LIMA – Peru's president on Wednesday signed an amnesty bill into law, preventing military personnel and police officers from being prosecuted over alleged human rights abuses during the country’s armed conflict decades ago.

The new law came despite calls from the local and international community to strike it down. The war that raged between the Peruvian military and the Shining Path communist insurgency from 1980 to 2000 left an estimated 70,000 people dead, the majority of them in rural areas.

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President Dina Boluarte said during an official ceremony that Peru “honors” those people who confronted the insurgency with “courage and dedication." She added that military members and police officers have carried “for years the burden of endless trials, unjust accusations

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