PERU-SHINING PATH/RELEASE Peruvian authorities rescue 39 people kidnapped by Shining Path rebels

Record ID: 145915

  • Title: PERU-SHINING PATH/RELEASE Peruvian authorities rescue 39 people kidnapped by Shining Path rebels
  • Date: 28th July 2015
  • Summary: ALTO HUALLAGA REGION, PERU (FILE) (ORIGINALLY 4:3) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF SHINING PATH MILITANTS IN FORMATION AND CHANTING AND ALSO MARCHING IN JUNGLE
  • Embargoed: 12th August 2015 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Peru
  • Country: Peru
  • Topics: General
  • Reuters ID: LVA4KWLGATQ3SQPAWP9RXFOWQUB4
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: EDITORS PLEASE NOTE: THIS EDIT CONTAINS MATERIAL WHICH WAS ORIGINALLY 4:3
    Peruvian Security Forces rescued 26 children and 13 women who were reportedly being held captive and effectively used as slaves by members of the Shining Path insurgency, Deputy Peruvian Defence Minister Ivan Vega told the media on Thursday (July 27).
    Some of the hostages had been held for as long as three decades in a camp in the town of San Martin de Pangoa, in the region of Junin, located some 650 km (1,025 miles) to the southeast of capital Lima within an area known as VRAEM, an acronym for "Valley of the Apurimac, Ene and Mantaro rivers."
    Vega said the ages of the children range from one to 14 years of age. He said the group included people who had been abducted twenty-five years ago from a mission run by nuns in the town of Puerto Ocopa.
    Many of the children were born as a result of rapes, according to media reports. They were now being cared for by the state, Vega added.
    "There are 13 adults, 26 children from the ages of 1 to 14 years old. The women's ministry, the health ministry, the state as a whole will welcome them to give them the attention they deserve. Health, education and food will give them a new lease on life," Vega said.
    Vega said the children and women were found working in a "production camp" run by the Maoist rebels, used to provide the insurgents with food and supplies. According to reports, the children would be indoctrinated into the Shining Path's extreme Maoist ideology and forced to join their ranks at a later date.
    Vega said no Peruvian deserved to live in these dire conditions and pledged to bring those responsible to justice.
    "What are we looking for? To pacify the VRAEM (Peru's southeastern Amazonian region known as the VRAEM). This has been a very hard blow to the Shining Path, we have not fired a single shot. It took intelligence and pure persuasion to make these people understand that it is better to approach the state rather than to be subjugated by the Shining Path as slaves. No Peruvian should be a slave, no Peruvian deserves to live under the regime of slavery. No Peruvian deserves to be raped and forced to work. The Peruvian state does not allow it, we will not allow it and Quispe Palomino (Shining Path leaders) both Jose Raul as well as his entire criminal structure is going to pay and will be accountable to the Peruvian justice system," Vega said.
    Vega told local media those rescued would be taken to town of Mazamari to try to find their relatives.
    The Shining Path, or Sendero Luminoso, has waged acts of violence in Peru since approximately 1980, funded in part by cocaine trafficking, according the Drug Enforcement Administration.
    The Shining Path, which declared itself committed to Maoist ideals, has been designated a foreign terrorist organisation by the United States.
    Its efforts to topple the Peruvian state have claimed an estimated 69,000 lives.
    The insurgency was crippled in 1992, when its powerful founder and leader, Abimael Guzman, was captured, but remnant bands of rebels still ambush security forces in jungle valleys where they are believed to coordinate with drug traffickers.
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