The Barrios Altos massacre took place on 3 November 1991, in the Barrios Altos neighborhood of Lima, Peru. Fifteen people, including an eight-year-old child, were killed, and four more injured, by assailants who were later determined to be members of Grupo Colina, a death squad made up of members of the Peruvian Armed Forces. The victims were partygoers, mistaken for Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso) rebels, a Maoist organization.
The murders became a symbol of the human rights violations committed during the presidency of Alberto Fujimori (July 28, 1990 – November 22, 2000). The case was taken to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. In August 2001, in conformance with the judgment of the Inter-American Court, the Peruvian government agreed to pay $3.3 million in compensation to the victims and families. The case was also part of the material reviewed by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (Peru) after the fall of the Fujimori government in the 1990s.
The Barrios Altos massacre was one of the crimes for which Fujimori was extradited from Chile to Peru on September 20, 2007. The killings at Barrios Altos were cited in the request for his extradition submitted by the Peruvian government to Japan in 2003.
Read more about Barrios Altos Massacre: Background, Massacre, Aftermath, Amnesty, Inter-American Court of Human Rights, Case Reopened
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“It is hard, I submit, to loathe bloodshed, including war, more than I do, but it is still harder to exceed my loathing of the very nature of totalitarian states in which massacre is only an administrative detail.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)