Fuelled by growing crime rates, Peru’s government declared a state of emergency in Lima Monday, with military announcing that it would deploy 1,000 soldiers in the capital to patrol key areas such as train stations, and support local police.
National police director Victor Sanabria announced there would be an increase in patrols at train stations and bus stations where tens of thousands of commuters gather each morning.
The motion in the national assembly followed a wave of violent crime over the weekend, in the city if eight million people, including the murder on Sunday of Paul Flores, a popular singer killed during a late night attack on his band’s bus. In a separate incident, an object exploded at a restaurant in the capital on Saturday injuring at least 11 people.
The state of emergency is expected to last for 30 days and will enable the government to suspend some civil liberties, including the right of assembly. The decree also enables police to search homes without warrants and arrest citizens without orders from judges. A similar measure was implemented from September to December.
“We are in a situation where there is exponential growth of illegal economies” such as the drug trade, “and in which there is a growing number of international criminal groups” operating in the country, said former Interior Minister Ruben Vargas.
Jorge Zapata, president of the National Confederation of Private Businesses, a powerful trade group, told local radio station RPP that many small business owners in Lima have been forced to make extortion payments to criminal groups.
There were 2,057 murders in Peru in 2024, compared with 674 in 2017, according to government statistics.
According to Peru’s attorney general’s office, there were 22,800 extortion complaints filed by citizens last year, four times as many as in 2017.
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