Peru's President Fujimori vows military-led crackdown on crime after taking office
Peru's newly inaugurated President Keiko Fujimori — the country's ninth leader in just a decade — pledged after her swearing-in to deploy the armed forces to crime-ridden areas and adopt a hardline security strategy as Peru battles its worst wave of gang violence, extortion and illegal mining in decades.
Keiko Fujimori struck a hard line moments after being sworn in as Peru's president, pledging to send the armed forces directly into neighborhoods gripped by gang violence, extortion rackets and illegal mining. Peru has now cycled through nine presidents in barely a decade, a churn that has deepened the country's security crisis.
The new leader described a military deployment plan targeting both the shantytowns ringing Lima and illegal gold-mining zones in the Amazon basin, framing it not as a temporary state-of-emergency measure but as what she called a lasting security architecture. Fujimori said troops would work alongside police in the highest-crime districts.
Previous governments have tried similarly tough crackdowns without lasting success, and human rights groups warn that military deployments risk excessive use of force. How the Fujimori administration balances those concerns will be an early test of her presidency.
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