rebels cope with trauma, too.

"The fact is, the Shining Path, the army — they didn’t come from somewhere else. They were not foreigners. It was us," he said.

But for Burt, the professor at George Mason University, the amnesty law continues a trend that moves away from confronting what happened.

Last year, Congress passed a statute of limitations for crimes against humanity committed before 2002.

Then, in March, Congress amended a law to include new restrictions on civil society groups and other nonprofits. Opponents have dubbed the measure the "anti-NGO law".

One provision would bar nonprofits that receive international development funds from assisting in legal cases against the Peruvian government.

Burt has worked with Peru's Truth and Reconciliation Commission and followed the Accomarca legal case.

She believes that the amnesty bill, in combination with the "anti-NGO law", would make it nearly impossible for nonprofits to challenge the state in human rights cases, like those resulting from the armed conflict.

"To deal with the past, reckon with the past, provide reparations to the victims, and to help society kind of move past what happened", Burt said it is important to acknowledge the truth of what unfolded.

But one of the ways to do that is "by providing victims with a remedy right through a legal system" — something she said has become harder in the shadow of the new bill.