Peru police make violent raid on Lima’s San Marcos University - The Guardian

Scores of police raided a Lima university on Saturday, smashing down the gates with an armoured vehicle, firing teargas and detaining more than 200 people who had come to the Peruvian capital to take part in anti-government protests.

The police raid on San Marcos University – the oldest in the Americas – is the latest in a series of affronts driving growing calls for President Dina Boluarte to step down after six weeks of unrest that has claimed 60 lives, while leaving at least 580 injured and more than 500 arrested.

The demonstrations began in early December in support of the ousted former president Pedro Castillo but have shifted overwhelmingly to demand Boluarte’s resignation, the closure of Congress and fresh elections.

Photograph: Juan Mandamiento/AFP/Getty ImagesMany of those arrested in Saturday’s raid had travelled from southern Peru to the capital to take part in a demonstration last Thursday labelled the “takeover of Lima ” which began peacefully but descended into running battles between protesters and riot police amid stone-throwing and swirls of teargas.

In a statement on Twitter, the office of the UN high commissioner for human rights called on the Peruvian authorities to “ensure the legality and proportionality of the [police] intervention and guarantees of due process”.

Paredes said it was a flashback to regular police and armed forces raids on the public university in the 1980s and 90s, when the campus was seen as a hotbed for subversion during the state’s conflict with the Mao-inspired Shining Path rebels.