Peru to seek bodies of insurgent conflict victims

LIMA: Peruvian lawmakers approved new measures Thursday to find the remains of people who went missing during a violent conflict between the state and armed insurgents from 1980 to 2000.
The law approved by a vote in Congress sets up a national registry of people missing and a program to try to find out what happened to them.
"This is a debt the state owes that must be corrected," the head of the congressional justice commission, Juan Carlos Eguren, told the chamber.
"A law is needed to humanise those cases that are the responsibility of the state."
Thousands of victims went missing, many of them thought to have been abducted by the communist insurgent group Shining Path which waged an armed insurgency from 1980.
The new law spares victims' families the need to file a formal criminal suit before they can ask authorities to seek their loved ones' remains. Eguren said many relatives were too afraid to report the disappearances at the time.
Peru's Truth and Reconciliation Commission and forensic authorities estimate there are 15,741 missing people buried in 4,000 mass graves in the country, many in the southeast.
The commission estimates the conflict left some 69,000 people dead or missing.
The Peruvian armed forces are also accused of atrocities during the conflict.
Former President Alberto Fujimori is in jail after being convicted for massacres of opponents in the 1990s.
His daughter Keiko Fujimori is running for president in a second-round election on June 5. A survey published Thursday by pollster CPI indicated she was favoured to win. — AFP