Foreign universities reject prosecutor’s accusation of promoting "terrorism" in Ayacucho (La República [Spanish] – 2/13/2023)

Foreign universities reject prosecutor’s accusation of promoting "terrorism" in Ayacucho (Spanish)

The promoter of the academic event, Professor Anouk Guiné, denied the accusation that the Ayacucho People's Defense Front (FREDEPA) organized and financed the colloquium on the internal armed conflict.


"It was an academic and scientific work with a plurality of voices for debate," said Anouk Guiné (photo composition LR)

 María Elena Hidalgo

The Le Havre Normandie University of France, which, along with other foreign universities, organized a 2022 discussion on the consequences of the internal armed conflict in Huamanga has rejected the accusation of Prosecutor Ketty Garibay Mascco, who stated that the event was a terrorist conclave.

 By requesting 18 months of preventive detention for the President of the Ayacucho People's Defense Front (FREDEPA), Rocío Leandro Melgar; the Vice President Stefany Alanya Chumbes and the Secretary of said organization, Alejandro Manay Pillaca, the Prosecutor Ketty Garibay alleged that these three people were part of an alleged New Red Fraction of Sendero Luminoso and that they were the promoters and financiers of a colloquium to justify their activities terrorists.

The international colloquium State Violence in Peru: from the Internal Armed Conflict to the Bicentennial Generation was an initiative of the Groupe de Recherche Identités et Cultures, of the Université Le Havre Normandie, which was joined by the University of Chile, the Autonomous University Metropolitana de México, the Complutense University of Madrid (Spain) and the University of Patagonia (Argentina). In addition, it was sponsored by the Ibero-American Resistance and Memory Network, the organizers pointed out to clarify the accusation of Ketty Garibay.

The universities and institutions that participated expressed that the information disseminated "by prosecutors prone to making accusations without rigor" is not true. The event was scheduled for 2021, but due to the pandemic it was held in 2022.

 “The event had an academic and scientific nature, and the doors were opened to all voices. The objective was to reflect on conflicts experienced in the last two decades of the 20th century in Peru and Latin America, which was done by addressing numerous approaches typical of a democracy," they said in a joint statement.

 “We condemn the stigmatization of its participants and the use of the colloquium to justify a supposed apology for terrorism. It is especially serious to accuse those who directly or indirectly participated in the organization of the event of a supposed 'terrorist affiliation'”, they added.


(Communication from the universities)

 Le Havre Normandie University Professor Anouk Guiné, promoter of the colloquium in Huamanga, told La República the motivations of the academic conclave described by prosecutor Ketty Garibay as a “terrorist” event.

 “I am the initiator of the project. At the University I belong to the Identities and Cultures Research Group, made up of about twenty professors and researchers. I presented my project, and it was approved by vote, then it went through several commissions that studied the file and the support. And finally, it was approved by the rector of the university. The usual thing is to hold the colloquium at the same university, but, due to the nature of the subject, it was held in Ayacucho”, explained Anouk Guiné, who is co-author of the book “Gender and armed conflict in Peru”.

The colloquium is part of the context of the two hundred years of the Independence of Peru, and it was proposed to think and rethink the internal armed conflict of 1980-2000, its end and its consequences to the present.

 “I have been working on the issue of the internal armed conflict since 2010 and in Peru historically there is a continuity of this State violence, a violence that does not end, with political persecution of everyone who has a critical voice. In the colloquium we seek to establish a dialogue between the Peruvian process and other Latin American experiences, and that explains the presence of Latin American universities in the organizing committee and in the scientific one,” said Anouk Guiné.

 It was the Le Havre Normandie University that, through an agreement with the National Association of Relatives of the Kidnapped, Detainedand Disappeared of Peru (ANFASEP), financed the transportation, hotel, and food expenses of the speakers, he said.

 Regarding the participation of FREDEPA, as well as Rocío Leandro, Guiné and other leaders, Guiné confirmed that they were invited to the event because it is a representative social organization in Ayacucho.

 “An international symposium of this magnitude cannot be organized without going through social organizations; in this case, represented by FREDEPA. FREDEPA reached the end of its journey, in June 2022. Several people from FREDEPA sent the summary of their presentation individually, and among those chosen was Rocío Leandro. She was a speaker on the first day,” she noted.

 “It is very easy to criminalize. It is part of the logic of a 'witch hunt' towards people who work for fundamental civil rights. We reject that the colloquium was an act of 'apology for terrorism'. Reflecting on state violence cannot be treated as terrorist. It was an academic and scientific work with a plurality of voices for debate. There was even a voice on the side of the military, Carla Granados, a military historian who participated as a speaker," said Anouk Guiné.

Tags: #FREDEPA #ANFASEP #Terruqueo #RocíoLeandro #KettyGaribay #AnoukGuiné

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