Peru’s capital under curfew

Press, 10 February 1986, Page 6

Peru’s capital under curfew

NZPA-Reuter Lima Peru’s military prepared yesterday to enforce a nation-wide state of emergency and a curfew in the capital and Maoist guerrillas promised to step up their Giant Leap offensive against the Government. The President, Mr Alan Garcia, put the armed forces in charge of enforcing the 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. ban under emergency measures announced on Friday aimed at curbing the spread of Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) guerrillas from the Andes to Lima. It was the first time since Peru returned, to democracy, in 1980, that the Government was to impose a curfew in Lima, a city of five million people. Mr Garcia, elected in a landslide election six months ago, also suspended a wide range of constitutional rights in the state of emergency. The Government is now empowered to ban public assemblies and travel to the provinces and abroad. The police and soldiers can raid homes and arrest suspects without warrants. But Sendero, in a communique issued in the Andean city of Ayacucho, said it would climax a Giant Leap offensive to bury Mr Garcia’s American Popular Revolutionary Alliance (A.P.R.A.) Government. , >. The Great Leap is known as the most spectacular stage of Sendero’s periodic campaigns, the latest of which is expected to culminate in March, security force sources say.

The current Great Leap appeared to have been heralded by the posting of Senderos’ red hammer-and-sickle flags on three Ayacucho highways on January 20, they said.

Since then Sendero has killed one municipal official, two town governors and 14 Indian peasants in Ayacucho state, where the rebel movement was born in 1980.