Peru's Facebook-driven vigilantes deal rough justice to the guilty – and innocent

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/06/catch-your-thief-peru-facebook-vigilante-movement

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It began as a local Facebook page in the Andean city of Huancayo, encouraging citizens frustrated by an ineffective, and sometimes corrupt, local police force to capture and punish petty criminals themselves.

But the message – “Chapa tu choro” or “catch your thief” – has gone viral, triggering a social-media driven vigilante movement across Peru, and prompting a wave of violent reprisals against suspected criminals. Since the campaign began in August, more than 100 “Catch your thief” Facebook pages have popped up, exhorting brutal punishment for criminals and posting graphic online videos of vigilantism.

Dozens of videos show savage beatings. Suspected thieves are stripped to their underwear, bound to posts, punched and kicked, and beaten with belts or pieces of wood. One video shows a woman stripped half-naked and forced to walk with a placard saying “I’m a thief”.

Another online video shows a man accused of robbing a lorry being beaten; it later transpired he was a curious neighbour who had nothing to do with the crime.

Since the campaign began, three men have been killed: two suspected murderers were burnt to death in the town of Andas, in the Andean region of Huanuco, while in the northern city of Trujillo, a 17-year-old was shot dead after allegedly stealing a mobile phone.

The campaign began when Cecilia García, a journalist in Huancayo, described how she and her neighbours had caught a thief and handed him over to the police, only to see him released after half an hour. She was so outraged she began the campaign calling for people to take justice into their own hands rather than hand criminals over to the authorities, she told RPP, a national radio station. “The people are expressing their indignation through social media,” she said.

García has rejected accusations that she should be held responsible for any deaths caused by vigilantes, telling El Comercio newspaper: “The government doesn’t want to accept its ineptitude and is looking for someone to blame.”

In Cerro El Pino, one of Lima’s most crime-ridden neighbourhoods, Holler Vílchez echoed such sentiments. “There were so many muggings, residents started to take justice into their own hands,” he said.

Local vigilante groups known as ronderos patrol these steep, labyrinthine streets where almost every house, however humble, has a wrought-iron door and metal bars on the windows.

“The police never came when we most needed them, they would say they didn’t have a car, or didn’t have enough fuel, or would arrive an hour later. So we catch our criminal and punish him ourselves,” said Vílchez.

Taking out a tattered envelope, he selected an image of a young man wide-eyed with terror surrounded by men whose faces are concealed by balaclavas. Other photos show the same alleged thief chained to a sign a few metres from where Vilchez stands. It reads: “Here we hang criminals, drug addicts and rapists. We will burn them alive.”

The original “Catch your thief” Facebook page has spawned ever-more violent copycats, including “Catch your thief and leave him paralysed”, “Catch your thief and castrate him” or even “Catch your thief and hang him”.

Earlier this month the interior minister, José Luís Pérez Guadalupe, attempted to rein in such vengeful urges: “Catch your thief but hand him over to the police,” he said. “If they want to take justice into their own hands, the country’s justice system must also judge them.”

But few Peruvians trust that system to deliver justice: A recent Ipsos poll of Lima residents showed 55% do not trust the police, and 79% have no faith in the judiciary. Another poll, by market research company GfK, showed that 72% of Lima residents broadly backed the “Catch your thief” movement.

And other officials have proved more ambivalent in their reaction to the spate of violence. Lima’s mayor, Luis Castañeda, said the campaign could have a “dissuasive effect” on crime.

Jorge Yamamoto, a social psychologist at Lima’s Catholic University, said that while popular justice has long been a part of Peruvian life, social media has triggered the escalation of vigilante acts.

“When the police and judicial system is dysfunctional, it’s like apowder keg which can be set off by the media and people’s ownexperiences,” he said. “Social media has such penetration in societythat it can act as a trigger to this kind of behaviour.”