It is estimated that between 150 and 200 children in Peru have been abducted and are currently being trained by narco-terrorist groups.
Minister of Women’s Affairs Ana Jara made the announcement mere days after police rescued nearly a dozen children from a Shining Path training facility in Satipo, Junin.
Peru’s national police are still trying to determine whether the women found in the camp from which the children were rescued are the children’s mothers. Also yet to be determined is whether they were abducted along with the children or if their participation was voluntary.
Shining Path, formally known as the Communist Party of Peru, is a Maoist organization founded by former university professor Abimael Guzman in the late 1960s. The group believes that imposing a dictatorship and inducing a cultural revolution will create a truly Communist Peru. However, its tactics have landed the group on a number of countries’ terrorist organization lists.
Abducting children, and training those born into the group has caught the attention of a number of humanitarian and child protection groups over the years. While they push for a Communist Peru, Shining Path makes money in drug trafficking, much like many rebel groups in Colombia.
Earlier this year, UNICEF told reporters, “The utilization of children and adolescents on the part of the Shining Path constitutes a violation of the [Convention of the Rights of the Child] and puts them in an extremely vulnerable situation that affects their emotional, social, cognitive and physical development.” Adding, “It is necessary to understand that in these circumstances they are victims. It is imperative that these children can enjoy their rights again.”
